Academic Libraries in Partnership With the Government Publishing Office

The implementation of the Government Printing Office Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act of 1993 (P.L. 103-40) brought the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) fully into the digital age. The transition has created expected and unexpected changes to the way the Government Publishing Office (GPO) administers the FDLP and, in particular, to the relationships between the GPO and academic depository libraries. Innovative partnerships, use of emerging technologies to manage and share collections, and greater flexibility on the part of the GPO have given academic depository libraries a prominent and proactive role within the depository program. Newly announced initiatives from the GPO, the National Plan for Access to U.S. Government Information and the Federal Information Preservation Network (FIPNet) potentially could either increase academic depository libraries' collaboration with the FDLP and the likelihood that they will remain in the program, or accelerate the rate at which academic depositories are dropping depository status.

Information Management and Strategic Communication for Institutional Change in Ethiopia

The growing need for institutional effectiveness and efficiency in meeting institutionally set objectives cannot be seen independent of information management and strategic communication. As a result, information management and strategic communication practices have become quite useful to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of institutions. To find out the information management and strategic communication situation in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Regional state (SNNPRs) in Ethiopia, primary data were collected from nine zonal departments in selected three most populated zones namely Sidama, Gedeo and Hadiya among the 13 zones in the regional state. The study of the information management and strategic communication activities in the three zones was believed to indicate the overall performance in the public administration practices of the region where the three zones alone comprised almost 40% from 15 million population of the regional state. As part of the study, some secondary sources were also used and relevant literature was reviewed. Then, the data were classified using sex, age, qualification and experience, and also analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean value, standard deviation, T-test and correlation analysis. Based on the analysis, it was found out that the information management and strategic communication practice was less effective due to its intuitional placement where the section was given no or little importance in the institutional administration. Besides, it was found out that most of the challenges and problems related to Business Processing and Reengineering (BPR) implementation for institutional change in the state were quite related to the marginalization of information management and communication practices along with the inadequacy of finance and office equipment, and poor office situations like in the case of Gedeo zone. Actually there was better institutional change/reform in the public administration practices of Hadiya zone than the rest two zones. There was a strong correlation among the zones in information exchange level and challenges of BPR implementation. There was, indeed, about 63% success story in reducing process time, and more than 50% in reducing cost and about 50% success in proper use of resources and creating accountability in Hadiya zone though much more is expected. Sidama and Gedeo zones seem to have by far low successes in BPR implementation.

Open Judiciary Worldwide

Despite its origins, openness in the judiciary has expanded beyond transparency and, therefore, beyond the common law open justice principle. Several initiatives worldwide are echoing this trend and a new term, open judiciary, is arising as a way to address openness in the justice field. This chapter gives an overview of open judiciary initiatives worldwide, focusing on some of the most successful, in order to identify drivers of adoption, critical success factors, and preliminary results. The research is embedded in a broader exploratory study on the state of the art of open judiciary. The chapter is addressed to answer two of the research questions: What are some learning practices that can be identified worldwide in relation to openness in the judiciary? What are some of the most important lessons that can be learnt from these practices?

Major Issues Affecting Government Data and Information in Developing Countries

The ever-developing technology is multifaceted, not only in technical specifications, but also in mode, type and characteristics. New technologies are designed and produced, new ways of using these technologies also are being suggested, tested and adopted. Telecommunications and digital technology provide today remarkable smart technologies that enable people to capture, process, maintain, disseminate and store efficiently all kinds of information at very fast speed, with high degree of efficiency and correctness. Much of government data collected are continuously affected by the development in such technology. Recent trends of technology currently and for 2017 and beyond have shown that the impact of such trends will enhance the impact on the way governments handle data. This chapter presents an overview of such trends. However, a common strategy for government data should be developed in a concise way that will guide the process of dealing with the trends of modern technologies. Therefore government data platform will adopt new technologies, new hardware and software but essentially the way government data is kept and managed still remain the same, just new tools have been adopted.

Use of Estimation and Control Techniques for Increasing of Efficiency Training for Public Officers in Russia

This chapter focuses on the use of technology estimation and control applied in Modern E-Learning Systems for training of public officers in Russia. Due to the rapid development of innovative technology, implementation of information science and technology in the educational process, it becomes obvious problem of interaction between the participants in the educational process and organizations - employers. This problem is particularly acute, and has its own specific characteristics in the field of continuing professional education of public officers in Russia. The authors propose to solve the problem of increasing the effectiveness of the training creation of a system of continuous professional development, the improvement of information and technical support activities for continuous professional development, including through the creation of a single information resource, including an updated bank of basic programs and additional professional Bank methodical, analytical and informational materials on the most pressing issues of implementation of the state policy for self-education.

Enhancing Citizens' Participation via Recommender Systems

With the introduction of Web 2.0, which includes users as content generators, finding relevant information is even more complex. To tackle this problem of information overload, a number of different techniques have been introduced, including search engines, Semantic Web, and recommender systems, among others. The use of recommender systems for e-Government is a research topic that is intended to improve the interaction among public administrations, citizens, and the private sector through reducing information overload on e-Government services. In this chapter, the use of recommender systems on eParticipation is presented. A brief description of the eGovernment Framework used and the participation levels that are proposed to enhance participation. The highest level of participation is known as eEmpowerment, where the decision-making is placed on the side of citizens. Finally, a set of examples for the different eParticipation types is presented to illustrate the use of recommender systems.

Open Justice in Latin America?

The new trend of information technology and communications has been adopted by court systems. A similar path follows other powers in the republics: executive branches with e-government portals and legislative branches with informative and participatory portals. Despite the fact that technology has reached the judiciary branch, we know very little about the changes, advantages or disadvantages of this adoption. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the use of technology, especially in the websites portals in the Latin America region. An assessment model, which has been developed by Sandoval and Gil-García (2015) and that has four components: information, interaction, integration and participation, has been implemented on a sample of 25 countries during the month of July, 2015. Findings reveal a great disparity among the different countries in the region.

E-Government's Role in Shifting the Paradigm of Performance in the Public Sector

The emergence of e-government changed the world of the Public Administration (PA) and the discipline of Public Management dramatically. Through the presentation of a case- study of the municipality of Palermo, this article attempts to discuss the renewed need for assessing performance of e-government services in a local government and to disclose the main critical issues in accomplishing this evaluation. Palermo is experiencing the implementation of a second- generation e-government project that is embodied in the realization of a web portal. The conceptualization of a framework to assess the performance of the digital services appears to be crucial in order to improve the system and to avoid the errors of the first project. This work relies on a survey to the citizens and semi-structured interviews to managers in charge of the development of the project. System Dynamics, a particular kind of dynamic simulation, is used to provide the necessary feedback structure for identifying the determinants of the success of the portal.

Importance of Stakeholders Identification in Information Distribution Chain Management for Public Value Detection in Public Initiatives

The generation of public value by public organizations for citizens, in diverse social and economical topics, has been an object of analysis and strong debates in social sciences and administration and management sciences. New paradigms arisen recently, looking to satisfy economical and social agents' needs, but they hardly combat the lack of efficiency and mainly efficacy perception people have on public initiatives. The concept of public value can be defined as something that improves the life conditions for a community and whose benefits are appreciated by that community. Defining what is valuable for society, and considering this definition to establish the goals and the extent of a public initiative, is one of the toughest challenges in public administration. The results for a specific public initiative must the needs and expectations of society and, at the same time, observe the laws and regulations, and follow the experts' advice. The outcomes and expected value are conditioned by the capability to access information and by the way this information is transmitted to stakeholders. In this article, we propose a questionnaire to identify and map key stakeholders for a specific public initiative, in order to identify and understand the potential interested individuals and groups. This helps public officers to identify the best way to share information with those interested, and to evaluate the generation of public value. By using this questionnaire we were able to identify the key stakeholders for an exports encouragement program in a medium-size city in Brazil, whose vision must be considered to create public value for this public program.

Incentives for Inclusive E-Government

In this chapter, the focus is on incentives for inclusive e-government. Five case studies of the implementation of contact centers in Swedish municipalities are described and discussed. The research methods used are mainly qualitative interviews with different categories of municipal personnel and with citizens. The main conclusion is that the implementation seems to contribute to increased accessibility of municipal services, even for those citizens who might have problems using Internet services. The study indicates a development towards increased equal treatment of citizens and a contribution to reducing problems related to the “digital divide.” Municipal services became more adapted to citizens' needs by using citizen-centric methods during the development process and in the daily work of the contact centers. The implementation of municipal contact centers can thus be seen as indicating incentives for local e-democracy and a step towards inclusive e-government, although there is still a need to go further in this direction.