Social Media and Web 2.0 for Rethinking E-Government Maturity Models

In this chapter, the authors argue that social media and Web 2.0 technologies have the potential to enhance government responsiveness, representation, citizen participation, and overall satisfaction with the public policy-making process. To do that, this chapter suggests the dialectical approach of a new E-government maturity model through both New Public Service and Social Construction of Public Administration views. Then, they provide guidance to practitioners who are responsible for developing social media and Web 2.0 strategies for public service organizations. Finally, to provide guidelines for public administrators, this chapter argues that the “public sphere” should be redefined by citizen’s online social networking activities with public administrators and capacity building activities among practitioners in public service agencies through their use of social media and Web 2.0 tools.

Open Source, Crowdsourcing, and Public Engagement

This chapter is an investigation of open source, crowdsourcing, and public engagement in the public and nonprofit sectors through four cases: (1) Changemakers competitions, (2) Peer to Patent in the U.S., (3) Future Melbourne 2020 in Australia, and (4) Idea Box in Japan. Macintosh’s (2004) case analytical framework is adopted to systematically document the four cases for comparisons. From the literature three components are identified to understand the open source and crowdsourcing models: initiator, mechanism for information selection, and beneficiary. Three components are used to examine how governments or nonprofits adopt the open source model or crowdsourcing model to facilitate public engagement. The conclusion is that different designs of the projects might lead to different scales of public engagement, defined by Savar & Denhardt (2010). Finally, some potential issues and challenges of implementing the open source and crowdsourcing models to facilitate engagement in public affairs are discussed.

Using Web 2.0 as a Community Policing Strategy

Community policing is intended to empower citizens who are plagued by crime and disorder. Scholars have considered community policing as a proactive measure that addresses issues of disorder to prevent the occurrence of more serious crimes (Goldstein, 1986; Wilson & Kelling, 1982). In a digital age, people are increasingly interacting socially via web platforms. This digital interaction includes governments, which can interact with the citizens in their society to co-produce effective responses to criminal activity. Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, iPhone applications, and Nixle provide new media for citizens and police interactions. Using a sample of 163 municipal police departments, this chapter examines the level and type of participation among municipal police departments using these resources. It is argued that Web 2.0 social media applications allow for a more fluent and dialogic relationship between citizens and police to work together to reduce crime and increase community livability. Policy and practice recommendations related to participating in and enhancing social media presence for police are also provided.

Assessment of Web 2.0 Applications Employed by Human Resource Departments in U.S. Cities

Most local governments employ an intranet within the organization, to assist in human resources. A telephone survey of local government officials (n=17) found these intranet sites employ few Web 2.0 applications. The survey found most cities have plans to increase their use of Web 2.0 applications for human resources management. However, the recent economic recession has adversely impacted these plans. The chapter forwards recommendations to improve local governments’ use of Web 2.0 applications while maintaining cost efficiencies.

Local Governments and Social Networking

This chapter argues that Web 2.0, a valuable tool used to expand government-citizen communication opportunities and bring citizens as a group closer to government, widens a communication opportunity divide between local government and its citizens. Web 2.0 access is almost exclusively English-language based, benefiting that segment of the population and leaving others behind, especially the fastest growing language minority, Spanish speakers. While local governments continue to take advantage of the ability to interact with citizens through social networking (Aikins, 2009; Vogel, 2009), McDonald, Merwin, Merwin, Morris, & Brannen (2010) found a majority of counties with significant populations of citizens with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) did not provide for the translation needs of these citizens on their Websites. The chapter finds that Web 2.0-based communication is almost exclusively in English and that cities are missing opportunities to communicate. It concludes with recommendations based on observations of communities employing Web 2.0 to engage non-English speaking populations.

Measuring the Impact of Social Media use in the Public Sector

Existing research on eGovernment performance has provided limited proof for the impact the use of technology has on citizen participation, engagement or generally satisfaction with government activities. Social media applications have the potential to improve responsiveness, reach, and efficiency, and even cost savings in government. The current Government 2.0 initiatives launched by all executive departments and agencies of the U.S. Federal Government as a response to President Obama’s Transparency and Open Government memo show that government agencies are implementing social media applications as additional information and communication channels. This chapter provides a comparison between traditional eGovernment measurement techniques and the current practices, highlighting the current practices of measuring social media impact in the public sector. The insights are based on data collected in 2010 from interviews with social media directors in the most innovative executive departments and agencies. The results show that the current standard practices mostly include quantitative impact measures instead of the qualitative measures needed to better understand the sentiments of citizens.

The Paradox of the Interactive Web in the U.S. Public Sector

Web 2.0 technologies—what we prefer to call the “Interactive Web”—have become frequently used tools in the public sector. These tools include social networking applications such as Twitter, Facebook, Wikis, or RSS feeds. Public sector agencies are using blogs to communicate information on public hearings, wikis to coordinate work or share expertise and intelligence information, and social networking sites to communicate with citizens. These kinds of applications create a public sector paradox. On the one hand, they have the potential to create opportunities related to key public sector issues of transparency, accountability, communication and collaboration, and to promote deeper levels of civic engagement. On the other hand, information flow within government, across government agencies, and between government and the public is often highly restricted through regulations and specific reporting structures, and therefore usually delayed through the filter of bureaucratic constraints. The authors provide an overview of drivers encouraging the adoption of Interactive Web applications, but also transformative organizational, technological, and informational challenges ahead that might lead to resistance to that change.

Web 2.0

Democracy shares many of its core principles with Web 2.0: it is participatory, interactive, individual-centered, host to and tolerant of multiple voices and opinions. They even have some common polemics: wisdom of the crowds vs. ignorance of the crowds; and the fact that everyone voicing an opinion may constitute both noise and debate. The emergence of the term e-Democracy 2.0 results from an alliance between Web 2.0 and democracy. This chapter intends to demonstrate that Web 2.0 has the potential to improve democracy. For this purpose, it begins by providing an overview of the core benefits and challenges of e-Democracy 2.0, then focuses on the importance of social technology for citizen participation. More specifically, this chapter conducts a content analysis to assess the role that Facebook plays in terms of encouraging and facilitating citizen participation.

Using Web 2.0 to Reconceptualize E-Government

This chapter examines the growing literature on e-government and Web 2.0 with particular attention to online collaborative platforms, such as GovLoop, that complement government. The authors present a thorough background to the topic of Web 2.0 in e-government and present numerous examples of how these technologies are used across government both in the U.S. and globally. This chapter explores two main areas: first, how Web 2.0 and social media are being used as a vehicle to enhance e-government, and second, to present a case study of GovLoop, which is a collaborative social media platform designed to complement the work of government. GovLoop provides those working within and external to government—citizens, government employees, academics, non-profit professionals and contractors—with the ability to share information and collaborate on issues of public benefit. The chapter presents a starting point for future research on how Web 2.0 is changing the very nature of e-government and service delivery, and how governments are in a unique position to utilize these tools to expand collaboration and openness with their communities.

eGovernance2.0

This chapter discusses the results of exploratory research conducted by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, which aims to collect and analyse evidence and to assess the significance of the impact of social computing (also known as Web2.0) on public services in order to better understand its implications for governance. After introducing the rise of the social computing phenomenon and its trends in the public sector, which are of crucial importance to both government-citizen relations and organizational and institutional aspects of government (what is referred to as governance), the chapter argues that the emerging wave of openness—that is implicit in social computing-enabled applications—could lead to a new phase for eGovernance. The chapter also explains that social computing has multiple areas of potential impact on governance which need further systematization, in both conceptual and methodological terms. Social computing has a potentially disruptive impact on government-citizens relations, on public sector organizational and institutional design, and the way public services are created and delivered. There are also signs that there will be fundamental shifts in the relation between government and citizens that could result in new ways of “public value creation,” which are worth further investigation. Social computing can play an important role in the innovation process in the public sector by supporting profound transformations which would allow citizens to take an active part in policy-making processes. Social computing applications can promote the modernisation of existing governmental functions by supporting the optimization of back office procedures, by streamlining and consolidating information flows, and by exploiting knowledge sharing mechanisms for administrative purposes. Finally, the chapter discusses the key findings and provides conclusions and future policy and research indications. Social computing’s multiple impacts on governance need to be further documented in order to fully understand in which areas of the policy cycle it can play a role and in which not. To make it an effective part of governance systems and society at large the best way to embed it in public sector strategies and policy making mechanisms needs to be determined.