Social Media Corporate Policies for Government Organizations

As government organizations increasingly recognize the fast growth and expanding influence of social media tools such as social networking sites, blogs, and wikis, they start involving in these tools to increase the value delivered to their citizens. Many government organizations have realized the importance of having corporate policies to guide them while involving in these social media tools. The main purpose of this chapter is to present the key lessons learnt from the process of formulating a government-wide social media policy in the United Arab Emirates. This covers how government officials perceive the adoption of social media by government entities, the main barriers face successful adoption of social media, and the key issues need to be covered by social media policies. The authors analyze the collected answers in light of some of the literature available on the topic. They conclude the chapter with a brief summary and recommendations for future research directions.

Elucidating Online Structure for Democratic Legitimacy

This study explores the impact of online communicative structures in local government Web disclosure on democratic legitimacy, after the implementation of e-government in Java, Indonesia, as a result of recent bureaucratic decentralization. Being at a very early stage in the e-government initiative, the analysis of 78 local government websites in Indonesia reveals that local government online structures present certain aspects of democratic and interactive appearance. However, the levels of democratized Internet mediated human interactions are restricted. These restrictions reflect the eradication of sensitive information, a low level of responses to citizens’ solicitations, and disclosure of selective information in local government websites. This chapter suggests that restriction on local government online structure is due to the government’s favor of more controlled media interaction influenced by the embedded authoritarian political culture due to many years of institutionalization. In a sense, websites merely function as a symbol of government legitimacy and power over citizens through media technology, which could suggest local government manipulation of democratization processes.

E-Government Policy Implementation in Brunei

Policy reform initiative in e-Government and other public management areas such as good governance has been momentous and visible in many societies in recent years. However, in many countries, reasonably good policies have made somewhat slow progress at the implementation stage. It has to be appreciated that policy implementation occurs in several ways, manifesting multiple challenges. Taking a key interest in Brunei Darussalam and Singapore, this chapter has made an attempt to see how these challenges or critical factors play a key role in making e-Government policy a success. The authors have examined e-Government strategies in Brunei in the light of policy success in Singapore. Based on their empirical research in these two small countries in South-East Asia, this chapter highlights the salient features and success factors that have enabled e-Government policies to be successfully implemented in Singapore. Learning lessons from Singapore, the authors have proposed potential success ingredients for an effective e-Government policy implementation in Brunei.

Impact of Internet Use on Civic Engagement in Chinese Rural Areas

Few prior studies have addressed the political impact of the Internet on civic engagement in rural areas. This preliminary study aims to explore the connection between Internet use and civic engagement of rural Internet users. Based on the surveys implemented by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the authors find that using the Internet does enhance the level of civic engagement among rural Internet users in China. However, better use of the Internet faces some obstacles, too. They are the young age of rural users and the limited Net bandwidth. Implications of these obstacles are discussed. The chapter concludes that, under certain circumstances, there is great potential for Chinese rural Internet users to become more actively engaged in public affairs in the future.

Educational and Democratic Potential of Digital Games in e-Government

Digital games have, or can be made to have, certain characteristics that make them suitable for education, communication, and the promotion of civic skills in e-Government: hypertextuality, interactivity, reusability, updateability, object-likeness, reprogrammability, personalizability, multimodality, and so forth. From the citizens’ point of view, the functions of societal games can be divided into learning support and the enhancement of participation in society. Enlightened participation in the civic society requires both. Learning by games should promote the understanding of complex social issues and their mutual relationships. For learning to act as a springboard to informed action, one would also have to understand the consequences of actions and events. Consequently, learning by playing serious games is best understood as reasoned practical action in a virtual world.

Transparency Issues in E-Governance and Civic Engagement

Today, people regularly debate the meaning of the term transparency relative to government. President Obama has made transparency a prominent issue in the federal government with his directive to use online resources to promote transparency. However, transparency is important at all levels of government, particularly transitioning from e-government to e-governance. This chapter discusses the definition of transparency related to e-governance and the implementation of transparency initiatives. The mission is to set the standards for government transparency and citizen engagement with an online presence. The standards and roadmap for achieving transparency in e-governance involve politics, policy, and technology. This chapter outlines the necessary political, policy, technology, and transparency issues in e-governance. The discussion and recommendations covers issues such as political will, insufficient knowledge, and fear. Also, recommendations address best practices in policy development and implementation. The current applications and data recommendations cover technology developments.

Reconfiguring Performance Information Linking with Accountability

Over the past decade, performance information has been widely available to citizens along with the expansion of e-government, which has magnified communications between citizens and government as well as citizen direct participation in government business. If citizens are informed more about government performance, citizen trust in government should improve. However, there is, in effect, little use of performance information by citizens, since availability to citizens is not very visible. To disseminate the results of performance measurement effectively, government should pay attention to the improvement of performance measurement systems and performance reporting systems with citizen-centered approaches. User-friendly reporting should not just simplify the multi-layers of performance measurement for improving performance itself. Rather, this chapter suggests applying different approaches to present complicated performance information to citizens. Performance reporting should be constructed in modernized, innovative, and user-focused ways to stimulate the use of performance information by external stakeholders, which can promote government accountability.

Implications of e-Government in Botswana in the Realm of e-Participation

Countries the world over have drawn e-Government interventions placing much emphasis on erecting affluent ICT infrastructures, institutional, legal, and regulatory frameworks. However, most of these interventions lack carefully-drawn e-Government awareness strategies, which translates into most of these interventions being typically unknown by the general public and causing low e-Participation. This chapter presents the novel interventions that are being authored towards robust e-Government development for Botswana where e-Government development is at the very intial stages. Using exploratory and empirical study of Francistown and surrounding rural areas, the chapter presents a critical analysis of the state of e-Government preparedness and further presents the current status of e-Government adoption in Botswana. This study establishes that whilst many e-Government strategies are being authored in Botswana, the e-Participation component has not been adequately considered in drawing the different e-Government interventions. This is negatively impacting on the overall anticipated value prepositions for e-Government implementation.

Innovative Processes and Managerial Effectiveness of e-Procurement in Healthcare

Procurement reform, launched in the last few years, offers prospects of consistent and permanent expense saving. The urgency to reduce expenses and achieve a recuperation of efficiency of the public sector suggests the intervention of modernization and reorganization of the acquiring procedures of goods and services of the public administration. This work describes how the new models function, which indicates an important step forward in the reorganization process of the procurement procedure of the public administration, not only in terms of a “new model of management,” but also relative to the “burden,” in terms of contributions towards saving, which is foreseen. The results obtained in terms of savings, the simplification of the procedures of procurement, and initially the levels of service of the State Sector suggest the extension of the new procedure even to other compartments of public expenses, amongst which the healthcare system, whose reform of the policies of acquisition is called upon to combine with both the objectives of public finance and the objectives of re-qualification of the health authority.

Managing Interactional Performance in E-Government

Currently, citizen-users show a noticeable preference for in-person communication, over Internet-based delivery channels. As a result, governmental agencies still face high numbers of contacts via more traditional service channels such as phone and desk. This chapter deals with the issue of interactional performance in public e-service delivery. It offers a conceptual framework built on the literature of media choice and the theory of perceived justice. As such, it examines the interplay of service complexity, media richness, and social cues on individual media preferences. In addition, it presents key factors which lead citizen-users to the perception of a sense of equity through electronic communication. Finally, this chapter concludes by highlighting a number of possible directions for future action.