Digital Governance and Collaborative Strategies for
Improving Service Quality
Michael E. Milakovich
Department of Political Science, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, U.S.A.
Keywords: Digital Governance, Collaborative Model, Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), Paradigm
Shift, Benchmarks, Performance Management, E-Governance, Social Networking, Voting Advice
Applications (VAAs), Open Government, Connected, Citizen Participation, Co-Production of Services.
Abstract: This paper explores changes in traditional political linkages and argues for greater use of a collaborative
model (Figure 2) for achieving citizen access with information communication technologies (ICTs). There
is substantial evidence that a ‘paradigm’ shift from bureaucracy-driven electronic to collaborative digital
governance is taking place. Common factors which encourage or limit adoption of ICTs by governmental
agencies include public administrators’ distrust of non-professionals, government officials’ fear of loss of
control, lack of sufficient funding. Prospects for the future expansion of digital governance to deliver higher
quality less costly government services in the current strict fiscal environment are assessed. The paper
highlights case studies of emerging applications in selected cities and states where advanced ICT
applications are being used to achieve operating efficiencies, program effectiveness, and productivity.
Examples are given which can serve as ‘benchmarks’ for collaborative reforms. Digital governance
strategies can promote both the politics and performance management potential for technological
collaboration well as improve access to and satisfaction with government services. Emerging collaborative
relationships among governments and public as well as private agencies not only result in a more efficient
service delivery, but also lead to more accountable and interoperable administrative structure.
1 FROM E-GOVERNMENT AND
E-GOVERNANCE
Digital technologies are increasingly important in
lowering the cost and improving the quality of all
types of public services (Dunleavy, Margetts,
Bastow, and Tinkler, 2006; Milakovich, 2005; Obi,
2007; West, 2005). New technologies, however, do
not self-implement. In order to be successfully
applied, proposed technological changes must be
framed within collaborative strategies designed to
promote information sharing, partnerships, and
uniform standards (Agranoff and McGuire, 2006;
O’Leary, Gerard, and Bingham, 2006; Tang and
Tang, 2014). Methodologies for achieving these
goals differ from agency to agency, from country to
country and from region to region. They range from
incremental to radical changes in governmental
workforces and information technology systems.
Digital governance offers a strategic framework for
designing and implementing new paradigms to shift
from bureaucracy-based (Figure 1) to citizen-
centered public service (Xu, 2012). The
collaborative model (Figure 2) differs from other
reforms by emphasizing data sharing,
interoperability, system integration and results-
orientation (Milakovich, 2012a).
Figure 1.
109
E. Milakovich M..
Digital Governance and Collaborative Strategies for Improving Service Quality .
DOI: 10.5220/0005021001090118
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (KMIS-2014), pages 109-118
ISBN: 978-989-758-050-5
Copyright
c
2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
Figure 2.
Since the beginning of the information revolution, e-
government concepts have been adopted by many
governments worldwide. Early design concepts such
as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and
Total Quality Management (TQM) were drawn from
commercial business applications and applied to
government agencies. The World Bank (2014)
defines e-government as “analogous to e-commerce,
which allows business to transact with each other
efficiently (B2B) and brings customers closer to
businesses (B2C), e-government aims to make the
interaction between government and citizens (G2C),
government and business enterprises (G2B), and
inter-agency relationships (G2G) more friendly,
convenient, transparent, and inexpensive.”
Electronic government can be understood as a means
to better serve citizens through economical and
efficient devices and services.
Governance is the legal obligation of duly-elected
government entities to exercise authority over
citizens within their jurisdictions, such as police
power, policy-making, goal setting, performance
management and regulation. UNESCO (2011)
defines e-governance as “the public sector’s use of
information and communication technologies with
the aim of improving information and service
delivery, encouraging citizen participation in the
decision-making process and making government
more accountable, transparent and effective.” E-
governance differs from standard governmental
decision-making by engaging citizens in a wider
range of governing processes through the extended
use of information and communication technologies
(ICTs). The difference between e-government and e-
governance is that “e-government refers to the usage
of ICT as tools that will allow the State to
communicate with its citizens, and the States’
agencies between them. [E]-governance refers to
ICTs used in order to boost the active participation
of the citizens in the political procedures of their
country, giving a channel to ‘hear their voice’ in a
dynamic process of continuous feedback” (Obi,
2007: 29). In an external environment where ICTs
are restructuring nearly every aspect of a society,
government must enter the electronic world
complying with the rules and principles of e-
governance to electronically execute its functions.
With the rapid deployment of ICTs, more and more
words have added a prefix “e”, such as e-mail, e-
government, which generally refers to ICTs applied
to deliver a particular function. Digital governance
differs substantially from electronic governance.
2 DIGITAL GOVERNANCE
Digital governance is an objective or a further result
evolving from government’s progress towards
implementation of e-governance. Electronic
governance is the preliminary stage of combining
government functions with electronic devices so that
citizens are better able to increase both the depth and
breadth of contacts with government agencies
electronically. Digital governance should “provide
government services that don’t simply fit within a
read-only paradigm of interactions between citizens,
government officials and government sources of
information, but to allow a paradigm that achieves
more interactive, process-oriented dissemination and
viewing of government information” (McIver and
Elmagarmid, 2002: 10). Therefore, digital
governance plays a greater role in designing a
strategic framework in which a more citizen-
centered public service can be ensured and more
democratic government-citizen relationships will
emerge.
Digital governance is the networked extension of
ICT relationships to include faster access to the web,
mobile service delivery, teleconferencing, and multi-
channel information technology to achieve higher
levels of two-way communication. It encourages the
use of Google+, Skype, Face Time and other two-
way direct communications to facilitate the co-
production and delivery of government services
between citizens, business partners and public
employees (Milakovich, 2010). Digital governance
combined with the Internet and social networking
apps has the potential to transform the basic nature
of public service and government-citizen
relationships.
KMIS2014-InternationalConferenceonKnowledgeManagementandInformationSharing
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3 FACTORS ENCOURAGING
DIGITAL GOVERNANCE AND
SOCIAL NETWORKING
Traditional public agencies are governed by
hierarchical, linear, top-down communication styles
maintaining distance between citizens and public
officials. Citizens only receive services between 9
AM and 5 PM, when most are working. Darrel West
pointed out nearly a decade ago that IT has the
potential “to substantially redistribute power,
functional responsibilities, and control within and
across federal agencies and between the public and
private sectors” (West, 2005: 5). Digital
technologies are transforming public agencies into
flatter and nonlinear citizen-centric organizations
fostering more interactive relationships with affected
citizens using network-based systems and database-
driven analytics software. New types of
organizations are seeking to delegate decision-
making to socio-algorithmic forms of power that
have the capacity to predict, govern and activate
learners' capacities and subjectivities (Williamson,
2014: 12) Digital technologies are also accessible
24/7, capable of enhancing communication by
overcoming distances in both time and space—
encouraging bureaucrats to work collaboratively
with citizens.
In addition, digital technologies can promote
participatory democracy for larger numbers of
citizens. E-democracy can also be defined as the use
of ICTs and strategies by democratic actors (e.g.
government, elected officials, the media, political
organizations, citizens/voters) within governance
processes of local communities, nations and on the
international stage (Milakovich, 2010). E-democracy
can and should be measured by the level of e-
participation, because levels of citizen’s
participation in political and governance processes
are an effective measure of participatory democracy
(Klofstad, 2011). This includes applications of new
social networking websites such as Linked-In,
Facebook and Twitter. Online applications and
social networking websites have the further potential
to contribute to even more extensive development of
e-participation.
Social networking applications enable more
individuals and groups to participate in a greater
variety of online political activities, such as
acquiring and sharing political information,
discussing political issues in online forums and
engaging in political campaigns. In addition, some
countries already allow their citizens to vote online.
In a recent paper, Alvarez, Levin, Trechsel, and
Vassil, introduced a new type of web application:
Voting Advice Applications (VAAs), which can be
used to “match voters to the party or candidate
representing their optimal choice, based on
information provided by the individual and parties,
and an algorithm used to compute issue distances;
VAAs subsequently offer “voting advice” consisting
of a list of candidates ranked in terms of their
distance to the user” (Alvarez, et.al., 2012: 1).
VAAs have been developed for elections taking
place in individual countries as well as for region-
wide European Union elections. However, VAA
users are more likely to be younger, higher educated,
and have higher income levels. VAAs are more
likely to affect the choices of those who have not yet
developed strong partisan attachments, as well as
individuals with lower levels of education (Vassil
2011).
The importance of social networking in promoting
political activities is widely recognized, if not yet
well understood. There is a growing assortment of
social networking websites which are used as often
for “info-tainment” as they are for connectivity and
communication. What is distinct about social
networking websites, as compared to other types of
media and Internet services, is that they can establish
online relationships based on existing social
networks, clustered around groups of people who
already know each other (Boyd, 2008). Therefore,
social networking websites can be powerful tools for
reinforcing and promoting users’ existing political
views. Social media may also serve as alternative
service delivery networks for cash-strapped
government agencies.
Prior to the invention and widespread use of
Internet-enabled new media devices such as mobile
cellular smart phones, iPads, and Global Information
Systems (GIS), access to big datasets and broadband
applications were only available to a limited number
of experts and institutions. The Internet facilitates
collaborative applications by simultaneously acting
as a low-cost worldwide broadcasting network, a
platform for information dissemination and
propaganda, and a medium for interaction among
individuals and groups via computers, laptops,
mobile phones—without regard for geographic
boundaries or time zones. Social networking
applications have broadened the base for sharing
ideas and political partisanship with others. For
instance, Facebook pages are used mainly for
businesses, individuals, organizations and brands to
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111
share their stories and connect with other like-
minded groups or persons. The main function of the
page is the feed or the "wall," where users can
publish messages, share links, and tag photos.
Parviainen, Poutanen, Laaksonen, and Rekola
(2012), measured activity and friendship
connections on Facebook, and analyzed candidate
supporters’ political behavior during the Finnish
presidential elections. In 2011, they found that
Internet penetration had reached 89% of the total
population. Moreover, 47% of Finns registered with
a social networking service, and 49% searched for
information on political parties or candidates online
(Parviainen, et. al., 2012). This study implies that
activity on political pages is linked to the
connectedness of the users generating the content.
These findings better explain why online civil
society and digital town squares have become new
arenas for political competition (Newsom and
Dickey, 2013).
The predictive results and future implications of this
apparent ICT trend could be utilized to understand
and possibly predict patterns of political activity on
social media. Moreover, ICTs are capable of
creating closer links between government officials
and citizens because both groups can more easily
participate through multiple channels.
Citizen participation is at the very foundation of
democracy in the United States and other Western
Democracies. According to Florini “information is
the lifeblood of both democracies and markets”
(2002: 3). Digital governance strategies facilitated
by ICTs and social networking sites have make it
easier for citizens to search public records from
government websites, discuss political issues in an
internet forum, and scrutinize government actions
through retrieval of records from databases. ICTs
can also broaden access so that more citizens are
better able to participate in democratic processes,
especially for excluded groups, such as the poor,
disabled and handicapped. The participatory model
been reinvigorated in recent years by the Obama
administration’s Open Government (2012) and
ConnectED (2013) initiatives encouraging citizens’
input in governance and technologically-based
learning. Digital technologies increase opportunities
to go beyond traditional forms of citizen
participation such as debating issues, seeking
information, and voting online. The increasing
pervasiveness of digital social media in the last
decade has also dissolved many past technical
barriers preventing widespread and sustained citizen
involvement in actually co-producing and co-
delivering public services.
Pioneering initiatives,
in turn, are also thawing cultural barriers
between public administrator professionals to
collaboratively engage in co-designing public
services with non-expert citizens.
Higher levels of e-participation may bring deeper
levels of knowledge about political processes and
encourage participatory democracy. For those with
access to ICTs, e-collaboration can help citizens
become more personally informed and better
capable of checking and balancing decision-making
processes. In this way, government becomes
increasingly transparent. E-participation enables
citizens’ voices to be heard more clearly and
frequently, which encourages willingness to engage
into decision-making process, and enhances greater
certainty about individual political efficacy. Since
the early 1980s, academics have recognized that
aspirations for citizen participation in government
should go beyond merely contributing to policy
formulation processes; it should extend to the
delivery of public service programs as well
(Whitaker, 1980). Recognition that the delivery of
services could include citizen participation is
reflected in the long history of citizen involvement
as interns, jurors and volunteer firefighters, self-
management of community centers, and
neighborhood watch programs. The newly
recognized techno-enhanced phenomenon of co-
delivery is increasingly being adopted in the private
sector in many ways, including the use of online
banking, ATM machines and self-service gas
stations. Many of the routine functions of
government could similarly be converted to mobile
service delivery.
4 DIGITALLY ENHANCED CO-
PRODUCTION OF SERVICES
Since the late 1990s, advances in technology have
allowed more governments to apply new approaches
to more actively engage citizens in the design,
delivery and co-production of public services. An
early trend was the creation of self-service
opportunities for citizens to find information or
complete a service transaction online, including
availability of Congressional issue briefs, payment
of bills or drivers’ license renewals. In the most
recent rendition of this concept, two-way
information and communication technologies such
as live chat sites are being used to complete complex
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licensing and registration transactions online. Wired
public officials are available via two-way video to
assist citizens in the co-delivery of services and by
helping to complete transactions with government
agencies without having to wait in line during office
hours.
The IBM Center for Business and Government
highlighted three different types of co-delivery
initiatives that can increase citizen engagement, each
offering different roles and opportunities for citizens
to engage in public services: co-design, co-
production, and co-delivery of public services
(Kannan and Chang, 2013).
Co-design initiatives. These allow citizens to
participate in the development of a new policies
or services. Initiatives are typically time-bound
and involve citizens either individually or as a
group. For example, the development of the
Obama administration’s Open Government
policy in 2009 engaged citizens via an open
electronic platform where citizens could be
actively involved in the drafting of policy
guidance.
Co-production initiatives. Involves citizens—as
individuals or in groups—in creating a service
to be used by others. These can involve either
short-term or long-term participation. For
example, the Youth Court of Washington, D.C.
engages first-time, non-violent offenders to
serve as a jury and try other offenders as a
teaching tool to reduce the chances of
recidivism. Similarly, the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office engages individual outside
experts in the patent application examination
process to speed patent issuance (Simone-
Novack, 2009. In contrast, the Library of
Congress engages large groups of citizens via
crowdsourcing to classify and categorize
content and facilitate appropriate information
retrieval for all users.
Co-delivery initiatives. Also involves citizens—
as individuals or in groups—in delivering a
service to others. It can be premised on either
short-term, transaction based or longer-term
relationships. The United Kingdom has been a
pioneer in co-delivery of health and mental
health programs, including family intervention
programs and community support programs
(Kannan and Chang: 2013).
Despite these advances, traditional bureaucratic
systems still present barriers to expanding the use of
collaboration, co-delivery and pro-active
approaches. Among them: 1) public administrators’
distrust of non-professional citizens’ 2) government
officials’ fear of loss of control; and 3) lack of seed
funding (Bovaird and Loeffler, 2012). However, a
clearer understanding of different engagement
strategies and their value and potential limitations
can help lower some of these barriers, especially in
cases where government leaders are willing to pilot
the adoption of these new operating approaches.
Chief among the obstacles to further expansion is
the realization that it is generally easier to apply
technological innovation than it is to make the
administrative and political changes necessary for its
implementation and utilization. Technology has
important objective capacities, but it also influences
employee behavior, organizational structures, social
interactions, and institutional responsiveness.
Plainly, the skills necessary for meaningful use of
ICTs may be more constraining than access to the
technology (Mossberger, Tolbert, and Stansbury,
2003).
5 FACTORS LIMITING ICTS’
ADOPTION IN FEDERAL,
STATE, AND LOCAL
AGENCIES
Despite electoral successes and promises of reform,
public administrators (the much maligned ‘action’
side of government) often lack the capacity,
competence and motivation to breakthrough
ingrained administrative processes. Without
systematic reforms of current structures of
government bureaucracy and additional training in
the use of human capital, government workforces
may not be up to the challenge of creating the tech-
savvy workforce envisioned and funded by Obama
administration. The pace of change is also affected
by an agency’s political willingness to change.
Political motivation is typically guided by
administrative-legislative relationships.
Digital technologies have been used in the past two
American presidential election cycles to encourage
otherwise non-involved but tech-savvy voters to
participate in elections by direct contact with like-
minded friends and information sharing with the
candidates (Milakovich, 2010). Federal agencies
have encouraged similar changes to deliver public
services, but have just begun to use ICTs to achieve
them. What factors limit adoption in federal, state
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113
and local agencies? Heeks and Bhatnagar (1999)
suggested that there are several barriers to successful
technological implementation: technical, people,
management, process, cultural, structural, strategic,
political and environmental. More recently,
Goldfinch (2007) identified four implementation
problems: over-enthusiasm, unrealistic assumptions
about organizational control, lack of valid
performance indicators and benchmarks, and lack of
public accountability through inappropriate
contracting out of technology.
Darrell West posed the question, what drives the
speed and breadth of technological change? He
pointed out the pace and breadth of change is
affected by factors such as “the nature of work
routines within bureaucratic agencies and the degree
to which the organization is open to change”
(2005:12). Bureaucrats are notoriously suspicious of
change and often choose to slowdown the
dissemination of new technology by resisting
standardization and rational innovation.
Public administration may have to reassess the
classic theory of incrementalism. First proposed by
Charles A. Lindblom 55 years ago, it has become the
operating manual of how most public agencies
should make decisions (Lindblom, 1959).
Incrementalism is a model of decision making
through the use of limited successive comparisons
focusing on simplifying choices and ‘muddling
through’ rather than maximizing outcomes. In sharp
contrast, most new technological applications
require changes in the status quo and more precise
decision-making methodologies. Bureaucrats may be
forced to streamline data collection processes,
change internal structures, and re-organize external
relationships among organizations.
The decision to fully adopt a complex ICT social
networking project requires governments to make a
long-term commitment rather than a series of
successive incremental allocations. Frequent
elections, changes in office-holders, lack of
expertise, and shifts in political priorities and
budgetary preferences work against a consistent
focus and momentum to complete ICTs projects.
6 ACCESS, DATA ANALYSIS
AND COLLABORATION
Nearly all governments are under severe short-term
budgetary and fiscal pressures brought on by
revenue constraints resulting from weakness in the
economy. This has also widened the gap between
citizens with access to digital technology and those
without (Dijk, 2005). The digital divide affects 62
million Americans and reflects economic inequality
between groups, broadly construed, in terms of
access to, use of, or knowledge of ICTs. Knowledge
of computers and Internet use are divided along
demographic and socioeconomic lines, with
younger, more affluent and better educated citizens
more likely to enjoy the benefits of connectivity.
Thus, factors such as age, illiteracy and poverty
become barriers to receptivity of digital
technologies. Unless and until this knowledge
barrier is eliminated, there is a significant risk that
those most in need services may become those least
able to access them in a new world of technological
discrimination.
Similarly, within an organization, there is also a
digital divide among human assets, which results
from differences in employees’ ages, education
backgrounds, and cultural diversity. Generational
differences within workforces may lead to conflict,
frustration, and poor morale for some workers, while
at the same time those very differences could inspire
increased creativity and productivity for others. For
example, younger New Millennial workers prefer to
use email to contact colleagues, while more senior
Baby Boomers still use telephones to contact others.
Highly educated technological experts hired by
public agencies bring technological reform into
organizations, but others with basic educational
experience have to accept re-training in order to
adapt to new digital systems.
Emerging globalization trends and the openness of
the Internet bring together elites from all over the
world into organized activities. The emergence of
global elites which control nearly one-half the
world’s wealth lessens the potential for
democratizing political processes (Hindman, 2009).
Furthermore, different languages, value systems, and
uneven awareness of the importance of digital
technologies could further hinder progress.
Organizations converting to the digital governance
model must take cultural diversity into
consideration. Developing a common platform
equipped with a uniform language for interaction,
clarifying organizational cultures, and
accommodating differences, increases the
probability that organizations will reduce digital
divides resulted from poverty and cultural diversity.
Collaborative strategies among diverse public
agencies are vital in successfully moving from
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bureaucracy-driven to data-driven strategies.
Performance management strategies can and should
be used to reinforce core performance values (e.g.
cost reduction, efficiency, results-measurement,
satisfying external customers, and teamwork) and
make necessary program adjustments (Milakovich
and Gordon, 2013). Governments generally fall
behind the private sector in managing performance
because they rely on “lagging indicators” and
obsolete data collection centers to evaluate agency
performance. To help improve agency effectiveness,
managers need real-time data. Governments at all
levels need to rely more on continuous data review,
which allows them to perceive problems
immediately and take actions in time to prevent
them from becoming unmanageable (Milakovich,
2012b). However, few public administrators, and
ever fewer elected officials, have access to statistical
skills and relevant case examples necessary to fully
utilize information available from burgeoning cloud-
based mega-databases. Additional expertise is
needed to implement advanced data collection and
analysis.
Public organizations of all types may be
overwhelmed by the vast amounts of different types
of data requiring real-time processing. They need to
build the capability for analyzing more and different
kinds of data in order to take advantage of the big
data opportunity. Moreover, the timeliness of
processing unstructured sources is also an important
factor. Coping with mega data effectively requires
performing data mining in real time rather than after
it has been collected and stored (Milakovich,
2012b). This may require contracting with outside
expertise, specialists in concentrating multiple data
points into decision-able analysis. Collaboration
with the private sector is also more common, with
businesses entering into myriad new arrangements,
contracts, partnerships and cooperative agreements
with providers where risks and rewards are shared
and the focus of both parties is less on partisanship
than on delivery of improved results. Unlike
outsourcing models of the past, digital governance
strategies are designed to achieve genuine
collaborative partnerships that go beyond merely
installing information technology—rather they
encompass all activities necessary to provide needed
assets and services.
In government, efforts such as these are too often
viewed as crisis interventions rather than
comprehensive collaborative performance
management strategies. Bretschneider (1990) partly
explains why nurturing genuine collaborative
partnerships is a challenge for government: the
authority of the public organization derives in part
from legal and constitutional arrangements
embedded with traditional checks and balances
causing greater interdependence across
organizational boundaries. Greater interdependence
leads to higher levels of oversight rather than
collaboration. In addition, a more cooperative
relationship among business entities results from the
fact that private firms are driven by the overarching
goal of maximizing profits. Public organizations are
not profit-driven and frequently have multiple,
complex, and sometimes competing or conflicting
organizational goals (Thomas & Jajodia, 2004). This
pronounced difference between private and public
sectors also makes it harder to initiate, organize, and
apply an enterprise-wide ICTs projects.
Despite numerous efforts to enhance communication
and collaboration among governments at all levels,
public agencies have relied principally on single
sources of data which are no longer sufficient to
cope with the increasingly complicated problems.
Linkages between different data sets are occurring
and will continue in the future. This helps to
increase interoperability between agencies at
different levels. Traditional bureaucratic concepts of
data ownership are being challenged and new
models drawn from multiple data pools are being
established. With the help of ICTs, public service is
no longer wedded to older models of citizen-official
interaction. Interactions can be customized based on
citizens’ needs and preferences (Ho, 2002).
Electronic sharing of data among agencies is
improved in the name of preventing counter-
terrorism and protecting homeland security, and
lessons learned from these applications are being
transferred to other governmental functions. Several
states and local governments have converted
traditional bureaucracy-centered systems to newer
citizen-centered, cloud-enhanced and networked
governance.
7 FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL
BENCHMARKS
Among the obstacles to data-ready cloud computing
is reconciling the customer service model with rigid
federal and state cost-allocation rules for funding IT
systems that operate social services, transportation,
public safety and health care. In recent years, a
growing number of U.S. states as well as numerous
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localities have moved their data systems and
applications from expensive regional data centers
into the information technology cloud. Texas signed
a series of multiyear data center service contracts,
outsourcing the state's massive data management
needs. Minnesota finished moving almost 40,000
workers in more than 70 state agencies to
Microsoft's cloud-based software program for email
services and collaboration tools. Colorado has
moved its 26,000 member workforce to Google's
suite of office applications. My Maine Connection,
created by the Maine Department of Health and
Human Services in partnership with the state’s e-
government portal provider, Maine Information
Network, provides a one-stop portal for citizens to
determine eligibility and apply for Maine's food,
medical and temporary families and child-care
assistance programs. This service can also work on
mobile devices. The program “telemedicine” in
Alaska ensures citizens’ accesses to quality health
care by overcoming the extreme climate, state’s
geographic factors, and the lack of infrastructures in
remote areas. This tele-health system allows
providers in local village clinics to collect patient
information into an electronic case and to transmit
the case to medical specialist as remote location via
a secure network.
Government-initiated citizen participation efforts
have begun to evolve beyond listening and
responding to complaints. Newer applications are
aimed at efforts at greater engagement, such as the
use of e-petitions, GPS systems and citizen reporting
of street-level service problems (Lipsky, 1980).
Mobile telephone cameras enable citizens to provide
real-time feedback to public authorities responsible
for crime control, fire prevention, and public safety.
Many federal and some state and local agencies are
pioneering new initiatives as well, such as the
“citizen archivist” role at the National Archives and
Records Administration in Washington, where
citizens can help digitize the Archive’s paper
records, identify ancestors in old photographs, and
transcribe handwritten Civil War diaries.
New York City has transformed software from
reactive systems responding to problems as they
occur to proactive systems which enable officials to
integrate databases, discover and address problems
before they happen. Residents may contact either
911 or 311 or submit photos or videos via smart
phones to a call-center to record their complaint.
Bicyclists can summon police directly by taking
pictures of motorists blocking bike lanes. New York
City uses comprehensive metrics collected from
both citizens and public officials to measure just
about everything, from emergency assistance calls to
bike paths; from tree plantings to detailed, agency-
specific indicators. In addition, the New York Fire
Department utilizes big data to help predict where
fires will occur by cataloguing over 60 factors that
make fires more likely to occur, such as average
neighborhood income, the age of the building, and
whether or not the buildings have electrical issues.
Fire inspections are then prioritized based on “risk
scores” generated by an algorithm (Dwoskin, 2014).
The Information Security Cloud of New York City
uses real-time analytic data to identify and analyze
malware on site.
The City of Los Angeles and the software
development company CGI implemented a web-
based Financial Management System across 42 city
departments, replacing the city’s three aging legacy
systems and seven other redundant systems. Its
benefits such as dashboard analytics, reporting and
tracking, real-time budgetary information, “E-
approvals,” and automated past-due billing
processes improve the city’s cash flow. Nevada
County, California, using “community of interest”, a
way of grouping departments with related mission
for broad-based analysis of technology needs and
solutions, transitioned its technological governance
from one centered on the perceived needs of
individual departments to one integrating
technological needs across the entire enterprise.
8 TOWARDS A
COLLABORATIVE DIGITAL
FUTURE
As the pace of technological applications quickens at
all levels of government, more individuals and
organizations are likely to experience both the
benefits as well as the risks inherent in mega data
collection. Indeed, as suggested earlier in this paper,
internet technology may be transforming the nature
of government itself, but not necessarily in positive
ways. Public accountability is a primary concern not
always shared by private data gathering and
information storage companies. Under some
circumstances, populations are seen as disaggregated
sets of sub-populations with different risk profiles
rather than a single unified social body.
Extraordinary measures must be taken to protect the
integrity, privacy and security of data collection and
storage.
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Whether or not a collaborative approach will be
accepted by government to improve service quality
initiatives is still an open question, one without a
simple yes or no answer. Change-oriented
governments and support organizations must adopt
new methods of training to accommodate the needs
of multiple groups and interests in order to
encourage collaboration and enhance performance
and productivity. Digital divides within
organizations and among the most vulnerable
citizens must be overcome. How these inequalities
are dealt with, how skills are learned—and how they
can be applied to various functions at different levels
of government—will determine how case study
evidence is used to equalize access to the Internet,
enhance political connectivity and promote better
customer service based on improved data collection,
analysis and collaboration.
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