Information Polity

2022 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/ip-229002

Aaen, Jon; Nielsen, Jeppe Agger

2022 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/ip-200286

Public sector organizations increasingly engage in robotic innovation projects to assist or substitute for humans in service delivery. However, transitioning small-scale development projects into a large-scale context is a notoriously difficult task that often fails, with many promising robotic projects becoming lost in the diffusion “chasm.” We investigate a failed robotic diffusion project to analyze what went wrong and what can be learned from it. Despite an increased interest in learning from public sector digitalization failure, little attention has been paid to how and why seemingly successful service robot initiatives fail to move beyond the pilot stage. We identify three types of explanations for diffusion failure using an in-depth case study of a service robot initiative in the Danish eldercare sector that had a high degree of management support and commitment from key stakeholders. Our analysis demonstrates how the failure was caused by interrelated and context-specific reasons regarding the lack of technological maturity of the service robot (technology-oriented explanations), inadequate problem-solution fit in the conceptual design (scope-oriented explanations), and misalignment between the robot company and public sector organization mindsets (competing logic-oriented explanations). We outline the lessons learned for public sector digitalization and discuss the paradox between the hype surrounding robot innovations and their slow diffusion.

Skargren, Fredric; Garcia Ambrosiani, Karin

2022 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/ip-200262

Based on the perspective of e-government practitioners at a government agency in Sweden, this article analyses the design-process with the aim of unearthing the design-principles of a Digital Index (DI). The DI is developed to address challenges of how to: understand; appraise; learn from and develop e-government – by combining digital technologies with the context of public administration. This study applies a design-science research method and analyses the initial steps of the design-process: awareness of the problem, suggestion, and development. The results show how the abstract artefact – the DI – is constructed and how it is based on three main design-principles. Firstly e-government should be contextualised with the nature of public administration – which means relating digital technologies vis-a-vis core-businesses of a public authority. Secondly: digital technologies support administrative processes and must be premised on the classification of information and law. Thirdly, apply a process view of e-government that highlights the relationship between internal administrative procedures, the interaction with citizens/companies and the sharing of government data. The discussion highlights how the DI is relevant for research on e-government by offering some concrete as well as general perspectives on how to combine e-government and public administration.

Bickerton, Sarah Hendrica; Löfgren, Karl

2022 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/ip-210320

Public engagement is a gendered experience, whether offline or online, something which is reflected in women’s experiences of social media. In this article, we seek to systematically explore the experiences from politically engaged women Twitter users in New Zealand in order to draw some lessons, through a thematic and interpretative analytical approach, at four different strategic levels on how to deflect intimidating and aggressive behaviour. We conclude that understanding strategically how structural social locations like gender effect the ability to contribute to political participation and engagement, if addressed, can produce more inclusive and productive online political and policy spaces. Further, this strategic approach involves connecting together different levels of response to online negativity such as platform tools, space-curation, and monitoring, having these made coherent with each other, as well as with this strategic understanding of how structural social location plays into access and use of online political and policy spaces.

Soni, Suparna; Mitchell, Austin M.

2022 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/ip-200302

Public service delivery is an essential component of e-governance initiatives but the digital divide limits citizens’ access to e-government services, especially in rural communities. The Digital India initiative launched Common Service Centers (CSCs) to mitigate the physical-digital divide issue. The privately operated local kiosks are meant to ensure easy access to digital government services in India’s remote pockets. Although the literature indicates that females generally have lower perceptions and adoption rates of digital government, existing studies commonly assume women directly interact with government websites. We know little about gender-specific experiences of digital government through the user assisted and privately operated local kiosks. This survey study utilizes the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to explore the gender-specific acceptance of public service through local kiosks in rural India. This paper argues that user-assisted kiosks help mitigate the gender digital divide by increasing the usefulness and ease of use of e-government, which improves rural women’s acceptance and use of digital government services. This field research brings insights from the developing world while recording women’s voices from underserved communities.

Pano, Esther; Magre, Jaume; Pons, Llorenç; Casajuana, Sara

2022 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/ip-200300

Despite the growing interest in transparency policies and, concomitantly, the need to include a gender perspective in analysing the actions of public authorities, the intersection of both fields has attracted limited attention from the research community. The scarce contributions to this topic do not provide a framework that supports an empirical examination of institutional transparency and gender, and therefore, the implementation of these policies remains unexplored. This paper contributes to the debate on institutional transparency and gender perspective by developing an index of gender inclusion in transparency policies based on the information available on official local government websites, and by identifying and analysing factors that drive variations in the municipal councils. The research focuses on the municipalities of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (MAB) and includes other cities for comparative purposes. The findings indicate that the number of inhabitants of the municipality, the presence of women in its political bodies and institutional factors, and particularly the volume of the budget, are positively associated with the incorporation of a gender perspective on institutional websites.

Yavuz, Nilay

2022 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/ip-200305

Technological solutions available to public agencies in delivering public services have increased, including the information and communication technologies (ICTs) used in public transit. For many women who depend on public transit services to access employment, childcare, education, health, and political processes (Hamilton & Jenkins, 2000), transit technologies may offer increased convenience and benefits and eventually improve their living conditions. While women tend to use public transit services more intensively than men (Racca & Ratledge, 2004), prior studies have shown that their perceptions and attitudes towards ICTs and patterns of technology use tend to differ from men. On the other hand, these differences are not well explored in the context of public transit services. Accordingly, using systematic literature review methodology, this paper intends to outline what we know and do not know about gender differences in technology adoption in the public transportation context to develop a research agenda for future studies. It aims to inform theory and policy development for digital government by identifying the gaps in this area.

Damas, Kasny

2022 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/ip-229001