Understanding the importance of collaborative problem formulation for data analytics: Key lessons about leadership, governance, and technologyCronemberger, Felippe; Gil-Garcia, J. Ramon
2024 Information Polity
doi: 10.1177/15701255241304597
Data analytics (DA) use has been frequently considered a transformational practice in the public sector, particularly in terms of its potential for data-driven decision making by local governments. Despite growing interest from academics and practitioners, empirical research on what cities are actually doing regarding DA and how is still relatively scarce, particularly in terms of a focus on specific activities and processes. Based on a socio-technical view, this paper examines a local government’s experience with DA use and how DA can be seen as a process and transformational practice. Results reveal that DA practices go beyond the use of specific technologies and involve collaborative efforts to formulate meaningful problems and prepare data for specific uses. Indeed, problem formulation is an essential step where collective discussions and assessment by technical and nontechnical DA practitioners occurs. Our findings suggest that (1) data analytics viewed as a socio-technical process involves data management and analysis, but also collaborative processes between multiple city agencies, (2) collaborative efforts go beyond data analytics and include data collection, data representation, and problem formulation; and (3) formulating the problem in a collaborative manner could be considered an important first step when using data analytics for decision-making in local governments. Furthermore, collaborative problem formulation in DA seems to be affected by specific variables related to the collaborative effort such as leadership, governance, and technology.
How women circumvent systemic constraints: Patriarchy’s extension to the adoption of digital government innovationsSenshaw, Debas; Twinomurinzi, Hossana
2024 Information Polity
doi: 10.1177/15701255241304596
This study investigates the significant influence of patriarchy on the potential acceptance and use of local digital government innovations in resource-constrained countries, building on studies that highlight patriarchy’s impactful role in shaping innovation. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) was adopted as the evaluation theory (n= 270) using Ethiopia as a case study. The results from structural equation modeling (SEM) reveal that patriarchy moderates the relationship between facilitating conditions and usage behavior. Contrary to conventional assumptions, we found that despite facing systemic barriers, women demonstrated higher engagement levels with the local digital innovation compared to their male counterparts, even when they did not perceive direct job-related benefits. This revelation not only challenges prevailing gender stereotypes but also underscores the resilience of women in circumventing patriarchal constraints. The study significantly contributes to theory by contextualizing the UTAUT model within a patriarchal framework, bringing out how societal norms and gender dynamics shape technology adoption in public sector settings. Practically, our findings advocate for gender-sensitive policies and interventions to bridge digital divides, emphasizing the need for inclusive strategies that account for underlying societal structures. By providing empirical evidence from a resource-constrained setting, this research offers important insights for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers aiming to foster equitable digital engagement and harness the full potential of digital government innovations.
Changing tasks and changing public servants? The digitalisation and automation of public administrative workGräfe, Philipp; Marienfeldt, Justine; Wehmeier, Liz Marla; Kuhlmann, Sabine
2024 Information Polity
doi: 10.1177/13837605241289773
Due to digitalisation, automation, and the use of artificial intelligence in policy implementation, public administrations are adapting their workflows and organisational structures. We explore the impact of the digital transformation on the nature of tasks as well as the subsequent (potentially) changing demand for competences and job profiles in public executive agencies, based on a comparative case study and semi-structured interviews with over 60 public servants from three key administrative services in Germany – electronic tax returns, internet-based vehicle registrations, and digital building applications. The findings reveal less complex tasks being partially substituted and core discretionary tasks being standardised. We highlight the emergence of “work for digitalisation” that often remains “invisible”, including “compensating work” (scanning, IT support), “connecting work” (software maintenance) and “cleaning work” (validating data), resulting in an overall increased workload. Additionally, there is a need for role-specific new competences and upskilling of middle-level public servants. Our results indicate a potential substitution of traditional administrative job profiles but a growing demand for highly skilled, academically trained public servants. The findings therefore challenge the notion that digitalisation and automation threaten human labour or effectively counteract staff shortages. Rather, (potential) benefits, burdens, and job perspectives are distributed unevenly across job profiles.
A Framework for the Multi-Dimensional Assessment of Interoperability for Open Data Ecosystems DevelopmentAli, Mohsan; Papageorgiou, Georgios; Aziz, Abdul; Loukis, Euripidis; Charalabidis, Yannis; Alexopoulos, Charalampos; Pellicer, Francisco Javier López
2024 Information Polity
doi: 10.1177/15701255241297172
The generation of social and economic value from the vast quantities of data opened by governments has been much lower than the initial expectations. It requires the development and cooperation of ecosystems composed of various public, private, and non-profit actors. For the development of these ecosystems in order to generate social and economic value from open government data (OGD), necessary conditions are, on the one hand, the availability of a critical mass of OGD and, on the other hand, the existence of some level of homogeneity and interoperability among the numerous portals and websites providing them, which enables their combined exploitation that increases the potential for value generation from them. This paper focuses on the latter and develops the Technical, Semantic, Legal, and Organizational (TSLO) Interoperability Framework, a conceptual tool designed to provide a structured multi-dimensional assessment of the interoperability capabilities of OGD infrastructures, based on the ‘European Interoperability Framework’ (EIF) as well as relevant OGD literature. This TSLO framework has been applied for the assessment of the above main dimensions of the interoperability of the OGD infrastructures of the Greek local government administration institutions of all three layers (decentralized, regional, and municipal). After this application, nine interviews were conducted with nine municipalities that do not provide OGD in order to gain a deeper understanding of the reasons for this. The results of this first application of TSLO revealed not only the low participation of Greek local government institutions, and especially of the municipalities, in the OGD movement (with only 8 out of the 332 municipalities providing open data on their portals or websites), but also the inconsistent implementation of this, especially with respect to the use of semantic technologies as well as the legal frameworks under which the open data are provided, resulting in low levels of interoperability among them. The interviews that were conducted revealed that the opening of some of their data was not a priority for them, as their limited resources had to be used for the development of internal information systems for increasing their efficiency, as well as e-services for the citizens, enabling them to conduct transactions electronically (through the Internet). Our study makes a contribution to the still limited body of research on OGD ecosystems, examining an important precondition for their development that has not been researched in previous literature; also, our framework can contribute to the increase of interoperability of OGD infrastructures and therefore to the increase of social and economic value generations for the OGD they provide.