Financing digital government in municipalities

The main goal of any digital government initiative is to create public value [34]. Although this sentence represents a powerful idea, there is no clear evidence about the causality route from technology to the creation of public value for citizens and businesses in a region. Local governments are more tangible examples of how digital government initiatives may transit from new ICT projects to benefits for citizens, governments and society. In theory, citizens may benefit by receiving more efficient and quality public services in a context of participation and transparency. Governments benefit by improving their strategic, regulatory and financial position to accomplish their mission. Society in general benefits from digital government initiatives by improving the quality of life in the region. However, understanding the causality routes from implementing digital government to improving public service delivery, and from these to the final creation of public value is complex and multifaceted. This article examines empirically these complex causality routes of digital government by adapting an integrative version of the public value framework and tests it by using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) techniques on a dataset of municipalities in Mexico. The results indicate that the framework was useful to capture the transition from digital government advance to the improvements of public services in terms of efficiency and quality in the context of participation and transparency. It was also suitable to represent the transition from the improvements of public services and the enhancement of participation and transparency to the creation of public value in government, but more investigation is required for uncover the causality route of the creation of public value in society. Several conclusions are drawn for local digital government implementation.

Exposing an overlooked ambiguity in how philosophers use the term ‘public good,’ this paper proposes to distinguish between inherently and contingently public goods, where inherently public goods are non-rivalrous and non-excludable in principle (e.g., national security) and contingently public goods are non-rivalrous and deliberately provided in a non-exclusionary way (e.g., parks). This distinction is conducive to philosophical debate in two ways. At the level of ideal theory, contingently public goods reveal the inadequacy of the various benefit principles that have been proposed to ensure justice in the provision of public goods (Claassen 2013; Miller and Taylor 2018; Murphy and Nagel 2001). Because these goods could be provided as club goods, benefit principles mandate unacceptable transfer payments to the privately wealthy and to people who disvalue their inclusive mode of provision. At the level of non-ideal theory, contingently public goods constitute a natural yet underappreciated focal point for effectively rectifying injustices. While all public goods promise to render access to private resources less relevant, contingently public goods hold special potential: their provision may be costless and involve no market interference, it can more powerfully express a commitment to status equality and it can be especially effective at addressing inequalities in opportunity.

The Routledge handbook of international local government

The government invests in a transformation initiative called Digital Government or previously known as e-Government. Digital Government requires technology, people, and process along with a set of strategies. For the digital government to succeed, government workers must be equipped with appropriate digital skills that are currently not thoroughly explored. Government employees must be trained with proper digital skills, albeit rigorously studied, to ensure the success of this Digital Government implementation. In Oman, studies on digital government started in 2004. However, most of the studies focus on strategy, process, and technology but lack the people aspect. Also, there is a lack of studies on Digital Government Competency (DGC) for public sector managers. Additionally, studies on how to retain employees with advanced ICT competency in different public sector organisations have to be conducted. Therefore, this study aims to develop a conceptual framework for the digital government to assess the relationship between public sector managers, digital leadership skills, data protection skills, soft skills, digital literacy, management skills, digital creativity and innovation. This framework’s development relies on Human Capital Theory (HCT) and Technology Organization Environment Theory (TOE). Based on previous literature works, there is a relationship between the success of digital government initiatives and employees’ competency. As a result, this study proposes a framework for researchers and governments by demonstrating the value of the Digital Government Competency on the Omani government, which can help to increase the success rate of the Omani Digital Government initiatives.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are shaping the global agenda by extending the notion of sustainability beyond the realm of environmental impact, to include economic divides, social inclusion, and institutional impacts in a coherent whole. Digital technology in general, and digital government initiatives in particular, can play a key role in supporting the achievement of these goals. In this paper, we focus on the relevance of the SDG agenda for digital government research. Based on our analysis of 291 studies in the area of digital government and sustainable development, we map examples of empirical studies against each of the 17 SDGs, highlighting foci and gaps in the existing body of research. Drawing on the findings, we provide inputs for a research agenda in digital government that systematically tackles the way digital government can help achieving the United Nations’ Agenda 2030.

This report, composed of two separate themes of Digital Government Readiness Assessment (DGRA) and Open Data Readiness Assessment (ODRA), is intended to help government assess their digital environments and frame their own strategies.In order to assess the potential for a Digital Enabling Government Initiative (DEGI) for Vietnam, this report compiles two chapters of aforementioned DGRA and ODRA. Specifically, it assesses potential opportunities and challenges of improving digital government and open data initiatives in the country. Although DGRA and ODRA are two separate assessments with different dimensions evaluated, they take a similar methodological approach from a broader point of view, starting with the desk research and later expanding to scoping mission. Therefore, both chapters of DGRA and ODRA are similar in format but outlined in respective assessment dimension and individual indicators. Since its onset in the fall of 2017, intensive desk research was conducted, and a field mission was carried out to confirm preliminary findings and uncover additional insight during a specific period in time, which means that during the course of analysis and writing additional developments could have been made. This is similar to the United Nations global e-government development report, which assesses progress during a “snapshot” in time.DGRA, the first part of the report, aims to evaluate Vietnam’s current potential for digital government development across seven key dimensions of leadership and governance; user focus; business process change; capabilities; culture and skills; shared infrastructure; data driven; and cybersecurity, privacy and resilience. Meanwhile, ODRA assesses Vietnam’s open data policy through evaluating eight different dimensions of leadership; policy/legal framework; institutional structure; data within government; demand; citizen engagement; funding; and infrastructure.The DGRA chapter focuses on digital government, which is a core part of Digital Economy as public sector delivers information and services more effectively and make them accessible to its citizens.The DGRA also measures the citizen’s demand for digital government services as well as integration and infrastructure policies to delve deeper into the opportunities and challenges the country faces in its digital development journey. The assessment includes a step-by-step analysis of specific components of digital government and presents an action plan to address the challenges identified for improvement.ODRA, the second part of the report, focuses on the country’s open data policy. Open data refers that the data must be both legally and technically open to public, thus placed in the public domain or under liberal terms of use with minimal restrictions, and that the data is published in machine-readable and preferably in non-proprietary electronic formats, which enables everyone to access and use data with freely available software tools.This report, bringing DGRA and ODRA assessments altogether, aims to help raise awareness of digital government and open data, two critical topics as Vietnam prepares its next step for the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). Further, it hopes to serve as a useful resource for the top government leadership in identifying areas of relative strengths and weaknesses to help improve digital government and open data at the same time.

As Japanese local governments are facing severe financial situation, reduction of administration cost with use of ICT is in burning necessity. However, electronic local government has not been promoted smoothly in Japan, since ICT systems have been introduced without sufficient business process reengineering. On the other hand, the citizens’ needs for enhancing public services have increased. In order to respond the citizens’ needs with the fiscal constraint, enriching public online service by the service interaction between local governments and regional institutions and private sector is indispensable. The Association for Promotion of Public Local Information and Communication (APPLIC), its members are local governments and private companies, has promoted the standardization activities of Local Government ICT Platform, which enables smooth interaction of data and services and brings solutions to the problems. By applying the standard specifications, business operation in local governments will be streamlined, and local governments and regional entities will be able to provide high value-added services such as one-stop service to citizens. This paper describes problems Japanese local governments have regarding the public service utilizing the ICT, activity of APPLIC to establish and promote Local Government ICT Platform for alleviating the problems, and the effect and architecture of Local Government ICT Platform.

<p><b>Local governments are innovatively applying smart city technology to resolve challenges in their jurisdictions. These challenges commonly relate to environmental sustainability, infrastructure, and transportation, and result in novel discourses within local government strategies and operations, such as Smart Environment, Smart Infrastructure, and Smart Mobility. Driven by the success of these discourses, local governments seek further solutions through converging the smart city technology with other disciplines. The next likely convergence is with the heritage discipline, subsequently producing the Smart Heritage discourse. Academic literature records that Smart Heritage is an emergent yet unformed discourse that is on the verge of application within local government. Smart Heritage presents opportunities to converge historical narratives with the automated and autonomous capabilities of smart technology. However, due to its novelty, the local government sector has no guidance on delivering Smart Heritage within strategies and operations. Therefore, this thesis comprehensively explores and defines the Smart Heritage discourse and addresses Smart Heritage's delivery within local government strategies and operations.</b></p> <p>The original contributions to knowledge in this thesis are the first thorough definition of Smart Heritage in academic literature and the production of Smart Heritage Principles, which direct the delivery of Smart Heritage within local government. This thesis firstly defines Smart Heritage through an investigation into the nascent patchwork of academic literature at the intersection of the smart city and heritage disciplines. This definition establishes the discursive framework for the subsequent inquiry into how to deliver Smart Heritage in local government organisations. In this inquiry, the researcher conducts three case studies on local governments in Australia: Broken Hill City Council, the City of Melbourne, and the City of Newcastle. In each case study, the researcher analyses strategic smart city and heritage documents and then interviews their smart city and heritage advisors regarding strategic and operational convergences between the disciplines. The researcher then synthesises the resulting data into cross-case key considerations that contextualise a base understanding of how local governments deliver Smart Heritage. Using this understanding, the researcher conducts a second round of interviews and synthesis that, in turn, produces the refined Smart Heritage Principles. The researcher validates the principles’ relevancy and applicability through an additional case study with Wellington City Council in New Zealand.</p> <p>The research finds that Smart Heritage in the academic literature is nascent yet organically forming around a shared discourse between the smart city and heritage disciplines. As a result, there are numerous understandings of Smart Heritage. Nevertheless, these understandings agree that Smart Heritage convergences historical contextual narratives with automatic and autonomous technologies and advances from the passive Digital Heritage discourse. The case studies find that there is a foundation for Smart Heritage within local government through strategic documents that share similar focuses and advisors who seek multi-disciplinary convergences. However, the disciplines’ overlapping is not explicitly recognised in strategic documents and operational models, leading to inadequate financial and staff resourcing of Smart Heritage and inefficient cross-disciplinary initiatives in local government. The research identifies four thematic key considerations that address delivering Smart Heritage within local government; recognition, delivery, resourcing, and innovation; and proposes four Smart Heritage Principles for local governments to follow in order to deliver the discourse. The researcher presents the principles in an industry-ready document at the end of the thesis.</p> <p>The implications of this research are the increased visibility of Smart Heritage as an academic discourse and support for the delivery of Smart Heritage within local government strategies and operations. Smart Heritage becomes more visible as this research solidifies then illuminates a discursive pathway that researchers can engage with. Importantly, this research presents evidence that Smart Heritage is extant within academic literature and local governments, supporting its position as a constructive academic and practical discourse. The Smart Heritage Principles support the delivery of Smart Heritage within local government strategies and operations through the applied guidance they offer the organisations. As the industry-ready document is the first publication with this focus, the influence on the delivery of Smart Heritage is significant. The researcher aspires to share the Smart Heritage Principles document beyond this research context through its distribution to other councils globally.</p>

A Theory Towards the Selective Public Goods Provision Behavior of China’s Local Government

Disaster management requires institutions to help alleviate the effects of climate change on individual citizens. The chapter explores the institutional factors to explain how local Mexican governments can develop better (or worse) instruments to prevent and manage disasters. Using a national survey done in 2020 to over 2,000 municipal governments, the chapter performs an Optimal Scaling Regression to explore the factors that explain why local Mexican governments develop better or worse instruments to manage Disasters Triggered by Natural Hazards. When considering these instruments, we evaluate which institutional factors are important and group them into three areas: exposure and public infrastructure, fiscal autonomy and management capacity, and social participation. The findings show that governments were more likely to have disaster and urban development plans if they also had these institutional factors. Thus, describing how local governments are crucial to help prevent and manage disasters in Latin America.

Government revenue is the source of funds for local governments to arrange fiscal expenditures and provide public services.With the completion of tax-sharing system reform in 1994, the financial capacity of the central government has been rapidly improved, but local governments face with increasing pressure on their budgets. The transfer payment system plays an important role in narrowing the gap among regions in economic development and public services. However, the problems with China’s transfer payment system are very obvious. In addition to the unreasonable structure, potential problems such as irregular allocation, opaque implementation and lacking supervision in the transfer payment budget management process are usually mentioned in the literature. These problems exist in the transfer payment system may directly restrict its effectiveness. Differing from previous studies that focus on the economic effects of the scale and structure of transfer payments, this paper discusses the impact of transfer payment volatility on fiscal expenditure bias from the perspective of uncertainty, which is a relatively new perspective. As a whole, transfer payment volatility caused by the inadequate management of government budget increases the uncertainty of local government revenues, leading to a decline in the expected utility of local governments. To avoid the utility loss, local governments tend to increase productive expenditures to stimulate regional economic development and maintain fiscal revenue stability. In detail, this paper builds a theoretical framework to demonstrate how transfer payment volatility affects local governments’ fiscal expenditure bias in China, and then uses the county-level data to examine their relationships. The empirical results show that transfer payment volatility significantly aggravates local governments’ fiscal expenditure bias towards productive activities, and the effect manifests an asymmetric feature, which is more prominent in central and western areas, and regions with lower net inflow of transfer payments and fiscal self-financing rates. In addition, the results pass through a series of robustness checks, including an instrumental variable method, adjustment of core variable measurement and accounting for other major events. Therefore, our findings reveal that, transfer payment volatility will further aggravate the insufficient supply of social public goods by local governments. In order to achieve the policy goal of equaling basic public services among regions during the period 2020-2025, which was mentioned in the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, besides making steady progress in reforming the division of administrative authority and spending responsibilities between the central government and local governments, it is also necessary to standardize the budget management system of transfer payments to reduce the transfer payment uncertainty of local governments.

Incentives to Provide Local Public Goods: Fiscal Federalism, Russian Style

Enterprise Architecture (EA) plays an important role as an enabler of digital transformation with strategic objectives, especially in digital government initiatives. Despite its potential, EA implementation in the public sector faces challenges such as complex organizational structures, diverse stakeholder interests, and regulatory constraints. This study aims to systematically review the literature to identify critical success factors that influence the success of EA implementation in government and propose a comprehensive maturity evaluation methodology. Using a systematic literature review of 48 studies published between 2018 and 2024, this research identifies key factors such as strategic alignment, governance, human resource capabilities, and stakeholder engagement as critical to achieving effective EA implementation. It also introduces an EA maturity evaluation model designed for the public sector to assess and improve EA practices. The citizen-centric aspect is the novelty of this research where the factors in this aspect characterize the implementation of EA in the digital government sector. The findings provide insights and academic contributions in expanding the study of EA in the public sector as well as providing practical guidance for government agencies to improve their EA maturity so that accelerated digital transformation can be achieved

When clients vote for brokers: How elections improve public goods provision in urban slums

1. Introduction Multifunctionality of agriculture is already noticed in the past and the scale of its occurrence is characterized by the utilization of labour resources and physical capital on farms and the scale of non-agricultural employment. In the Polish scientific literature there is a discussion of the multifunctionality of the country and the rural areas (multifunctionality of rural areas), which consists of rural economic diversification and thus increasing employment opportunities in non-agricultural activities in rural areas (Wilkin, 2008). According to the definition of pure public goods which are delivered to all citizens in the area without being able to exclude anyone from consumption and the marginal cost of supplying those goods is zero. In terms of tourist visiting the region of agro-tourism services can be a public good or club, depending on whether it is possible to exclude anyone from consumption. They can also be good in a club or private, depending on whether these goods are competitive. From the perspective of the inhabitants of the region carry out the tasks of a municipality within the rural tourism can be regarded as providing a pure public good. The premise of the present paper is the multifunctional development of the current issues of agriculture which is to include reinforcing elements increasing rural tourism values by enriching the attractiveness of the landscape and tourism development. Noticeable is the lack of definition in the literature that treated rural tourism as a public good provided by local or central government. Under the law the task of municipalities is to conduct and financing of tourism policy. Selection of paper topic and related issues has been conditioned by the need to supplement, to systematize and update knowledge of the relevant aspects and conditions for development of multifunctional agriculture (especially tourism), taking into an account the characteristics of natural, social and economic environment for local and regional levels. Against the background of the study there will be attempt to answer the following questions: * Whether the provision of public goods by agro tourism affects its profitability? * Whether agro-tourism services have an impact on the profitability of farms or if only by a purely market-based revenues, or through transfers from public funds? The development of tourism in rural areas is possible. More than half of rural communities meet the criteria for recreational space and has favourable conditions for development of tourism. However, it is noted that there are significant barriers concerning human capital. They influence the decision to be taken in shaping changes in rural areas and do not allow full use of the existing possibilities. 2. Material and research methods The research on the evaluation of agro tourism as a public good was carried out in the Western Pomerania communities. The questionnaire method was used to collect data. The source materials on the opinion of owners of agro tourism farms were the result of research carried out in 2011. The research involved 40 farm owners. In order to identify following questions: (a) whether the provision of public goods by agro tourism affects its profitability? (b) whether agro tourism services have an impact on the profitability of farms or if only by a purely market-based revenues, or through transfers from public funds? The [chi square] test of independence, which allows to determine the statistical significance of the relationship between both measurable and non-measurable variables, was used. The test involves comparing the number of responses received in a number of researches that can be expected under the assumption that there are no relationships between the analysed variables. The values of [chi square] and degrees of freedom (df) are working and are generally not assessed. The interpretation covers primarily the level of probability (p), on the basis of which the existence or lack of dependence are predicated. …