Towards Interoperability amongst European Public Administrations

In this paper we present the technical approach followed in the InfoCitizen project. Its novel approximation to Public Administration necessities lies in the combination of Web Services as providers and Intelligent Agents as consumers of public services. The distributed nature of a Web Service network requires a similarly distributed architecture, that in turn requires an assurance of availability and transparency achieved with the use of Intelligent Agents.

Purpose The objective of this article is to make an exploratory study about European public administrations (public administration, public agencies, public law entities, entities dependent on the public administration and public universities) in relation to workplace health promotion interventions. The sample was extracted from the ESENER-3 (Third European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks) (EU-OSHA, 2019) and consists of 7,981 public entities from the EU-27 countries. Four WHPI have been studied: healthy nutrition interventions, sports activities after working hours, back exercises at work and prevention of addictions. Design/methodology/approach This is an exploratory study. The sample was extracted from the ESENER-3 (Third European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks) (EU-OSHA, 2019) and consists of 7,981 public entities from the EU-27 Public Administration. In total, 45,420 establishments were interviewed. Findings Different patterns have been observed when implementing workplace health promotion interventions in the EU-27 public administration. The promotion of sports activities outside working hours is the one with the highest level of implementation in European public administration. On the other hand, the measure with the least implementation level is the promotion of healthy nutrition. Research limitations/implications The limitations of the study are that the studied items are nominal and comprise more than two categories, so it has not been possible to develop a correlation analysis. Practical implications The EU-27 public administrations can see which workplace health promotion interventions need to be improved. Originality/value Differences that may exist in the adopted workplace health promotion interventions by European public administrations have not yet been addressed in depth by the literature.

In a Europe without internal borders that must compete in a global economy, in which there are constantly evolving the needs of an aging society and the labor market, it is essential to achieve a very high level of mobility. The percentage of workers mobility in the EU is relatively low: currently about 2% of working-age citizens, originating in one of the 27 EU Member States, lives and works in another Member State. Mobility in the labor market, covering the mobility from one job to another and mobility between Member States or regions, is a fundamental part of the Lisbon objectives, and an important component of Europe's response to demographic change and globalization. This study analyze the issues related to public employment, ie employment in the public administrations of EU Member States, subject to the free movement of persons under art. 45 paragraph 4 TEU by a clause of exception that will safeguard the public interest. The study has highlighted the Italian legislation, the different types of access to European and Italian Public Administration and its application.

The European Union Location Framework (EULF) is a set of good practices and actions to promote more effective and efficient use of location information in e-government services. The EULF is part of the Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations (ISA) Programme, which supports interoperability solutions, sharing and re-use among European Public Administrations. This report assesses the conditions for an EULF, based on a survey of Member States and an examination of EU policies and work programmes. Five focus areas are being considered initially: policy and strategy alignment, e-government integration, standardisation and interoperability, costs and benefits and committed partnerships. The assessment confirmed their importance in realising and maximising the benefits of location-related information and services. There are various good practices demonstrating that these issues can be addressed and that benefits for governments, citizens and businesses can be delivered. However these good pratices are not universally deployed and there are some significant gaps. The assessment also identified other important issues, including the need for effective leadership and governance, a user-driven approach, an open and balanced data policy, training and awareness raising and appropriately targeted funding. There is, therefore, a need for an EULF, to build on the good practices and interest from Member States and to develop a framework of guidance and actions that will foster interoperable cross-sector and cross-border sharing and use of location information.

Cloud computing is evolving towards federated ecosystems, where several Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) federate each other in order to achieve economy of scale and an efficient use of their resources. In line with the Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy promoted by the European Commission, the objective of the FP7 Cloud for Europe (C4E) project is to leverage the concept of Cloud federation in order to pave the way toward an improvement of European Public Administration (PA) ICT services. In particular, it aims, on one hand, at preserving national authorities and on the other hand, at promoting efficiency, collaboration and harmonization among the different PA offices spread over the European Union (EU).

Do aspects of quality of government, broadly defined, such as corruption, impartiality, and quality of public services, vary below the country level? The concept of quality of government (QoG) and various measures to assess it have become more ubiquitous in several social science disciplines. QoG is related with economic and social development, better environmental conditions, and better quality of life. Yet while governance indicators have proliferated in recent years, their focus remains almost universally on analysis at the country level. Moreover, the majority of indices rely on expert assessments, as opposed to the assessments of citizens, who are the on-the-ground consumers of public services. Building on a preliminary round of data collected in 2010, this study, for which data were collected in 2013, presents a novel and comprehensive index that captures the quality of governance for 206 regions in 24 European countries. The ‘European Quality of Government Index’, which will be published free for scholarly use, is built on the largest survey to date focusing on governance at the regional level; over 85,000 citizens were surveyed. The instrument proposed here builds on both perceptions and experiences of citizens in public service areas such as health care, education, and law enforcement. The paper presents final results of the survey, as well as a sensitivity analysis and checks for external and internal validity.

The theoretical and historical discussion undertaken so far indicates that political, economic and social shifts by 1997 had combined to give greater power and significance to the individual as the consumer of public services. However, the Conservatives had not consolidated a consumerist citizenship regime by 1997, and were resistant to some of the inflationary pressures of consumerism in public services. When New Labour came to power therefore it found a transitional citizenship regime, with new charter rights for users and some extension of choice, but little sign that services themselves were being reworked around their users. Policy actors therefore had the option of moving more resolutely in the direction of consumerism, or of pursuing an alternative citizenship regime.

The article links the literatures on citizenship studies and electronic democracy by analyzing the extent to which theories and practices of citizenship are being transformed in the age of the Internet. Distinguishing between the different citizenship traditions of liberal-individualism and civic-republicanism, we analyze the interplay between generic technological tools and the divergent historical legacies of citizenship in Turkey and Britain. Based on our analysis of governmental portals, main e-government applications, and censorship and surveillance practices, we argue that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) serve the states' interests by enabling increased surveillance capabilities, more efficient bureaucracy, better border controls and criminal investigations. In both countries, citizens benefit from electronic service-delivery applications primarily as consumers of public services, while their role as citizens are not particularly enhanced. Parallel to these convergence tendencies, we observe striking differences in the way electronic citizenship is practiced in these two countries, stemming from different traditions of citizenship as well as different levels of democracy consolidation. Despite some of the transformative power of the ICTs, their use is largely shaped by the existing understandings of citizenship in both countries.

Accounting and reporting systems in public administrations of European countries have deeply changed in the last 20 years due to the new public management wave and the trend toward international harmonization. This research aims to examine the possibility of implementing International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board’s (IPSASB’s) Conceptual Framework (CF), by observing accounting and reporting systems in the different governmental levels of countries selected and taking into account the embedded traditional characteristics of European countries. Results highlight how many structural differences still occur within and among countries, showing that much work is still necessary to obtain harmonization as implied in the IPSASB’s CF.

In an attempt to enhance efficiency, public administrations around the world and in particular in Europe are increasingly relying on information technology (IT) to improve their performance and service delivery. This growing use of IT results in a changed set of competencies demanded from civil servants. In order to find out the concrete competencies that are required for successful implementation of eGovernment initiatives and that, consequently, need to be included in the education of future professionals, a European-wide survey was conducted (n=697). This paper reports on the first results of this study, revealing that there is a strong need for professionals with socio-technical, organizational and managerial competencies.

North and South European governments and public administrations have been subjected to similar external stimuli, such as globalization and Europeanization, and managerial trends, such as the New Public Management approach. Yet, until the onset of the global financial crisis and later the Eurozone crisis, Southern public administrations differed a lot from their Northern counterparts in terms of relations between bureaucrats and politicians and organizational aspects. In the past there were long-time diverging trajectories, separating South from North European administrations. After 2008 the Southern ones tried to adapt to the pressures of the economic crisis, and a North–South convergence became more visible. However, despite such convergence, changes are evolving in parallel across different regions and no common model of public administration is in sight.

Web services technologies change the software industry drastically by developing and integrating enterprise web services and applications in order to enable the users to access them. There are several research initiatives in the field of Web services for enterprise applications. However, none of the initiatives have attempted for web applications pertaining to academic institution using Web services technology. Web service composition is the combination of web services from different service providers to create a more sophisticated, value added web service to the web users. Researchers put on efforts to bring out the state-of-the art in web services technologies and security technologies for web services. The composition of web services is another promising area for research and development. A study reveals that there are number of approaches providing secure web services. However, there is no attempt made so far to secure the services at multi-level. This paper proposes a Multi-level Secured Framework (MLSF) for the students, faculty and employees of the academic institutions which provides secured composite web services such as admission service, fees payment service, library service, personalized service and so on. The MLSF enhances the security at various levels such as user level, device level, web services level and institution level.

Service discovery is the process to find a service that is best meet the user's requirement. Context of the user and the service plays an important role during the process because it takes into consideration more about the user and the service. In order to better implement the personalization of service discovery, and take into full consideration of the user's requirement and feature, a context-based framework for web services discovery is proposed in this paper. User Model and Intention Model are used in our framework to construct the user context. Service discovery and composition are carried out heuristically by considering both the user context and the web services context. And Service discovery is conducted by taking into account not only a published single web service but the combination of web services when a single web service can not be found. Service recommendation is also provided.

PurposeThe dramatic population growth of Hispanics and immigrants, combined with the issue of diversity, in the United States population raises several important questions about the future role of public administration and the delivery of culturally appropriate and culturally responsive public programs and public services in the post modern era of diversity. What is cultural competency in public programs and public service delivery? Can public agencies become culturally competent organizations? What is a cultural competency model for public administration and public service delivery? Aims to answer these questions that point to the need for a “new” kind of public servant and public service agency provider– one who possesses explicit cultural competency skills to work with racial/ethnic and cultural/linguistic groups in the delivery of public programs and public services.Design/methodology/approachUtilizing a literature review approach, the paper examines the concept of culture in public administration and argues that “culture” and “competency” must be tied together thereby leading to a contemporary standard and operational framework for advancing cultural competency in public administration and public service delivery. The article argues that cultural competency can enhance public administration/public service delivery normative values by increasing an agency's ability to work efficiently, effectively, and equitably in the context of cultural differences.FindingsThe paper concludes that there are five reasons for incorporating cultural competency into the study and practice of public administration/public service delivery and moving a public agency toward cultural competence.Practical implicationsEmbracing cultural competency in public service delivery recognizes the salience of understanding the cultural context in which any direct public service encounter occurs. Advancing cultural competency presents an opportunity to address the incomplete and often times inaccurate public services and public programs provided to minority populations. A focus on cultural competency increases the relevancy of a public agency's administration, services and programs to the groups that can best utilize them. Having knowledge, awareness, and skills in cultural competency, service delivery professionals are better prepared to do their jobs.Originality/valueThis paper should be of value to both academics and practitioners as they grapple with diversity and immigration issues, public administration, public programs and public service delivery.

<div class="htmlview paragraph">The rapidly changing needs and opportunities of today's global market require unprecedented levels of interoperability to integrate diverse information systems to share knowledge and collaborate among organizations. The combination of Web services and software agents opens a sophisticated computing paradigm for meeting such requirements. This paper proposes a component called “Agent-based Web Service” (AWS) to provide manufacturing scheduling services for enterprise collaboration. Enterprise level services other than resource scheduling can be replenished later on by introducing a richer set of AWSs. A unique property of this AWS based integration approach is that the scheduling process of an order is orchestrated on the Internet through the negotiation among AWSs. Moreover, the bid proposed by an AWS is supported with dynamic scheduling results of manufacturing resources inside the enterprise. A prototype system for AWS-based manufacturing scheduling is implemented and connected to the backend multi-agent dynamic manufacturing scheduling system.</div>