Abstract
This chapter examines both academic and grey literature on the transitions and developments in e-government towards notions of open government and open governance. This is viewed through the prism of European level strategies, the EU’s research and innovation programmes, as well as common strategies like the European E-Government Action Plan agreed to by all EU Member States. The three strands of the proposed European open governance setting, consisting of open data, open service and open process, are examined, as is the conceptualization of government as an open source service platform as well as a broader platform for collaboration between all societal actors. The purpose is to support societal-wide innovation for tackling pressing societal challenges where the role of ICT is seen more broadly than has traditionally been the case, i.e. as a general purpose technology. In this context, the chapter also examines emerging technologies likely to impact government in the short as well as longer-term, such as big data, artificial intelligence, drones and blockchain.
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Notes
- 1.
The terms ‘public sector’ and ‘government’ are in practice used interchangeably in this paper as in many others. The term ‘governance’ refers to public governance as “the role of governments, working alongside other actors, in building, facilitating and overseeing political, social and economic development. Irrespective of any intrinsic value it might have, public governance is therefore a crucial means to desired development outcomes.” (Bevir 2013)
- 2.
There are many established definitions of ‘public value’, for example “public value refers to the value created by government through services, laws, regulation and other actions” (Kelly et al. 2002). For the present purpose it can be also thought of as similar to the older notions of ‘public goods’ and ‘good governance’.
- 3.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/TransparencyandOpenGovernment/ (accessed 10 May 2015).
- 4.
http://www.opengovpartnership.org (accessed 10 May 2015).
- 5.
A recent example is the Danish tax system which has for many years been driven by an NPM approach leading to downsizing, outsourcing and seeing hastily developed IT systems as a panacea. In 2016, it became clear that this has strongly contributed to losses amounting to billions of Euros of tax revenue, both internationally and domestically. In August 2016, the tax minister announced a reversal of these policies with massive re-investment in the tax system, the re-employment of dismissed tax personnel, and employment of thousands of new personnel, and in much better IT. This is a clear example where political decisions leading to cutting and blind over-optimistic faith in untested IT can lead to massive inefficiencies and losses.
- 6.
See the OECD’s Observatory of Public Sector Innovation: https://www.oecd.org/governance/observatory-public-sector-innovation/events/
- 7.
See the OECD’s Observatory of Public Sector Innovation: https://www.oecd.org/governance/observatory-public-sector-innovation/events/
- 8.
- 9.
Parts of this text are derived from the author’s participation in an Expert Consultation Workshop on eGovernment in the Horizon 2020 Work Programme for 2018–2020, held on 27 April 2016 in Brussels.
- 10.
- 11.
Expert Consultation Workshop on eGovernment in the Horizon 2020 Work Programme for 2018–2020, held on 27 April 2016 in Brussels.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
This brief analysis is partially based on the Wikipedia entry for blockchains (accessed 24–4-16) and the Nesta blog of 24–3-16 “Why you should care about blockchains: the non-financial uses of blockchain technology” related to public (permissionless) blockchain: http://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/why-you-should-care-about-blockchains-non-financial-uses-blockchain-technology
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Millard, J. (2017). European Strategies for e-Governance to 2020 and Beyond. In: Ojo, A., Millard, J. (eds) Government 3.0 – Next Generation Government Technology Infrastructure and Services. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63743-3_1
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