Abstract
Digital technology in business is indispensable and over the last decades revolutionized production and operations on a global level. In politics, however, most countries are still far from having “digital governments”. Many countries possess strategies for the digitalization of governance, although those differ greatly in desired outcome and definitions of the term “digital”. This chapter compares and categorizes different approaches to digital governance in several countries and regions such as USA, UK, Europe and Singapore. It distinguishes between the two notions of eGovernment and Digital Government in focus and approach, showing the opportunities and challenges both can bring about. While opportunities include citizen services, cost savings and growth, common risks of increased digital governance are security concerns, impacts on the labor market and difficulties in change management. The chapter provides a comprehensive summary of recent empirical analyses on the “digital” discourse, concluding that the goals of measurable citizen outcomes, transformative service delivery and public governance are not yet met, but that the way is paved for future improvement.
The original version of this chapter was revised. An erratum to this chapter can be found at DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-38795-6_10.
An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38795-6_10
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Notes
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Factiva Search in English speaking newspapers and online journals from March 26th, 2015 to May 25th, 2015.
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Accenture Technology Vision 2015.
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Oxford professors Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne estimated that almost half (47 %) of total US jobs are at risk due to computerization. McKinsey’s Global Institute predicts that about 140 million knowledge worker jobs are about to disappear in the digital age.
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Accenture worked in partnership with the National Academy of Science and Engineering and with more than 70 German companies, business associations, labor unions and the best German industrial and IT universities to develop a vision on how to compete in the digital future on a global level. The group focused on business models, the regulatory environment and the people side. On the digital enterprise side, the group predicts the emergence of a new type of Software Defined Platforms to connect intelligent products during operations and the emergence of “Everything as a Service” bundles of products and smart services.
This public private partnership supports Germany’s goal to become the number one country in Europe in terms of digital growth. With its first strategic initiative “Industrie 4.0”, Germany has already taken an important step towards being the first country to tap into the potential of this new form of industrialization. Now, the second strategic initiative, entitled “Smart Service Welt”, is focusing on the value chains that incorporate the smart products made by Industrie 4.0 once they have left the factory. Smart products are combined with physical and digital services to create smart services that then can be marketed as a flexible, on-demand service. The disruptive impact of smart services is already visible in retail, for example in online marketplaces. However, the changes are also affecting the traditional business models of Germany’s flagship industries, such as the automotive, mechanical engineering, chemicals, electrical engineering, medical technology, logistics and energy technology industries, not to mention the rest of the economy.
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In 1997, for the first time ever, the United States’ administration articulated the idea of online citizen service in their National Performance Review “Access America: Reengineering Through Information Technology”. And indeed, the US portal, then called FirstGov went online in 2000 with the intent to provide all government information online. Governments across the globe published their eGovernment strategies in the beginning of the 2000s:
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The UK publishes their first strategy in April 2000. The document “eGovernment: a strategic framework for public services in the Information age” talks about the need for a common infrastructure, urges public sector units to modernize and innovate.
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France publishes their reform program “Governmental Action Plan for Information Society” in 1998.
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Singapore published their “eGovernment action plan” in 2000, with a strong spin on the competitiveness acceleration through focusing on the transition to the knowledge economy.
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South Africa launched their eGovernment strategy Electronic Government Framework Electronic Government—The Digital Future: A Public Service IT policy in 2001.
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India the Dept of IT and Dept of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) prepared a National governance action plan which was presented to the Prime Minister in 2003.
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Digital Government Security Forum.
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UN.
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Falk, S., Römmele, A., Silverman, M. (2017). The Promise of Digital Government. In: Falk, S., Römmele, A., Silverman, M. (eds) Digital Government. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38795-6_1
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