JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government
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Open or Closed? Open Licensing of Real-time Public Sector Transit Data
Get PDFThis paper explores how real-time data are made available as “open data” using municipal transit data as a case study. Many transit authorities in North America and elsewhere have installed technology to gather GPS data in real-time from transit vehicles. These data are in high demand in app developer communities because of their use in communicating predicted, rather than scheduled, transit vehicle arrival times. While many municipalities have chosen to treat real-time GPS data as “open data”, the particular nature of real-time GPS data requires a different mode of access for developers than what is needed for static data files. This, in turn, has created a conflict between the “openness” of the underlying data and the sometimes restrictive terms of use which govern access to the real-time data through transit authority Application Program Interfaces (APIs). This paper explores the implications of these terms of use and considers whether real-time data require a separate standard for openness. While the focus is on the transit data context, the lessons from this area will have broader implications, particularly for open real-time data in the emerging ‘smart cities’ environment
Playing (with) Democracy: A Review of Gamified Participation Approaches
Get PDFAlbeit a wide range of e-participation platforms being already available, the level of public participation remains low. Governments around the world as well as academia are currently exploring new ways to design participation methods that are more engaging to use and will foster participation. One of the strategies is gamification. By adding game elements to e-participation platforms it is hoped to motivate for citizens to engage. This paper reviewed a large number of e-participation platforms, seeking to provide an overview of the current state of the art of so-called gamified participation initiatives. Our results show that while about half of the review projects can be categorized as game-related, only a small amount employs gamification. Moreover, current gamified participation initiatives seem to focus on reward-based gamification, a strategy which is said to come with risks. In this paper we further provide recommendations for future gamified participation projects
A Mental Models Perspective on Designing Information Visualizations for Political Communication
Get PDFInformation visualizations (InfoVis) in the context of political communication are designed to convey a broad understanding of socio-political data and their multitude of intricately connected variables to the public. A cognitive framework to explain and empirically study how users acquire and organize their internal representations gained from InfoVis systems with multiple perspectives is still missing. In this paper we discuss the theory of mental models and its consequences for the design and research of InfoVis interfaces. Especially for multidimensional data, it is a challenge to design accessible and conceptually consistent InfoVis interfaces to support the local and global coherence of the recipients’ mental models. In this paper we exemplarily show how specific design features, i.e. advance organizers, narrative visualizations, seamless transitions, and multiple coordinated views can accomplish this in the field of political communication and its complex data
Modelling E-Government Development through the Years Using Cluster Analysis
Get PDFEvery e-government development has its supporting factors and various limitations that hinder the implementation of e-government initiatives and further improvement of e-services. This paper examines and evaluates the specific challenges, trends and the progress of e-government between the years 2008 and 2014 in the European Union Member States based on the global e-government development indices. It is focused on the effects and consequences of the European recession, which started as the global financial crisis in 2007 and was followed by the European debt crisis since the end of 2009. The purpose of this research study is to understand the influence of selected indicators on the e-government development in order to uncover similarities and identify areas that were affected by the crisis a need further improvement. The results of this work may be used to introduce more efficient measurements and benchmarking frameworks of the e-government development. The main methods used are descriptive, correlation and cluster analysis
Visualization of election data: Using interaction design and visual discovery for communicating complex insights
Get PDFState elections results in India yield variegated and unique set of insights. Often it is hard to grasp the nuances of local electoral dynamics, and harder to communicate it to an audience not deeply engaged in the local political process, or to an audience from outside the state. While national news outlets do a fairly good job of analyzing and communicating the federal elections, the state elections in contrast have largely remained devoid of rigorous analysis and insightful communication. In this paper, using the data from the Assembly elections that took place in the state of Tamil Nadu in May 2016, we present a process and a set of interaction design and visualization methods to present complex insights. The general principles thus derived, will not only aid analysts and journalists to present their insights more effectively, but also empower the readers, depending on their level of interest and civic engagement, to go beyond what is presented and to discover new insights for themselves
Critical Success Factors Affecting E-Government Policy Implementation in Pakistan
Get PDFAbstract: This research turns e-government policy into practice in two ways, firstly to distil the lessons from existing evidence and experience about e-government implementation of policies and secondly by assessing the quality of the evidence, gaps in the existing research, and ways that research findings can support the implementation process in Pakistan. The main question, therefore, is how far national policy aspirations translate into actions, which are meaningful, tangible and measurable at a local level. This means the consistency of the goals at all levels remain the same i.e., macro and micro levels. This study identifies critical factors that determine the faith of policy implementation in Pakistan. The proposed model, which is based on these critical factors, is validate by analyzing different hypothesizes using empirical analysis i.e., quantitative and qualitative. This study provides a fair idea about intrinsic and extrinsic behavior of these critical success factors towards e-government policy implementation concerning Pakistan. This study also facilities successful e-government implementation in Pakistan by setting direction and guidelines for all implementation stakeholders
Editorial JeDEM 8(1) 2016
No full textThis summer issue of JeDEM presents the most recent “ongoing submissions” to the Journal of E-Democracy and Open Government. The authors have not submitted to a particular call for papers, but have responded to the journal’s open invitation to submit a paper to JeDEM’s main topics. The papers in this issue analyse current strengths and weaknesses in Open Data, Public Sector Information (PSI) and E-Government, present results, suggest methodologies as well as ideas for yet more research and work in these areas.
Developing transparency through digital means? Examining institutional responses to civic technology in Latin America
Get PDFA number of NGOs across the world currently develop digital tools to increase citizen interaction with official information. The successful operation of such tools depends on the expertise and efficiency of the NGO, and the willingness of institutions to disclose suitable information and data. It is this institutional interaction with civic technology that this study examines. The research explores empirical interview data gathered from government officials, public servants, campaigners and NGO's involved in the development and implementation of civic technologies in Chile, Argentina and Mexico. The findings identify the impact these technologies have had upon government bureaucracy, and the existing barriers to openness created by institutionalised behaviours and norms. Institutionalised attitudes to information rights and conventions are shown to inform the approach that government bureaucracy takes in the provision of information, and institutionalised procedural behaviour is shown to be a factor in frustrating NGOs attempting to implement civic technology
Critical Factors for Open Data Publication and Use: A Comparison of City-level, Regional, and Transnational Cases
Get PDFThere is a lack of research concerning the factors influencing the success or failure of open data initiatives. Based on the results of two workshops, we provide a list of 47 success factors for open data publication and 18 success factors for open data use. We further use three case studies (ENGAGE, Open NY, and Open Vienna) to examine how the criticality of factors varies depending on the geographical level and other characteristics of the open data initiative. The cases, representing open data initiatives at city, regional and transnational levels, point at different categories of critical success factors. Our key conclusions are that 1) the criticality of the factors depends considerably on the context of the open data initiative; 2) a number of success factors appear to be more universally applicable than others; 3) the factors that are critical to all three cases are derived from many different success factor categories, which suggests that open data initiatives should adopt an interdisciplinary approach, and 4) further work is needed to detail the success factors for open data publication and use in other contexts