JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government
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International Challenges to Transformational Government: Enhanced Project Management Identifies Need for Existential Change
Get PDFThe case for transformational eGovernment continues unabated; impatient stakeholders are more demanding; people, process and content are profoundly impacted; opportunity is rampart - but so is risk and complexity; still, transformational eGovernment remains more theoretical than practical. Execution has faltered and relief is not obvious.Enhanced project management has made progress in advancing eGovernment by applying enhanced project management in a holistic manner so that project activities are fully integrated with on-going operational activities: all with an emphasis on measurable results and outcomes.This paper, however, concludes that there is another dimension to the transformational eGovernment navigation tool-kit that coalesces with enhanced project management and creates a multi-dimensional approach to transformation; it is existential change leadership that focuses on human mindset behaviour.Thus, the next step in the research is to examine a two-pronged approach (enhanced project management and existential change leadership) to respond to the challenges and barriers that have long impeded transformational eGovernment progress and the accountability vacuum for the elusive transformational breakthrough result
Editorial JeDEM 7(2) 2015: CeDEM 15
Get PDFThis issue comprises the best papers of the CeDEM 15 conference in May 2015 in Krems, Austria. In this issue of JeDEM, we are pleased to include the keynotes by Shauneen Furlong and Alon Peled held at the CeDEM15 Conference at Danube University Krems, research papers from CeDEM and a paper submitted to the JeDEM open submission system. Whilst the keynotes’ articles describe the challenges to transformational government and the linking (or “wazing”) of the world’s government data resources, the authors investigate transparency in open governments, the critical factors in the use and publication of open data, the motivation to share knowledge in public administrations using new media technologies, as well as cities’ commitment to Open Data. The selection of research papers show that whilst “openness” and “transparency” are key issues in e-democracy and Open Government, they clearly contain a variety of dimensions that need to be analysed in different contexts and using different examples and perspectives
Wazing the Information Super Highway: Linking the World’s Open Government Data Resources
Get PDF***abstract**
Piracy, Property and the Crisis of Democracy
Get PDFA political battle is being waged over the use and control of culture and information. While media companies and copyright organisations argue for stricter intellectual property laws, a growing body of citizens challenge the contemporary IP-regime. This has seen a political mobilisation of piracy. Pirate parties see themselves as a digital civil rights movement, defending the public domain and the citizen’s right to privacy against copyright expansionism and increased surveillance. Since the first pirate party was formed in Sweden in 2006, similar parties have emerged across the world. This article draws on a study of the culture and ideology of copyright resistance, through interviews with pirate party representatives in Europe and North America. It focuses on challenges to democracy, and the distinction between public and private property and spaces, in the wake of the war on terror and the global financial crisis
OGD Heartbeat: Cities’ Commitment to Open Data
Get PDFThis paper develops and tests a theoretical model, which proposes to examine cities’ commitment to the concept of open government data (OGD) according to three typical levels. Level 1, Way of Life, indicates high commitment to OGD; Level 2, On the Fence, represents either a low or erratic commitment; Level 3, Lip Service, refers to either scarce or no commitment. This study shows that these types exhibit distinct behavior in four key indicators: (1) Rhythm, (2) Coverage, (3) Categorization, and (4) Feedback. This theoretical framework is examined using longitudinal mixed-method analysis of the OGD behavior of 16 US cities over a period of four years, using a corpus of municipal quantitative metadata and primary qualitative data. This methodology allows us to represent, for the first time, cities’ evolving OGD commitment, or “OGD heartbeat”
Open Data and Official Language Regimes: An Examination of the Canadian Experience
Get PDFThe open data moving is gathering steam globally, and it has the potential to transform relationships between citizens, the private sector and government. To date, little or no attention has been given to the particular challenge of realizing the benefits of open data within in an officially bi- or multi-lingual jurisdiction. Using the efforts and obligations of the Canadian federal government as a case study, the authors identify the challenges posed by developing and implementing an open data agenda within an officially bilingual state. Key concerns include (1) whether governments may use open data to outsource some information analysis and information services to an unregulated private sector through open data initiatives, thus directly or indirectly avoiding obligations to provide information analysis and information tools in official languages; and (2) whether the rush by governments to support the innovation agenda of open data may leave minority language communities both underserved and under-included in the development and use of open data
Escaping the Middleman Paradox: Better Reykjavik and Open Policy Innovation
Get PDFBetter Reykjavik is a unique municipal ePetition website that is developed and maintained by a grassroots nonprofit organization, has significant deliberative mechanisms, and has been normalized as an ongoing channel for citizen-government interaction across multiple elected administrations. The primary contribution of this study is an analysis of the novel “interface” that was established between the grassroots-developed technical system and the existing political and administrative institutions of policymaking. I begin with a brief overview of the challenges that citizens and governments face in the implementation of ePetition processes. I then suggest that Landemore’s (2012) “democratic reason” and Coleman’s (2008) “autonomous citizenship” constructs provide useful insights into why and how the Better Reykjavik has made a continuing impact on city governance. Next, I present an analysis of the socio-technical process of the initiative’s software development and political integration, showing how this project moved from the fringes of the grassroots towards the center of public and governmental awareness. I conclude by examining Reykjavik’s “new normal” political culture, which illustrates how a bottom-up, fast-moving technical initiative can productively support the slower-moving processes of democratic governance
Georeferenced Open Data and Augmented Interactive Geo-Visualizations as Catalysts for Citizen Engagement
Get PDFCitizen engagement figures prominently on political agendas around the world. In this context, high hopes are pinned to open government, open data and ICT tools. At the same time, there are fears of a widening digital divide, where large groups of society are in danger of being excluded from societal processes, for example due to having difficulties in using the online tools provided. In this paper, we propose an approach that has the potential to address many key issues in this context (e.g. accessibility, complexity, engagement). It relies on space and time as common integrators, and uses interactive augmented geo-visualizations to facilitate citizen engagement. We report on key challenges that need to be overcome to realize this approach and on initial progress towards this goal. We describe a set of prototypical tools aimed at supporting citizen engagement in the envisioned way, and discuss the approach as well as its potentials, issues and challenges in detail. Initial experiences and results indicate that our approach is not only technically feasible but it can also empower citizens to more effectively engage with societal and governmental processes
Polarizing Political Participation Frames in a Nordic Gay Community
Get PDFThis article is based on a research project studying political discussions in the Swedish LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-, Transsexual) community Qruiser. These discussions were very antagonistic and rude. The aim is therefore to understand what motivated participation in these heated discussions. The focus is on Qruiser political forum threads. The research is nethnographic through online interviews, participant observations in, and content analyses of, political discussions threads during the month of November 2012. By using framing theory as an analytical tool, the paper seeks to answer which frames attracted and mobilized participation and how this was done. In the article I find that polarizing frames of the left vs the right, the xenophobic vs the political correct, together with a truth and a game frame was used to motivated participation in the Qruiser forum threads
The Arts of the Possible. Information Visualization in the Field of Politics.
Get PDFInformation visualization offers multiple methods to make sense of complex data by graphic representations. Complementing verbal representations, they show rich potential to support cognition and communication in numerous areas of application, including the field of political communication and education. Yet – despite a strong increase in options with regard to accessibility of data, tools, and methods – no conceptual framework or discussion is organizing these emerging visual vocabularies and their possible recombinations up to now. Against this background, we want to discuss the layout principles of existing visualization methods and align them within a coherent framework to allow for a multimodal navigation of modern news and information spaces. On that basis, accompanying ways and means to minimize well-known barriers in the public and political communication realm are taken into consideration