Blockchain Papers

Horst Treiblmaier, Christian Sillaber

No abstract is available for this record.

Ioannis Tsampoulatidis, Dimitrios Bechtsis, Ioannis Kompatsiaris

The smart city concept gives prominence to the use of ICT for enabling the digital transformation of established public services, processes and policies. This roadmap started from the e-Gov 1.0 initiative and spans to the e-Gov 3.0 phase with special focus on interconnected citizens, smart and interconnected devices, big data analytics and cloud computing. As the smart cities initiative flourishes there is an overwhelming need for robust, secure and flexible solutions that will pave the way to citizens’ participation and inclusion. The proposed Blockchain Framework will not only facilitate acceptance of new governance models from the official stakeholders, but it will also dynamically identify, create and propose new policies, regulations and initiatives according to social trends and the citizens’ maturity level. It takes into consideration social, environmental and economic aspects as well as established policies and good practices for proposing solutions to stakeholders.

Adam Bumpus, Thu-Ba Huynh, Sophie Pascoe

Transparency in climate finance mechanisms, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), relies on the transfer of information within a complex global web of state and nonstate actors. Such information is required under internationally agreed REDD+ safeguards, including measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) processes and free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), and works to establish substantive and normative transparency. However, the sources of, access to, and outcomes from these information flows are still contentious. To address these problems, REDD+ project proponents are increasingly looking to information and communication technologies, such as mobile devices, to improve information gathering, processing, and access. In this article we develop a model and provide tentative examples of how normative and substantive transparency are connected through input and output legitimacy within broader governance contexts. We highlight that even though mobile devices are being used to bring forest communities into the REDD+ process, substantive transparency for emissions reductions through MRV tends to be prioritized over normative dimensions associated with FPIC. We conclude by highlighting the need to further understand the role of decentralized information flows in multilevel carbon governance and opportunities for how mobile technologies may be used to address transparency challenges in the governance of REDD+.

Shafaq Khan, Mohammed Shael, Munir Majdalawieh

World is experiencing revolution with the proliferation of technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, IOT, and cloud computing in our lives. This study explores Dubai Economic Department's (DED) electronic government (e-government) stages of integrating emerging technologies as its contribution in creating a smarter city. Our findings suggest that blockchain technology can be used as a platform to transform the e-business operating models in order to offer fully integrated services and to enforce common business rules. It can help governments in making processes simpler, faster and secure. It can be used for syncing of data across different departments, automatically & instantaneously. This work provides policy makers, enterprise architects and IT managers with useful guidelines to define and drive their e-government strategy and planning actions towards the most appropriate domains of implementation.

M. A. El-Dosuky, Gamal El-Adl

E-government provides access to services anytime anywhere. There are many e-Government frameworks already exist to integrate e-government services, but efficient full interoperability still a challenge. Interoperability per se can be modeled via four maturity stages, in which the interoperability zone is the holy grail of full interoperability to be reached ultimately with strategy alignment. As e-government services shift in the same way as e-commerce with value chain, this implicitly implies the possibility of benefiting from blockchain with e-government. Blockchain is a nascent promising architecture, whose transactions are permanent, verifiable, and recorded in a distributed ledger. This research article suggests applying blockchain in achieving e- government interoperability. Forms are juxtaposed on the outer borders of the system. These forms adopt those used by UK government, because they are standard as well as they are available for Python developers. Once a form has been completed, PySOA calls the requested service, before storing the data in Ontology Blockchain. After the service is performed, the policies are analyzed in batch processing using quantgov. A report is submitted to the central government periodically. Ontology Blockchain has a dual effect. On the one hand, it works as a secure data storage. On the other hand, it cooperates with PySOA in supporting both technology and semantic interoperability . The most important feature of the proposed method is the presence of (Government Interoperability Zone Alignment; GIZA), which acts as a backbone that coherently connects the internal subcomponents. This linkage is possible, because each form has an title, that corresponds to the appropriate service name. Each service in turn has a counterpart in the wallets stored in Ontology blockchain. To measure interoperability empirically, there is a need for metrics. This study adopts and quantizes a standard interoperability matrix along three dimensions of interoperability of Conceptual (Syntax& Semantics), Organizational (Responsibilities& Organization per se), and Technology (Platform& Communication). While concerns are : data, business, service, and process. Any deviation from the standard could contributes to the interoperability score (counting mismatches) or interoperability grade (counting absolute differences). An estimation is performed, for 1000 total random cases. It is estimated that the probability of getting a conceptual/technical interoperability score as large as the standard strategy score is (713 /1000 = 0.713 (2 in 3). It is estimated too that the probability of getting a organizational interoperability score as large as the standard strategy score is (712 /1000 = 0.712 (2 in 3). Then, Markov model is proposed to provide an accurate representation of the evolution of the strategies over time.

Carlos Eduardo Tofanim, Gabriel Moralo da Costa, Jean Paul Pezzutti, Matheus Casarin Giaculi

This study investigates the feasibility of applying blockchain technology to enhance the security and transparency of electronic voting systems. The research analyzes potential vulnerabilities and trust challenges associated with traditional electronic voting infrastructure and explores how distributed ledger technologies can be used to improve vote integrity and auditability. A prototype voting system was developed to simulate an online voting environment using blockchain as the underlying data storage mechanism. The system was implemented as a web application using ASP.NET MVC and C# within the .NET Framework environment, with blockchain functionality integrated through an open-source implementation adapted for the study. The prototype demonstrates how votes can be recorded as blockchain transactions, ensuring immutability and distributed verification of voting data. The architecture also includes a web-based user interface for vote selection and confirmation, as well as backend blockchain validation mechanisms responsible for maintaining the integrity of the distributed ledger. The study evaluates the technical feasibility of integrating blockchain with electronic voting processes and discusses potential advantages such as improved transparency, tamper resistance, and decentralized validation of election results. Although the study focuses primarily on the technical feasibility and proof-of-concept implementation, the findings suggest that blockchain-based voting systems could represent a promising approach for improving trust and security in digital electoral systems. Future research directions include scalability analysis, infrastructure requirements for nationwide implementation, and mechanisms for secure voter verification.

Alessandro Scuderi, Luisa Sturiale

Social networks in the public sphere support the process of innovation that aims to make the action of the municipalities more efficient and participatory. Due to their characteristics, social media seem to be able to contribute significantly to the development of e-governance and e-democracy as tools based on dialogue and on the enhancement of the contribution of users-citizens or, more generally, of users-local stakeholders. Web 4.0 and social media are progressively taking on a role of primary importance in the contemporary socio-economic context, contributing to change not only the processes and methods of communication of individuals, citizens and businesses, but also the organization and business management itself. In the new dimension of the Web 4.0 the user's behavior is not predetermined, but the user can derive and autonomously build the services, as the web is decentralized and enriched by the experiences of the users who participate in the definition and improvement of content.

Syed Omer Husain, Alex Franklin, D. Roep

This article introduces the concept of ‘place-based civic tech’ — citizen engagement technology co- designed by local government, civil society and global volunteers. It investigates to what extent creating such a digital space for autonomous self-organization allows for the emergence of a parallel, self-determining and more place-based geography of politics and political action. It finds that combining online tools with offline collaborative practices presents a unique opportunity for decentralization of power and decision-making in a manner which both politically motivates civil society and begins to update the infrastructure of democracy. The discussion is supported by a combination of primary and secondary data, with research methods including ethnographic and participatory observation techniques. Research data is drawn from a range of empirical sources, including an in-depth case study of the radical municipalist movement in Spain. The article concludes that there is a clear and compelling narrative of cities taking power back, in the form of a plural and globally networked movement. As such, this study contributes to both the theory and practice of civic tech, collective impact, municipalism and place-based urban politics while emphasizing the need for further research on experiments and movements currently existing below the academic radar. <br/>

David Allessie, Maciej Sobolewski, Lorenzino Vaccari

In less than ten years from its advent in 2008, the concept of distributed ledgers has entered into mainstream research and policy agendas. Enthusiastic reception, fuelled by the success of Bitcoin and the explosion of potential use cases created high, if not hyped, expectations with respect to the transformative role of blockchain for the industry and the public sector. Growing experimentation with distributed ledgers and the emergence of the first operational implementations provide an opportunity to go beyond hype and speculation based on theoretical use cases. This report looks at the ongoing exploration of blockchain technology by governments. The analysis of a group of pioneering developments of public services shows that blockchain technology can reduce bureaucracy, increase the efficiency of administrative processes and increase the level of trust in public recordkeeping. Based on the state-of-art developments, blockchain has not yet demonstrated to be either transformative or even disruptive an innovation for governments as it is sometimes portrayed. Ongoing projects bring incremental rather than fundamental changes to the operational capacities of governments. Nevertheless some of them offer clear value for citizens. Technological and ecosystem maturity of distributed ledgers have to increase in order to unlock the transformative power of blockchain. Policy agenda should focus on non-technological barriers, such as incompatibility between blockchain-based solutions and existing legal and organizational frameworks. This principal policy goal cannot be achieved by adapting technology to legacy systems. It requires using the transformative power of blockchain to be used to create new processes, organizations, structures and standards. Hence, policy support should stimulate more experimentation with both the technology and new administrative processes that can be re-engineered for blockchain.

David Meijer, Jolien Ubacht

Blockchain Technology is considered as a general-purpose technology with far reaching effects. As can be seen from the discussions on blockchain applications, both practitioners and researchers struggle to get to the core of blockchain technology consequences. Especially practitioners in the governmental sector explore adequate responses to this new technology. Therefore, our aim is to provide a conceptualization of the consequences of blockchain systems from an institutional perspective, and to use this conceptualization to provide insights into the governance of blockchain systems.

Álvaro Luna García, Xabier Barandiarán, Alfonso Unceta Satrústegui

No abstract is available for this record.

Heng Hou

The purpose of this article is to discuss the application of blockchain technology in e-government, particularly in the Chinese context. Chancheng District, part of Foshan City in Guangdong Province, China, has undertaken a project called "The Comprehensive Experimental Area of Big Data in Guangdong Province" since 2016. Promoting the application of blockchain technology in e-government is an essential part of this undertaking, which is the first use of blockchain in government in China. Taking Chancheng's project as a case study, this article analyzes the framework, difficulties and challenges of applying blockchain to e-government at present, and discusses how blockchain technology can contribute to the development of e-government and public services in China. This article considers the practical realities in China and discusses the application of blockchain technology in Chinese e-government, finding that blockchain technology can bring the following benefits: (1) improvements in the quality and quantity of government services, (2) greater transparency and accessibility of government information, (3) development of information-sharing across different organizations, and (4) assistance in building an individual credit system in China. However, information security, cost and reliability are still major problems in application. Thus, establishing a general application platform of blockchain technology and developing management standards are crucial for promoting and applying blockchain in e-government. Blockchain provides an effective way of making government services more efficient, but standardizing the management system, processes and responsibility for the application is necessary for its further promotion. This article, by providing an analysis of the practice of blockchain in e-government in China, could serve as a foundation for further practical work and theoretical research in government services.

Liam Lander, Nichola Cooper

No abstract is available for this record.

Usman W. Chohan

The aim of this chapter is to situate blockchain-based governance tools within a public value (PV) context, arguing that public governance on the blockchain requires elements of a “public value mindset,” which is comprised of transparency, efficiency, stakeholder salience and participation, innovative thinking, decentralization, and trust. To illustrate this PV mindset, the chapter analogizes the powerful solution put forth by cryptocurrencies towards the “double spending problem,” an issue that had once plagued electronic money, by arguing that the manner in which the double-spending problem was solved by blockchain technology (as best embodied by cryptocurrencies) also offers lessons for public governance on the blockchain, specifically in terms of the PV elements enumerated above. By elucidating the nature of the double-spending problem and the revolutionary solution offered by cryptocurrencies, the chapter advocates for a similar approach in the application of blockchain technologies to public management and governance.

Roger Atsa Etoundi, Emmanuel Moupojou Matango, Celestin Parfait Bessala Bessala, Serge Mani Onana

Abstract During the last decade, the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has led the world into a new era of innovative technologies that can provide effective responses to human concerns. In developed countries, the profitability motivation has imposed Service‐Oriented Architectures (SOA) in enterprises as a better way to design information systems capable of taking into account inter‐organizational cooperation mechanisms while preserving autonomy of the latter. Those Service‐Oriented Architectures did not stop at the doors of public administrations. Thus, several specifications have been made to adapt them to the peculiarities of public governance. But these models are not always able to respond effectively to the concerns of governments in developing countries particularly when they are structurally and territorially decentralized. Therefore, we propose a more suitable model to this type of e‐governance. We will later see how our model can be more suitable for the organization of remote and secured fairground courts in Cameroon to address constraints related to finance, time and security that these courts currently impose.

Eran Toch, Eyal Feder

This case study is one of ten international case studies developed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), in association with the Korean Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS), for the cities of Anyang, Medellin, Namyangju, Orlando, Pangyo, Rio de Janeiro, Santander, Singapore, Songdo, and Tel Aviv. At the IDB, the Competitiveness and Innovation Division (CTI), the Fiscal and Municipal Management Division (FMM), and the Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ESCI) coordinated the study. This project was part of technical cooperation ME-T1254, financed by the Knowledge Partnership Korean Fund for Technology and Innovation of the Republic of Korea. At KRIHS, the National Infrastructure Research Division coordinated the project and the Global Development Partnership Center (GDPC) provided the funding. In recent years, Tel Aviv has developed a unique bottom-up approach toward its Smart City project, focusing its efforts on direct resident-oriented services rather than expensive, large-scale infrastructure. This case study explains Tel Aviv's strategy, demonstrating how a high level of smart urban services was achieved using decentralized, low-cost methods. The report provides details on the approach, such as its reliance on the local startup ecosystem, its creation of services using open municipal databanks and public-private partnerships, and its emphasis on lightweight services that interact directly with residents. The case study analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of Tel Aviv's approach, discussing the technologies, processes, and strategies that can be used to implement a cost-effective smart city initiative.

Gabriel Purón-Cid

The purpose of local governments is to facilitate the well-being of communities and regions. Through the provision of different public goods and services local governments have the mission to provide security and stable conditions for individuals and firms by ensuring the necessary public infrastructure and amenities for their activities in the region, such as water supply, roads, waste disposal, parks, schools, and other public functions decentralized in the case of federal systems, among others. Many of these public goods and services are ICT-enabled, and therefore are included within the local digital government strategy. This is the context of digital government initiatives in municipal governments. The critical question for any local government in terms of digital government initiatives is how should they be provided and financed? Assessing this question of whether these ICT-enabled goods and services related to digital government might be more likely to be provided and funded, this article propose a model that embraces the concepts of public good and externalities from the economic perspective in order to provide a useful basis for developing a framework for financing digital government. This article describes a proposal for this framework based on these concepts and applies it in the case of several digital government initiatives undertaken by the City of Aguascalientes, Mexico. This framework applies to local as well as state and national levels of governments. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Sandeep Verma

No abstract is available for this record.

Mary Feeney, Eric W. Welch

Social media comprises a set of new technologies that enable richer data exchange in highly decentralized, dynamic, and loosely structured versatile virtual environments. Social media technology is expected to enhance participation, learning, and knowledge production in government settings, aligning traditional structural and authority boundaries while also challenging them. We examine the extent to which local governments in the United States are coupling social media technology with two types of participative tasks: collaborative work inside the organization and participative interaction with external stakeholders. We also explore how these two technology–task couples are associated with managerial perceptions of the positive and negative outcomes of technology use. We use survey data from five departments—community development, finance, police, mayor’s office, and parks and recreation—in 500 U.S. cities. Findings show that social media and their use for specific tasks have limited impact on either positive or negative perceived outcomes. These non-findings may demonstrate that the implementation cost of social media technologies outweighs the managerial benefits they realize; that technology–task applications substitute for traditional approaches to the same task, but no effect is incurred; or that social media technologies are relatively new to local governments, and efforts to effectively utilize them for internal work tasks and external engagement are in their infancy.

Beatriz Cuadrado‐Ballesteros

No abstract is available for this record.

Mary Feeney, Eric W. Welch

No abstract is available for this record.

Raffaele Adinolfi, Paola Adinolfi, Mita Marra

The paper reconstructs the path taken by the reform of public procurement in Italy which has gradually evolved from a and centralized market to an open and accessible one. Despite the development of the Electronic Public Administration Market Place (MEPA), information regarding its performance is scant. There are no available collected data on firm satisfaction. The paper discusses the role Consip, a public company owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, has played (and continues to play) to guide the decentralization of public e-procurement. At the same time it shows the results of a sample investigation aimed at analysing the level of satisfaction of small/medium enterprises (SMEs) participating in the MEPA. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Paul Starr

THE IDEA THAT WE ARE—or should be—moving from an “industrial age government” to an “information age government” is a staple of political rhetoric. But has the information age significantly altered government in the liberal democracies? And if it has not yet done so, should we expect the liberal state to change in any fundamental way, or be entirely replaced, because of the chain of consequences set in motion by new technology? Since the early development of computers, there have been, broadly speaking, three phases in thinking about the potential of new technology to improve government. Beginning in the 1950s, the application of digital technology to the public sector was conceived of as automation and the hope was mainly for greater efficiency and control in governmental operations. A second phase, dating from the 1980s and rising to a climax in the following decade, pitted two alternative visions against each other—privatization and reinvention—each premised on the idea that the information age made traditional forms of public administration obsolete. Finally, in the most recent phase, digital democracy has become a central theme of visions of new forms of governance based on the diffusion of cheap computing and online communication. Each of these phases has brought some notable but far from revolutionary achievements, and that is what we should continue to expect. Digital technology does enhance some features of democratic government, but the fundamental problems of democracy are not susceptible to technological solutions, and the same developments that strengthen some democratic capacities degrade others. In this new environment, it will be a struggle just to maintain some of the minimal conditions of political accountability that democracy requires. The U.S. federal government, particularly the military, was initially a leader in the development of computers, and from World War II to the 1960s, the state stood on the frontier of information technology. The application of computers to the public sector raised expectations not of radical change but of doing what government agencies already did, only faster and more cheaply—that is, automating the bureaucratic status quo. Top-down control and economy of administration were the primary purposes of computerization. Computers were supposed to cut paperwork and costs, reduce crime, and give managers and policymakers better information. The pursuit of control is at the core of bureaucratic administration. Bureaucracy is ideally supposed to ensure adherence to rules through such means as hierarchical command, specialization of functions, uniformity of procedure, and formal documentation. By limiting individual discretion, these elements of bureaucracy are supposed to increase the capacity of the state to carry out whatever purposes animate it. Democracy, far from being antithetical to bureaucracy, has often stimulated its growth. Scandals regularly prompt demand for new rules. The progressives who brought America the popular referendum and direct election of senators also introduced unified budgetary control and stricter rules about the award of government jobs and contracts. They sought as well to professionalize administration and make it more scientific. Computerization fit the progressive bureaucratic paradigm perfectly. The introduction of computers in the 1950s and 1960s coincided with budgetary reform efforts that were intended to give chief executives and their finance officers greater control over how money was spent. Computerization offered the promise of achieving the elusive fiscal goals of unified control and accurate cost accounting for public services. The very nature of early mainframe computers seemed to dictate centralized control, although line agencies fought to get their own computers. Thus, the most widely anticipated effect of computers on government was the centralization of power. Greater executive control over the bureaucracy was an explicit reform objective, but many critics feared that computerization would augment the state's dominion over the individual, and this concern focused the attention on privacy protection. These anxieties were hardly unreasonable. At all levels, government was oriented not to the computerization of service but to the computerization of constraint—that is, to computerizing functions such as police, revenue collection, and motor vehicle licensing. Within the service agencies, computerization chiefly involved functions in back offices such as record keeping. The “backstage” locus of automation concerned both supporters, who thought the public might not appreciate the value of computers, and critics, who thought the public might fail to appreciate the threat to privacy. The early decades of computerization did bear positive fruit. The mid-twentieth century saw enormous growth in government, and after 1955, computers helped public agencies cope with the sheer increase in transactions. Despite the rise in federal expenditures in the United States, the number of federal civilian employees fell; productivity gains from computerization helped to make that possible. But by the 1980s, new developments in both politics and information technology led to a dramatic turn in thinking. Instead of improving bureaucracy, the goal became overthrowing it. The rise of conservative antigovernment sentiment in the Reagan era coincided with a shift in the relationship of government to technological change. The private sector had now moved into the forefront in the use of information technology. In 1983, a Reagan administration commission was stating the obvious when it declared that although the federal government in the 1960s had been “the acknowledged leader in using state-of-the-art computer hardware and software,” the government had fallen “farther and farther behind.” The technological lag of the public sector was particularly evident at government's front end—that is, where the public had direct contact with government. By this time, businesses were using telecommunications and information technology to improve customer service and produce a wider array of products tailored to different tastes; consumers had become used to the convenience of automated teller machines (ATMs), credit cards, and free, round-the-clock calls to 800 numbers. By comparison, public agencies were far slower to take up the new possibilities. The shift from mainframes to minicomputers and the rise of personal computers also turned earlier assumptions upside down; instead of favoring centralized control, the new technology could be a means of decentralization. Conservatives and liberals responded to this situation in different ways. To conservatives, the failure of government to keep up with information technology confirmed the need for privatization. As many corporations were outsourcing specialized functions, so government should do the same—indeed, the state should generally cut back its size and role. The information revolution thereby provided a legitimizing rhetoric for policies that conservatives had long favored for other reasons. To liberals, the logical response to public sector lag was not to privatize government but to “reinvent” it by making public agencies more flexible in organization, more focused on results rather than procedures, and more responsive to “customers.” The Clinton administration's National Performance Review, led by Al Gore, embodied this approach and linked it to the information revolution. In the same period as this debate was playing out, the Internet was becoming a popular medium, and the vision of a reinvented state increasingly emphasized the use of online communication in making government more customer friendly. The focus on improving government at the point of contact with the public involved more than a pretty new interface; electronic access offered the promise of better integrated and more consistently delivered services. But besides improving government's output, the Internet also awakened an interest in giving citizens more input. And with the development of the Web and tools built on it, that interest has gained traction. Digital media have unquestionably expanded the democratic repertoire. Political campaigns and social movements now have cheap, instant means of communication that circumvent the established mass media, and they can use those resources to mobilize followers, coordinate their activity, and aggregate contributions of money, labor, and knowledge. The successful use of new media in politics has raised expectations about its use in government, particularly for three purposes—increased transparency, collaboration, and participation. Transparency is the most readily achievable of these goals. Just as some early advocates of “teledemocracy” envisioned, the Internet now provides instant access to government documents and data, and allows the public to track legislation and regulatory decisions. The idea of transparency has grown, moreover, into the notion of government as a “platform” that routinely makes granular data available in a form that enables others to build applications on top of it. Here, the goal of open government moves from transparency to collaboration and participation, which raise more difficult questions. Other ideas along these lines call for crowdsourcing proposals for government action and putting such proposals up for electronic voting. The further one moves along the spectrum of actions from transparency to participation, the more vexed the idea of digital democracy becomes. Even though the digital divide has narrowed, any reliance of government on digital technology will put people with less income and education at an inequitable disadvantage because of persistent differences in digital skill as well as access. Moreover, where online participation is opened up, highly committed minorities and special interests are likely to dominate. In a crowdsourcing initiative after the election, the Obama transition effort invited the public to submit and vote on ideas, but the results were embarrassing. As the New York Times reported, “In the middle of two wars and an economic meltdown, the highest-ranking idea was to legalize marijuana, an idea nearly twice as popular as repealing the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. Legalizing online poker topped the technology ideas.” Conceived this way, digital democracy recapitulates the classic problems of direct democracy—skewed participation and lack of deliberation. Other difficulties with the idea of revitalizing democracy through online communication arise from the indirect effects of new media on traditional mechanisms of political accountability. By providing an alternative platform for advertising as well as news, the Internet has undercut the sources of newspaper revenue, plunging journalism into a deep crisis and weakening the ability of the press to keep watch on government, particularly at the state and local levels. Resources for journalism are now disappearing from the old media faster than the new media can create them. Furthermore, newspapers have assembled a broad public, including many people who have bought a paper for the sports or crossword puzzle but nonetheless scanned the front page and learned something about the news of their community and the world. Online, however, they can go to a sports or puzzle site without any exposure to the news. In the early years of television, when the evening news was on all three available channels, the national news had a similarly broad public. But beginning with cable television, the advent of new media has brought a profusion of choices of different kinds of entertainment. The share of the public who regularly follows the news and public affairs has declined, though those with the most interest in politics (usually people with strong partisan commitments) have access to more news and a wider range of opinions than before. Despite the cornucopia of information, the politically attentive public has diminished and become more sharply divided along ideological lines. The gains for democracy from new technology are real, but unfortunately, so are the losses. It may be a long time before we can add them up and determine the net impact. In each phase, early enthusiasms have run up against stubborn and uncomfortable limits, even as new democratic possibilities have opened up. We are still in the midst of tremendous ferment in technology, media, and politics, and the creativity now being unleashed is our best hope that when the digital revolution finally runs its course, free societies and popular self-government will be left standing.

Sietse Overbeek, Marijn Janssen, P. van Bommel

Present-day governments are experiencing a shift towards supplying demand-driven and personalized electronic services. This often requires that government organizations collaborate with each other and their services and processes need to be integrated to act in a coherent manner. In this paper, we take the diversity of government agencies as a starting point and focus on the development of a shared ontology to enable interoperability among heterogeneous business process and services of public agencies. This framework contributes to understanding the key concepts and relations that form the basis for coordinating the activities necessary for integrated public service delivery. The ontology is aimed at capturing the main elements to enable communication among and integration of the activities of decentralized and autonomous agencies. The ontology has been interactively developed by studying organizational processes, by conducting interviews and literature study. The proposed ontology can provide a foundation for an architecture blueprint that can enable demand-driven integrated service delivery in practice without having to pose detailed requirements on organizations. As autonomy is fostered, this research can potentially enable the integration of private organizations.