Dr.Wisser

NPMEvolutionofInformation.pdf

Home >Government homework help >Dr.Wisser

THE EVOLUTION OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

SHUHUA MONICA LIU* AND QIANLI YUAN Fudan University, China

SUMMARY

Over the last decades, governments all over the world have tried to take advantage of information and communication technol- ogy (ICT) to improve government operations and communication with citizens. Adoption of e-government has increased in most countries, but at the same time, the rate of successful adoption and operation varies from country to country. This article outlines the evolution of ICT in the public sector over the past 25 years. It presents general trends by examining interactions and mutual shaping processes between ICT evolution and several inter-related institutional changes including government opera- tions, public services delivery, citizen participation, policy and decision making, and governance reform. The authors suggest that within a short time period, e-governance has evolved rapidly from rudimentary uses of ICTs as simple tools to support highly structured administrative work to the integration of ICT throughout government operations. The growing use of Web 2.0, social media, and mobile and wireless ICT by citizens can also heavily impact the way public services are delivered and how citizen engagement processes are carried out. However, new management approaches, governance structures, and policy frameworks are still missing, posing a challenge for governments to operate effectively in the age of big data. Gener- ally, developing countries are lagging behind in e-government adoption compared with developed countries. Thus, for devel- oping countries to successfully adopt ICT and try to leapfrog some of the obstacles encountered by early ICT adopters in developed countries, systematic analyses need to be conducted to understand the interactions among stakeholders and ICTs and co-create the institutional environment to lead to a positive impact of ICT on public administration. Only when this rela- tionship is clearly understood can innovative ICTs be seamlessly integrated into the governance structure. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

key words—information and communication technology (ICT); technology integration; government innovation; public service reform; e-government

INTRODUCTION

Since the 1990s, information and communication technology (ICT) was increasingly adopted by public agencies worldwide. This originated from some government agencies’ efforts to tackle challenges in storing and processing huge amount of data and in regulating public and private sector while performing critical tasks. Adoption of e-government has increased in most countries, but at the same time, the rate of successful adoption and operation varies from country to country. Generally, developing countries are lagging behind in e-government adoption success compared with developed countries (Ifinedo, 2011).

The key to further advances will hinge on civil servants and citizens’ use of ICT (Ifinedo, 2011). However, the processes of production reproduction and advancement of the public administration system and ICT in the past two decades was not well accounted for. This article aims to present the general trends in adopting ICT for governance in major Western countries and developing nations in the past decades. We focus on examining interactions and

*Correspondence to: S. M. Liu, Department of Public Administration, Fudan University, No 220, Handan Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai, China. E-mail: [email protected]

public administration and development

Public Admin. Dev. 35, 140–151 (2015)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1717

mutual shaping processes between technology use and inter-related institutional changes in the public sector. Spe- cifically, the article will address following research questions:

• What types of ICT have been adopted by government agencies in the Western countries while public adminis- tration continued to evolve since the pre-1990s?

• How did ICT use interact and shape while also being shaped by the evolution of public administration in the past decades?

• What are the implications for the developing world from understanding such interactions and their impact on the creation of management structures and on the production of social changes in developed countries?

APPROACH

The approach of this article is to focus on refereed journal articles on technology adoption in public manage- ment published in leading academic databases 1980–2013. They cover developed and developing countries worldwide. The idea behind this was that refereed journal articles not only set quality standards but also pro- vide a filter, thus establishing the nature and scope of the ideas presented to the academic community over the years.

Our database included 332 articles that assessed technology adoption and use in the public sector since the 1990s (Wiley Online Library - Journals, Web of Science Core Collection - Social Sciences Citation Index, EBSCO - Academic Search Premier, Springer Link Journal, and JSTOR). These represented roughly one third of articles pub- lished on the topic during this specific time period in major journals in the field of public administration and information science. The articles we chose to omit from the final database addressed a wide variety of topics, including technology and system design and commercial technology use that had no relevance to our chosen focus of study. Identified and regrouped accordingly were 267 articles addressing the topic of the adop- tion, implementation, and diffusion of ICT in public administration in Western countries and 65 articles focus- ing on developing countries.

We correlated findings from the qualitative analysis with outcomes from preliminary statistical analysis of the E-Government Reference Library (Version 9.4). The E-Government Reference Library (Version 9.4) is reported as one of the most comprehensive e-libraries of scholarly work about ICT use and public administration, contain- ing all 5627 articles published in core e-government conference proceedings and journals in the time period of 1981–2012.

Data analysis

The research team read through all papers and created a classification system. This classification system summa- rized major research themes emerging in scholarly work and government technology adoption and use over the years (Zins, 2010).

It comprised four steps:

First, all 332 papers were classified. Fifty papers were randomly selected from the literature database for a pilot content analysis. Research team members were asked to attach classification labels to research ideas and practice addressed in each paper. Classification labels used were selected and adapted from those previ- ously used in public administration research by Munoz and Hernandez (2010) and information science re- search by Hawkins (2001).

Second, a preliminary classification system was created integrating labels attached to each of the 50 papers. Brainstorming meetings were held to decide on the accuracy of classification themes assigned to each paper before a new classification system was created. An extensive memo book that recorded our decision criteria and guided our decisions in the pilot content analysis was also created. This memo book was refined and de- veloped while members of the research team continued analyzing all articles.

141TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND THE EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

DOI: 10.1002/pad

Third, each of the articles was then analyzed separately employing the newly created classification system following the same procedure using consistent, computer-based coding and recoding techniques (Lan and Anders, 2000). Any disagreements concerning the definition of the classification themes were resolved while the themes were updated.

Finally, 10 main research themes were identified after all 5627 papers were analyzed and categorized. Critical phases in government ICT adoption emerged from qualitative analysis of 267 articles addressing adoption of ICT in developed nations. The evolution of government ICT adoption practices was documented systematically.

FINDINGS

ICT evolution and advances of public administration: a glimpse at the general trend

Although the adoption of ICT in the public sector started as early as in the 1970s, a preliminary analysis of the 5627 articles included in the E-Government Reference Library demonstrated that for the past two-and-a-half decades, researchers did not pay close attention to ICT use and public administration evolution until after 2001. As can be observed from Figure 1, studies on interactions between ICT use and public operations were so scarce in the early years that only a few articles had been published through major publication channels. However, once researchers noticed the critical importance of ICT evolution in the public sector in the early 21st century, interest in the research area quickly evolved. The last 12 years witnessed an acceleration of publications in a new academic area called e-government (sometimes also called digital government).

Scholars focused on 10 major research themes concerning ICT use and public administration (Hawkins, 2001; Munoz and Hernandez, 2010):

Figure 1. Article distribution (1981–2012).

142 S. M. LIU AND Q. YUAN

DOI: 10.1002/pad

• e-democracy and public participation, • e-service, • human resources performance assessment, • inter-governmental communication, • policy and decision making, • technology adoption, • technology use in document cataloging and archiving, • technology use in information and knowledge sharing, • technology use internal data collection, and • technology use in online data transaction.

A closer look indicated that some early themes are slowly fading out of the literature while new themes closely associated with new governance models are starting to dominate the area. Early interests in technology use in doc- ument cataloging and archiving (from 28.6% in pre-1990 to almost 0% in 2009–2012) and technology use in online data transaction (from 28.6% in pre-1990 to 1.6% in 2009–2012) are steadily decreasing. How government agen- cies can employ ICT to deliver public services is a constant debate, many scholars, and researchers continue to re- flect on how ICT should be adopted and utilized in the public sector. Classic topics such as how ICT should be adopted to ensure smooth technology use in information and knowledge sharing and inter-governmental commu- nication can still find followers. New themes on interactions between ICT evolution and e-democracy and public participation and policy and decision making are gaining popularity among scholars and practitioners after 2008.

We also examined how interests in each major research theme shifted over time. Figures 2 and 3 co-present these findings, with themes listed in the same order. While different colors indicated five major time periods; the length of bars for each theme indicates the number and percentage of articles published during the corresponding time period. The most striking aspect of themes such as e-service is the high level of attention it received since as early as 1991. This has a lot to do with newly adopted integrated networks and the changes in government men- tality toward new public service in the public sector worldwide. From then, practitioners and academics constantly debated the interactions between public service delivery and ICT use. The same can be stated for multiple major themes labeled with technology use. Categorized as late adopter according to the technology diffusion model by Rogers (2010), public agencies were always concerned with security and public privacy, which demanded constant attention to factors contributing to technology adoption success.

While technology use in information and knowledge sharing is an area where ICT was consistently adopted, it is also a topic that has steadily attracted attention from scholars over the years. The most recent period, 2009–2012, was an era of “smart governance” in the age of big data. Smart governance defined by many scholars as a gover- nance pattern that fundamentally consists of ICT-based infrastructure and information structure for inclusion of complex analytics, modeling, optimization, and visualization in the operational government processes to make bet- ter decisions and policies (Nam and Pardo, 2011). The inevitable interaction between technology development and human agency will continue to provide a dynamic field for knowledge sharing and co-operation toward transfor- mation in social trends, policy response, and public governance adaptations (Dawes, 2008). Correspondingly, recent years have seen a rising research interest in e-democracy and participatory policy and decision making. This new interest flags the importance of a more integrated approach to ICT in public operation. Integration is essential for smart governance. The findings in these two figures offer some evidence that interest of public managers and scholars may have broadened from internal government operations employing ICT to a smart governance system integrated with ICT.

The interactive dance between technology use and advances of public administration

The statistical analysis in the previous section may help explain the general trend in research interest toward inter- actions between technology adoption and government operations. Qualitative findings from in-depth content anal- yses of the 267 articles on Western countries were categorized into five critical phases, explaining interactions

143TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND THE EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

DOI: 10.1002/pad

Figure 3. Theme distribution in information and communication technology use and advancement of the public administration system.

Figure 2. Theme evolution in information and communication technology use and advancement of the public administration.

144 S. M. LIU AND Q. YUAN

DOI: 10.1002/pad

T ab le

1 . In te ra ct io n s b et w ee n IC T s ev o lu ti o n an d ad v an ce m en t o f th e p u b li c ad m in is tr at io n sy st em

(c re at ed

b y au th o rs

b as ed

o n q u al it at iv e d at a an al y si s)

E x am

p le s o f IC T

ap p li ca ti o n s

A re as

o f p u b li c

o p er at io n s im

p ac te d

F u n ct io n s o f IC T s

R o le s o f IC T s

D ec is io n m ak er s

C h an g e fo cu s

P re -1 9 9 0

C la ss ifi ca ti o n an d

in d ex in g ; o n to lo g y

A rc h iv in g an d ca ta lo g in g ;

o ffi ce

au to m at io n

A u to m at io n to o ls

S ta ti c to o ls

B u re au cr at s

S in g le

g o v er n m en t

o ffi ce

1 9 9 0 s

In fo rm

at io n d is p la y

an d ac ce ss

ar ch it ec tu re ;

L A N s; p er so n al

co m p u ti n g ; em

ai ls an d

in tr an et ; in fo rm

at io n

p ro ce ss in g te ch n o lo g y ;

W o rl d W id e W eb

In fo rm

at io n sh ar in g an d

fi le

tr an sf er

ac ro ss

d ep ar tm

en ts an d re gi o n s;

sp ec ia li ze d p u b li c

in fo rm

at io n sy st em

an d

o n li n e p u bl ic

in fo rm

at io n

ac ce ss

an d se rv ic es

G o v er n m en t in it ia ti v e

im p le m en ta ti o n to o ls

U n ex p ec te d ca ta ly st

fo r ch an ge s in

p u b li c

m an ag em

en t

P u b li c m an ag er s

C ro ss -d ep ar tm

en t

L at e 1 9 9 0 s– 2 0 0 5

S ea rc h en g in es ;

In te rn et ; p u b li c em

ai ls ;

B B S ; in te ra ct iv e W eb

2 .0

p la tf o rm

s; o n li n e

su rv ey s an d W eb

co n fe re n ci n g ; e- v o ti n g

O n e- st o p g o v er n m en t

in fo rm

at io n p o rt al s an d

p u b li c se rv ic e d el iv er y ;

p u b li c– p ri v at e p ar tn er sh ip ;

p u b li c in fo rm

at io n ac ce ss

an d p u b li c en g ag em

en t

P la tf o rm

s fo r se rv ic e

d el iv er y an d

d em

o cr at ic

en g ag em

en t

T ec h n o lo g ic al

co m p o n en ts o f p u b li c

se rv ic e d el iv er y an d

d em

o cr at ic

d ev el o p m en t

P u b li c m an ag er s, th e

p ri v at e se ct o r an d

th e p o li ti ca l ac ti v is ts

P u b li c– p ri v at e

co ll ab o ra ti o n an d

p u b li c en g ag em

en t

in p u b li c se rv ic e

d el iv er y

2 0 0 5 – 2 0 0 8

M o b il e an d w ir el es s

te ch n o lo g y ; R F ID

; G IS ;

G P R S ; se n so rs

In te g ra ti o n o f p u b li c

fi el d w o rk

an d b ac k -e n d

o p er at io n s; p u bl ic

se rv ic e

d el iv er y

D at a ac cu m u la to r

D y n am

ic in fr as tr u ct u re

fo r

se rv ic e d el iv er y an d

d em

o cr at ic

d ev el o p m en t

P u b li c se rv ic e

p ro v id er s an d

ci ti ze n s

C it iz en -o ri en te d an d

ta il o re d p u b li c se rv ic e

2 0 0 9 – N o w

C lo u d co m p u ti n g ;

so ci al

m ed ia

an d b ig

d at a an al y ti cs

S o ci al

in fo rm

at io n

in te g ra ti o n ; p u b li c

en g ag em

en t an d

p ar ti ci p at io n

D at a in te g ra to r

B ac k b o n es

an d

fo u n d at io n s fo r

g o v er n an ce

E v er y o n e

S oc ia l da ta in te gr at io n,

an al ys is an d ap pl ic at io n

in sm

ar t d ec is io n

m ak in g

B B S ,B

u ll et in b o ar d sy st em

;L A N s, lo ca la re a n et w or k ;R

F ID

,R ad io -f re q ue n cy

id en ti fi ca ti o n ;G

IS ,g eo gr ap h ic in fo rm

at io n sy st em

;G P R S ,G

en er al p ac k et ra d io se rv ic e; IC T ,i n fo rm

at io n

an d co m m u n ic at io n te ch n o lo g y .

145TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND THE EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

DOI: 10.1002/pad

occurring in the public sector in developed countries as indicated in Table 1. We also presented challenges and op- portunities these interactions introduced to government and the society in the past two-and-a-half decades.

Frederickson (1999) argued that public administration is increasingly defined by efforts to create coherent pat- terns of governance across political chasms. However, with the evolution and wide adoption of ICT in the public sector starting in the 1990s in Western countries, the goal to create the coherent patterns of governance across po- litical chasms is becoming increasingly achievable while paradoxically difficult (Giddens, 1983). We can try to un- derstand these two conflicting sides from the enactment lens offered by structuration theory to study how ICT interacted, adapted, and shaped while being shaped by the advancement of public administration over the years (Poole and DeSanctis, 1990). The term “enactment” is used to preserve the central essence that when people act, they bring events and structures into existence and set them in motion. People who act in organizations often produce structures, constraints, and opportunities that were not there before they took action (Weick, 1988).

Throughout the 1990s, the organizational benefits of ICT innovations in the public sector started to be recognized (Orlikowski, 1996). Government bureaucrats in Western countries initially limited ICT applications to classification and indexing, aiming to improve efficiency and effectiveness of internal information archiving, sharing, and storage. ICT was mostly perceived as a static tool that can be easily replaced. But once ICT has been introduced, it provides a platform for employees to change organizational standards for data storage, archiving, and quality. Employees enact with rules, and resources that mediate social actions through ICT-as-infrastructure, ICT-aligned norms, and new in- terpretive schemes (Giddens, 1983). Furthermore, computing provides better information for decision making, greater administrative control, and improved operational performance (Kraemer et al., 1981).

Unexpected by government bureaucrats was the impact generated by computing on decision making at the opera- tional level (Kraemer and King, 2006). It made possible to build exception reporting into most financial and personnel management systems (Stodolsky, 1985). These capabilities became critical to effective organizational control, helping decision makers determine when they need to decide certain matters (Bozeman and Bretschneider, 1986). It also pro- vided a basis for large-scale computerized models for setting policy in budget control and performance measurement (Kraemer et al., 1981). The new paradigm of public management featuring economy, efficiency, and responsiveness was readily assisted by new information flow made possible by the new ICT (Drucker, 1988).

In the trend of new public management, new policies, agencies, and technologies were enthusiastically intro- duced and disseminated to different government sectors, jarring with public employees’ various levels of under- standings and readiness of acceptance (Margetts, 1998). New public managers became highly dependent on ICT when managing routine tasks (Swain et al., 1995; Bertot, 1998). Although they still carelessly altered information technology systems to fit in with new decisions after the fact, ICT has become important elements in shaping changes in public administration, with the first wave of automation and the second wave of agencification1 (Policy and Innovation Unit, 2000; OECD, 2002). In fact, agencification and technicalization both contributed to the reduc- tion of citizens’ autonomous problem-solving capabilities.

Thus, from late 1990s onward, a more challenging task for citizens was changed to operate appropriately to repre- sent their interests administratively and politically. This greatly stimulated citizens’ proactive pursuit in adopting the Internet as a new communication venue (Castells, 2010). This new adoption radically helped push for both adminis- trative and political changes in areas far beyond developed countries (Franda, 2002). ICT became important conditions to redefine relations among the government, the private sector, and the civil society (Dunleavy et al., 2006).

If ICT adoption before 2000 was oriented around needs of government operations and centralized mode of decision making, the proceeding mobile and wireless ICT adoption was among the first signals of a new paradigm change to- ward new public governance (Goodsell, 2006). Decentralization continued while mobile and wireless ICT wirelessly connecting back-end office work, front-office work, and field work in public operations (Scholl et al., 2007). This new adoption of mobile and wireless technology promoted the idea of customer-oriented service delivery where front-end office work was further pushed out to the field and to the front door of citizens (Fidel et al., 2007). Huge amounts of public operation data from the field and local front office were collected, analyzed, synthesized, and transmitted back

1Agencification in transition countries usually means the creation of new autonomous bodies for new functions or a significant increase in the autonomy of existing legally separate bodies either on an individual or a collective basis (Beblavy, 2002).

146 S. M. LIU AND Q. YUAN

DOI: 10.1002/pad

to the central (back-end) office for further strategy design and decision making (Liu et al., 2007; Liu, 2013). While complexities involved in the new public governance strategy continued to grow, it was essential for each government to develop a practical and comprehensive ICT implementation plan (Ndou, 2004; Bertot et al., 2005). What was even more critical was a long-term investment in both financial and human resources to tackle barriers to transformation and an overhaul of existing government operation and social systems (Ndou, 2004; Bertot et al., 2005).

The trend of citizen-driven technology adoption for public operation integration became more prevalent in citizens’ passionate use of social media in recent years (Götsch and Grubmüller, 2013; Wandhöfer et al., 2013). Facilitated by multiple platforms offered through real-time interactive ICT applications—such as microblogging— government–citizen interactions became more frequent, interactive, and transparent (Chatfield et al., 2012). Interactive communications on social media offers more opportunities for citizens to collectively deliberate on public policy making and the role of citizens in governance (Edgerly et al., 2013). This generated great pressure for government to take actions to seamlessly integrate policy and decision making in the back-end, service delivery in the front-end, and public-citizen communication in the virtual sphere (Picazo-Vela et al., 2012).

At the same time, big data analytics and interactive social media revolutionized the ways in which the public participated in decision making and policy design. The general public was no longer passive information re- ceivers—they became active information contributors (Traunmüller, 2010). Through collective discussion and deliber- ations on social media, citizens expressed their opinions freely and interacted with peers in a real-time manner (Assar et al., 2011). They could quickly share information informally, identify peers, form communities, organize political movements, and pursue goals together. This changed the power balance between the government and citizens (Chatfield et al., 2012). It also created pressure for government agencies to provide more space for democracy and transparency in daily operations and for services tailored to citizen needs (Chatfield et al., 2012; Wandhöfer et al., 2013).

Of course, governments worldwide have taken action to fight back against pressure brought over by increased social media use. In some cases, the wide adoption of big data analytics by governments was to employ heavy surveillance, data accumulation, and synthesis to maintain control while monitoring trends in public opinions (Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia, 2013).

In summary, in the past almost two-and-a-half decades, ICT innovations have introduced great benefits such as the following:

• increased effectiveness and efficiency in government operations; • integration of government operations across departments, regions, and states; • customized service delivery; • increased level of communication between the public agencies and citizens; and • some levels of engagement of the public in decision and policy making.

On the one hand, it was while interacting with these operational, managerial, and even institutional changes that the roles of ICT were further redefined, adopted, and customized.

On the other hand, it was during the enactment and adaptation process of ICT innovations that governance ad- vanced over time. While digitalization and networking in early years offered government agencies improved inter- nal efficiency and effectiveness, increasing use of social media and Web 2.0 in recent years further intensified tensions between government control and decentralization, government transparency, and citizens’ privacy con- cerns (Ndou, 2004; Bertot et al., 2005; Dale, 2005).

Sadly, facing consistent challenges introduced by the ICT evolution and social movement, governments still lack new governance structure and policy frameworks to operate smoothly in the age of big data. Progress must be made regarding the use of innovative technologies for a full-fledged political discourse and a democratic system.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD

In early 1980s, riding the wave of technology transfer associated with foreign direct investment, governments in developing countries saw the benefits of ICT to support the drive for economic development (Heeks, 2002;

147TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND THE EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

DOI: 10.1002/pad

Avgerou, 2008; Walsham, 2013). In the early days of ICT adoption, government agencies in developing countries mainly assimilated and adapted the more or less obsolete technology of the advanced countries, employing ICT for office automation and administrative efficiency improvement (Kim et al., 1987). However, more recently, it has frequently been observed that in the catching-up process, the late-comers did not simply follow the path of techno- logical development of the advanced countries. They skipped some stages or even created their own individual path, which is different from their developed counterparts (Dechezleprêtre et al., 2009). In 1998, Internet penetration rate in a given developing country was roughly 1 per cent. This dramatically changed to nearly 15 per cent by 2008, with a 21 per cent annual growth rate (Heeks, 2010). From the mid-1990s, ICT tools have been continuously adopted by developing nations in the Asia Pacific region to improve government administrative efficiency, share knowledge, provide public services, and reduce corruptions (Wescott, 2007). A Global Times study found that “71 percent of Chinese Web users attribute their growing interest in politics to microblogging” (Thomler, 2011). By the end of 2013, over half of the 538 million Chinese Internet users took part in social media use (CNNIC, 2014).

This leapfrogging certainly help enabled developing nations to bypass heavy investment in previous technology system and catch up with advanced countries in hardware adoption (Hobday, 1995). But, it also introduced com- plexities that developed nations experienced and adjusted accordingly over a longer period of time at a much slower pace (ITU, 2013). Most developing nations are still lacking understanding of potentials of ICT in introduc- ing changes to domains far beyond structural tools. They are facing huge difficulties in developing critical techno- logical capacity, allocating sufficient financial resources, and adjusting institutional contexts accordingly (Heeks, 2010). Such difficulties can only be tackled by understanding clearly of interactions between newly adopted tools and existing political, economic, and social contexts (Chepaitis, 2002; Shin et al., 2008; Cloete, 2012).

Successful adoption in economically developed Asia?

By the early 21st century, developing nations in East and West Asia have built comprehensive infrastructure and implemented ICT systems in almost all sectors of society (Ma et al., 2005). Many developing nations have launched national e-government policy and institutional reform. They aimed to introduce modern knowledge man- agement into government organizations (Koh et al., 2005), improve government administrative efficiency (Kim et al., 2004; Heeks, 2010), promote continuous reform, and hopefully advance democracy (Torres et al., 2005). In the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, led by Singapore, all eight Association of Southeast Asian Nations members improved their performance in overall ICT adoption (Porrúa, 2013). A majority has made progress in the international e-governance rankings. In Bangladesh, Thailand, and some other Southeast Asian developing nations, information systems were widely adopted for birth registration and medical records maintenance. Some authoritarian countries have been successful with digital government because they have top-down political structures and are able to overcome “bureaucratic and political intransigence” (West, 2007, p. 21). This was evidenced by rapid ICT adoption associated with high-speed economic development in the East Asia region since the early 1990s (Wescott, 2001).

However, for countries that successfully leapfrogged economic hurdles by adopting ICT hardware in Asia, they are still struggling with soft barriers such as traditional bureaucratic practices, lack of strategic planning, and busi- ness process redesign (Chepaitis, 2002). This can be demonstrated using the example of Chinese e-government de- velopment. Since 1993, Chinese government launched the government informatization movement, investing heavily in three national e-government intranets. However, the nation has a public administration system featuring compartmentalized bureaucratic practices, which presented a consistent challenge toward interoperability and data integration. Gearing toward resolving conflict among different systems used by different government agencies, the Chinese government launched the second initiative of “government connected” and “one-stop government Portal” to promote for inter-connectedness among agencies while extending public services to online presence in 2002. This new initiative partially helped bringing down communication barriers among agencies while promoting for national planning and new public services. By 2014, the National E-government system has covered almost 90 per cent of Chinese cities, enabling an infrastructure for fast information collection, transmission, storage, process- ing, and public service delivery (Gao, 2015). However, most civil servants still have to fill in paper forms before typing those same data in the system for reporting purpose even to this day. This causes dissatisfaction in ICT

148 S. M. LIU AND Q. YUAN

DOI: 10.1002/pad

among civil servants, the major providers of data on public operations. It is not uncommon for them to either with- hold data or simply fake data on the system to reduce the workload. This created a dangerous potential for decision makers to make wrong decisions based on fake data accumulated through e-government system on a daily basis (Shi et al., 2012). The benefits of ICT adoption were therefore blocked by existing political institutions, bureau- cratic forms, and technical difficulties, thus giving limited attention to the needs of the communities and presenting daunting challenges to the new open government initiative recently launched (Wescott, 2015).

Moreover, especially in East Asia, some nations are just realizing the consequence of over-reliance on techno- logical packages originating from developed nations. The recent Chinese initiative to develop indigenous operating systems and navigation satellite systems were among the attempts to counteract effects of over-reliance (Shi et al., 2012). Issues of national security were constantly discussed among scholars and practitioners in Asian developing nations concerned of employing foreign ICT in national defense and security operations (Wade, 2015).

Is accountability guaranteed by adopting ICT?

Following citizens in developed countries to represent their interests appropriately since the mid-1990s, countries in Latin America emphasized heavily on employing ICT for the promotion of democratic governance in the region since the very beginning (Welp, 2007). From early 1980s, Latin American governments invested heavily in and committed to the development of infrastructure in the region (Nogales and Zelaya-Fenner, 2013). Both government leaders and civil servants went through systematic training and qualification process (Porrúa, 2013). The combina- tion of political commitment, qualification of human resources, and availability of financial resource contributed heavily to the success of ICT adoption in each nation (Welp, 2010). Many governments aimed to improve admin- istration efficiency and serve the needs of a growing population with ever-increasing demands for convenient ac- cess to information and technological support (Escobar, 2007).

However, while no countries in the region can remain immune to the impact of ICT, such impact is not universal or unconditional. On the one hand, access to social media and big data analytics certainly helped political leaders reach their followers widely. But, on the other hand, making modern ICT tools and solutions available to citizens does not necessarily guarantee citizens will be satisfied with government services. Furthermore, it raised doubts about decisively linking development of democratic governance with the wide adoption of ICT. Countries with some of the highest levels of broadband Internet usage (such as Uruguay and Chile, ranked among the top 50 coun- tries worldwide) and those with some of the lowest levels of Internet exposure both experienced mass social move- ment and request for democracy and civil participation in decision making (Stepanova, 2011).

Thus, for developing countries to adopt ICT innovations in the governance system, the growing spread of advanced ICT will definitely reveal new vulnerabilities and opportunities. However, these new technological tools themselves do not reflect the nature of adoption or use. Identical technological systems may play very different roles in the deve- loping world. It is the particular system of governance in a particular country that dictates the roles that can be played by newly developed ICT tools. A full-fledged e-governance system mandated for seamless integration among techno- logical advances institutional arrangements (e.g.laws, regulations, and policies) and contextual factors (e.g.cultural, political, economic, demographic, and ecological conditions). Only when developing countries successfully accom- plish such integration can government sectors, private companies, and citizens enjoy the full benefits of e-governance.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We want to thank multiple funding agencies for their generous support that made this research possible: China National Social Science Foundation (project ID: KRB3056068), China Ministry of Education (project ID: JJH3056017), China Earthquake Administration (project ID: 201508016), Shanghai Municipal Advisory Commit- tee of Decision Support (project ID: KEH3056089), Shanghai Science and Technology Commission (project ID: WBH3056008), and Fudan University (project ID: JJH3353502). Our appreciation also goes to Jose Antonio Puppim de Oliveira, Paul Collins, Yijia Jing, Raya Fidel, and Philippe Cyr for insightful comments, and Shu Xiao and Yanfei Xin for their diligent work on data collection and analysis.

149TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND THE EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

DOI: 10.1002/pad

REFERENCES

Assar S, Boughzala I, Isckia T. 2011. eGovernment trends in the web 2.0 era and the open innovation perspective: an exploratory field study. In Electronic Government. Springer: Berlin-Heidelberg; 210–222.

Avgerou C. 2008. Information systems in developing countries: a critical research review. Journal of Information Technology 23(3): 133–146. Beblavy M. 2002. Management of civil service reform in Central Europe. Mastering Decentralization & Public Administration Reforms in Central and Eastern Europe, LGI.

Bertot JC. 1998. Challenges and issues for public managers in the digital era. Public Manager 27(4): 27. Bertot JC, McClure CR, Shuler JA, Quinn AC. 2005. Government information: new challenges in the internet age. Government Information Quarterly 22(1): 1–3.

Bozeman B, Bretschneider S. 1986. Public management information systems: theory and prescriptions. Public Administration Review 46(S): 475–489.

Castells M. 2010. The culture of real virtuality: the integration of electronic communication, the end of the mass audience, and the rise of inter- active networks. In The Rise of the Network Society: With a New Preface (Vol. I, 2nd edn). Polity Press: Cambridge; 355–406.

Chatfield AT, Akbari R, Mirzayi N, Scholl HJJ. 2012. Interactive effects of networked publics and social media on transforming the public sphere: a survey of Iran’s leaderless ‘social media revolution’. Paper presented at the 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-45), Maui, HI, USA.

Chepaitis EV. 2002. Soft barriers to ICT application in development: trust and information quality in Russia. Journal of International Develop- ment 14(1): 51–60.

Cloete F. 2012. E-government lessons from South Africa 2001–2011: institutions, state of progress and measurement: section II: country per- spectives on e-government emergence. African Journal of Information and Communication: Perspective on a Decade of e-Government in Af- rica 12: 128–142.

CNNIC. 2014. The 33rd Statistical Report on Internet Development in China. http://www.cnnic.net.cn/hlwfzyj/hlwxzbg/hlwtjbg/201403/ t20140305_46240.htm [10 April 2015].

Dale A. 2005. E-government reconsidered: renewal of governance for the knowledge age. Canadian Geographer 49(3): 317–318. Dawes SS. 2008. The evolution and continuing challenges of e-governance. Public Administration Review 68(s1): S86–S102. Dechezleprêtre A, Glachant M, Ménière Y. 2009. Technology transfer by CDM projects: A comparison of Brazil, China, India and Mexico. Energy Policy, Elsevier, 37(2): 703–711.

Drucker PF. 1988. The Coming of the New Organization. Harvard Business Review 45–53. Dunleavy P, Margetts H, Bastow S, Tinkler J. 2006. New public management is dead – long live digital-era governance. Journal of Public Ad- ministration Research and Theory 16(3): 1–28.

Edgerly S, Vraga EK, Dalrymple KE, Macafee T, Fung TKF. 2013. Directing the dialogue: the relationship between YouTube videos and the comments they spur. Journal of Information Technology & Politics 10(3): 276–292.

Escobar HM. 2007. e-Government Architectures, Technical and Political Situation in Latin America. United Nations Publications. Fidel R, Scholl HJ, Liu SM, Unsworth K. 2007. Mobile government fieldwork: a preliminary study of technological, organizational, and social challenges. Paper presented at the 8th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2007), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Franda MF. 2002. Launching into Cyberspace: Internet Development and Politics in Five World Regions. Lynne Rienner Publishers: Lynne, Rienner.

Frederickson G. 1999. The repositioning of American public administration. Political Science & Politics 32(4): 701–712. Gao X. 2015. Challenges and opportunities to develop e-government in China in the thirteenth five-year national plan. E-government 4: 12–16. Giddens A. 1983. Comments on the theory of structuration. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 13(1): 75–80. Goodsell CT. 2006. A new vision for public administration. Public Administration Review 66(4): 623–635. Götsch K, Grubmüller V. 2013. Web 2.0 for Local Policy and Decision Making Support. Research & Development Results from the ICT Project UniteEurope. Paper presented at the Electronic Government and Electronic Participation: Joint Proceedings of Ongoing Research and Pro- jects of IFIP EGOV and IFIP ePart 2013, Koblenz, Germany.

Hawkins DT. 2001. Information science abstracts: tracking the literature of information science. Part 1: definition and map. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 52(1): 44–53.

Heeks R. 2002. e-Government in Africa: promise and practice. Information Polity: The International Journal of Government & Democracy in the Information Age 7(2,3): 97–114.

Heeks R. 2010. Do information and communication technologies (ICTs) contribute to development? Journal of International Development 22(5): 625–640.

Hobday M. 1995. Innovation in East Asia: the challenge to Japan. Edward Elgar Publishing. Ifinedo P. 2011. Factors influencing e-government maturity in transition economies and developing countries: A longitudinal perspective. The Data base for advances in information systems 42(4): 98–116.

ITU. 2013. Measuring the information society 2013. http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/publications/mis2013/ MIS2013_without_Annex_4.pdf [10 April 2015].

Kim L, Lee J, Lee J. 1987. Korea’s entry into the computer industry and its acquisition of technological capability. Technovation 6(4): 277–293. Kim Y, Yoon J, Park S, Han J. 2004. Architecture for implementing the mobile government services in Korea. In Conceptual Modeling for Ad- vanced Application Domains. Springer: Berlin-Heidelberg; 601–612.

Koh CE, Ryan S, Prybutok VR. 2005. Creating value through managing knowledge in an e-government to constituency (G2C) environment. Journal of Computer Information Systems 45(4): 32–41.

Kraemer K, King JL. 2006. Information technology and administrative reform: will e-government be different? International Journal of Elec- tronic Government Research 2(1): 1–20.

Kraemer KL, Dutton WH, Northrop A. 1981. The Management of Information Systems. Columbia University Press: New York, NY.

150 S. M. LIU AND Q. YUAN

DOI: 10.1002/pad

http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/publications/mis2013/MIS2013_without_Annex_4.pdf

Lan Z, Anders KK. 2000. A paradigmatic view of contemporary public administration research an empirical test. Administration & Society 32(2): 138–165.

Liu SM. 2013. Urban community grids management in metropolitan China: a case study on factors contributing to mobile governance success. In E-Government Success Factors and Measures: Concepts, Theories, Experiences, and Practical Recommendations, Ramon Gil-Garcia J (ed.). Information Science Reference: Hershey, PA.

Liu SM, Unsworth K, Fidel R, Scholl HJJ. 2007. Fully mobile wirelessly connected technology applications: organizational communication. Social, and Information Challenges, ASIST.

Ma L, Chung J, Thorson S. 2005. E-government in China: bringing economic development through administrative reform. Government Infor- mation Quarterly 22(1): 20–37.

Margetts H. 1998. Information Technology in Government: Britain and America. Routledge: New York. Munoz B, Hernandez. 2010. Trends of e-government research: Contextualization and Research opportunities. The International Journal of Dig- ital Accounting Research 10: 87–111.

Nam T, Pardo TA. 2011. Smart city as urban innovation: focusing on management, policy, and context. Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV 2011), Tallinn, Estonia.

Ndou V. 2004. E-government for developing countries: opportunities and challenges. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Devel- oping Countries 18(1): 1–24.

Nogales M, Zelaya-Fenner S (eds). 2013. Democratic Governance in Latin America: A Regional Discussion. International Republican Institute: Washington D.C.

OECD. 2002. OECD Information Technology Outlook 2002. www.oecd.org/dataoecd/63/60/1933354.pdf [10 April 2015]. Orlikowski WJ. 1996. Improvising organizational transformation over time: a situated change perspective. Information Systems Research 7(1): 63–92.

Picazo-Vela S, Gutierrez-Martinez I, Luna-Reyes LF. 2012. Understanding risks, benefits, and strategic alternatives of social media applications in the public sector. Government Information Quarterly 29(4): 504–511.

Policy and Innovation Unit. 2000. Wiring it up: Whitehall’s management of cross-cutting polices and services. Cabinet Office: London. http:// www.pm.gov.uk/files/pdf/coiwire.pdf. [10 April 2015].

Poole MS, DeSanctis G. 1990. Understanding the use of group decision support systems: the theory of adaptive structuration. In Organizations and Communication Technology, Fulk J, Steinfield C (eds). SAGE Publications, Inc.: Thousand Oaks, CA.

Porrúa MA. 2013. E-Government in Latin America: A Review of the Success in Colombia, Uruguay, and Panama. The Global Information Technology Report 2013.

Rogers EM. 2010. Diffusion of Innovations. Free Press: New York. Sandoval-Almazan R, Gil-Garcia JR. 2013. Cyberactivism through social media: Twitter, YouTube, and the Mexican political movement “I’m Number 132”. Paper presented at the 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-46). Wailea, HI, USA.

Scholl HJJ, Liu SM, Fidel R, Unsworth K. 2007. Choices and challenges in e-government field force automation projects: insights from case studies. Paper presented at the 1st International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV 2007), Macao.

Shi C, Zhao Q, Li M, Tang W, Hu Z, Lou Y, Liu J. 2012. Precise orbit determination of BeiDou Satellites with precise positioning. Science China Earth Sciences 55(7): 1079–1086.

Shin S, Song H, Kang M. 2008. Implementing e-government in developing countries: its unique and common success factor. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the APSA 2008 Annual Meeting, Hynes Convention Center, Boston, Massachusetts.

Stepanova E. 2011. The role of information communication technologies in the “Arab spring”. Ponars Eurasia 15: 1–6. Stodolsky D. 1985. Information systems for self-management. Human Systems Management 5: 39–45. Swain JW, White JD, Hubbert ED. 1995. Issues in public management information systems. American Review of Public Administration 25(3): 279–296. Thomler C. 2011. Can microblogging save or destroy governments. Government in the Lab. Torres L, Pina V, Royo S. 2005. E-government and the transformation of public administrations in EU countries: beyond NPM or just a second wave of reforms? Online Information Review 29(5): 531–553.

Traunmüller R. 2010. Web 2.0 creates a new government. In Electronic government and the information systems perspective. Springer: Berlin- Heidelberg; 77–83.

Wade G. 2015. Beidou: China’s New Satellite Navigation System http://fortunascorner.com/2015/03/10/beidou-chinas-new-satellite-naviga- tion-system

Walsham G. 2013. Development informatics in a changing world: reflections from ICTD2010/2012. Information Technologies & International Development 9(1): 49–54.

Wandhöfer T, Allen B, Taylor S, Walland P, Sizov S. 2013. Online forums vs. social networks: two case studies to support eGovernment with topic opinion analysis. In Electronic Government, Wimmer MA, Janssen M, Scholl HJ (eds). Springer: Berlin-Heidelberg.

Weick KE. 1988. Enacted sensemaking in crisis situations. Journal of Management Studies 25(4): 305–317. Welp Y. 2007. Democracy and digital divide in Latin America. International Conference of Direct Democracy in Latin America, 14–15. Welp Y. 2010. ICT’s for democracy in Latin America? In Electronic Participation: 2nd IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference, ePart 2010, Lausanne, Switzerland, August/September 2010: Proceedings, Tambouris E, Macintosh A, Glassey O (eds). Springer: Berlin / Heidelberg.

Wescott CG. 2001. E-government in the Asia-Pacific region. Asian Journal of Political Science 9(2): 1–24. Wescott CG. 2007. e-Government and the applications of technology to government services. Globalization in Transition: Forces of Adjustment in the Asia Pacific Region. http://www.adb.org/Documents/Papers/E-Government/egov-techgov.pdf [4 May 2015].

Wescott C. 2015. Chapter 14 E-Government in Asia: How Culture Affects Patterns of Adoption. In Cultural Aspects of Public Management Reform. Published online: 10 Mar 2015; 351–367.

West D. 2007. Digital Government: Technology and Public Sector Performance. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.

151TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND THE EVOLUTION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

DOI: 10.1002/pad

Copyright of Public Administration & Development is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.