Electronic government and accountability in regional and state administration.

AutorLara Martínez, Marco Antonio
CargoArtículo en inglés

El gobierno electrónico y la rendición de cuentas en la administración regional y estatal

INTRODUCTION

In recent decades, globalization and the rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTS) have, among many other changes, created significant demand from citizens for electronic public services that reduce waiting time and increase their effectiveness. In this context, the postulations of New Public Management (npm) suggest an alternative to traditional bureaucracy by means of the modernization of Public Administrations through a more managerial approach. Accountability processes have also undergone changes with the incorporation of ICTS and NPM parameters to allow greater participation and better government-citizen (G2C) relations, making governance easier. The Internet is a cheap and accessible means of increasing transparency and improving accountability provided the necessary political and cultural conditions are given.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the level of implementation and the determinants of the use of new technologies for accountability in regional/state public administrations. Thus, this paper analyzes the websites of regional governments (state, provinces and autonomous communities) of five federal countries from three different continents: Australia, Canada, Spain,1 the United States and Mexico. In addition to measuring the degree of development of e-government in four pre-established categories--accountability, political dialogue, citizen dialogue and web accessibility--, the study looks deeper into the external factors that influence or may influence the development of e-government, using information on the subject published by the un.

This paper is structured as follows: after a review of literature on the topic, we describe the methodology used before analyzing the results. The results are then debated in the context of the current situation before providing our main conclusions.

ACCOUNTABILITY IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS THROUGH THE INTERNET

A significant amount of studies on e-government primarily focus on central (federal) administrations (and occasionally, on local governments) of Anglo-Saxon and European countries, while the number of studies conducted in developing countries and those aimed at regional administrations remain scarce. The study of e-government is often approached from different angles which range from the analysis of the supply of e-services provided by the administration to those that look at the demand for electronic services by citizens and companies.

The studies on e-government developed over the last decade have focused on the content of the disclosed information, the contribution of the disclosed information to international convergence and determiners of the disclosure of information via the Internet.

CONTENT OF THE DISCLOSED INFORMATION

During the 2000s, there were numerous studies on the evolution and difficulties of introducing e-government into public administrations (West, 2001; Moon, 2002, 424-434; Norris and Moon, 2005, 64-75; Reddick, 2004, 51-64; Chen et al, 2007, 45-61; Luna et al., 2007, 808826) and the evaluation of websites (Deakins and Dillon, 2002, 375; Wong and Welch, 2004, 275-297).

Groff and Pitman (2004, 23) evaluate the disclosure of financial information via the Internet in one hundred of the main cities in the USA. Their results show that 89 per cent of local governments include links to financial statements on their websites, whether they are budget statements or the CAFR, (2) with budget statements being the most prevalent. They also consider that the size of the city is an important factor in the presentation of financial statements.

Laswada et al. (2005, 118), in a study of local administrations in New Zealand, examine the characteristics that influence the disclosure of financial information over the Internet. Administrations with the highest debt coefficients and those more visible to the press are characterized by publishing financial information in this way.

Caba et al. (2005, 273), in a study on central administrations in European Union (eu) countries, show that these administrations are not taking advantage of the web as a means for improving transparency of financial information and responsibility to citizens.

Other studies have focused on the accessibility of concrete public services through websites for the disabled Potter (2002, 303-317) and on e-services and interactivity, Teicher et al. (2002, 384-393).

CONTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION DISCLOSURE TO INTERNATIONAL CONVERGENCE

Over the last few years, several studies have dealt with the role of the Internet in improving governance Ho (2002, 434-444); La Porte et al. (2002, 411-447), on the transition from a bureaucratic paradigm to electronic administration of quality services, Torres et al. (2005, 217238) and Asgarkhani, (2005, 157-166), and in the strengthening of transparency and accountability via the web, such as those conducted by McIvor et al. (2002, 170-188), Groff and Pitman (2004, 20-26), Las- 2 wada et al. (2005, 101-121), Caba et al. (2005, 258-276) and Pina et al. (2007, 583-602). Pina et al. (2007) did an empirical study on the role of ids in the accountability of central governments in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and 15 countries in the EU--84 per cent of the population of the EU--; their results showed that ICTs did not have the desired impact as they did not encourage financial accountability beyond what was required of them by law. They conclude that technology does not introduce substantial changes in the style of government relations (G2C).

DETERMINERS OF THE DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION VIA THE INTERNET

The cultural factor, and its influence on transparency and accountability, has been studied from different perspectives. Heintze and Bretschneider (2000, 801-830), Irani et al. (2005, 61-82) and McIvor et al. (2002, 173), maintain that greater use of ICTS requires a cultural change within organizations. For example, Irani et al. (2005, 77) indicate that the political culture is more important than e-government evaluation systems. Chen et al. (2007, 58) highlight that developing countries with a short history of democracy show less transparency than developed countries with large minorities and different languages, religions, cultural values and traditions.

Contreras (2008, 77) carried out a survey that compares information from central government and citizen demands for information, and an evaluation of the content of the website of the Presidency of the Republic of Mexico, and found that there were elements that had a positive influence on guaranteeing access to information, such as technological efficiency, political availability and citizen culture.

METHODOLOGY

This empirical study includes 117 regions (states) in Australia (8), Canada (10), Spain (17), the United States (50) and Mexico (32). Data was obtained from the websites of regional governments and agencies in charge of the preparation and publication of the financial statements (tax, budget, finance and economy, the names vary from country to country) during the second semester of 2010.

In order to measure the level of e-government development, we defined four categories of indicators: accountability, political dialogue, citizen dialogue and web accessibility, comprised of dichotomic variables --with the exception of the variables that comprise the citizen dialogue category. The "accountability" category was evaluated according to the seven sections of economic and financial information gathered in table 1, which include indicators that refer to the disclosure of accrued financial information. The "political dialogue" category lists such variables as the information available to the citizen, the scheduled political activities of governing party officials and an analysis of direct communication via email. The "citizen dialogue" category groups interactive indicators, as well as useful information for citizens. "Web accessibility" provides indicators that examine ease of navigation of the sites in order to find information in the least amount of time possible. Lastly, in order to study the external factors that may influence the development of websites, we offer variables represented by ratios that measure the capacity of governments to promote ICTs in aspects of policy, education, culture and technology, all of which were published by the United Nations (2005).

In order to know the level of development of e-government of each region, we applied a scoring system to the total number of answers with a value of 1, in addition to the maximum possible number. Services published online and information on education, employment and health were standardized in order to obtain a percentage for each category. In order to calculate the final score for each region, we weighted each category with a percentage value (published accounts 40 per cent; public and citizen dialogue 25 per cent; each category and accessibility to the web 10 per cent).

Multidimensional scaling (MDS) allows one to visualize and explore the characteristics of the sample in map form. MDS does not require linear assumptions, metric variables or a minimum sample size given its descriptive, rather than inferential purpose. The application of this technique...

Para continuar leyendo

Solicita tu prueba

VLEX utiliza cookies de inicio de sesión para aportarte una mejor experiencia de navegación. Si haces click en 'Aceptar' o continúas navegando por esta web consideramos que aceptas nuestra política de cookies. ACEPTAR