Bubbling under

September 29, 2010

A welcome return to Andrea di Maio and an issue that he raises, not that I’ve been ignoring him or inferring that he’s said nothing worthwhile in the meantime. In a piece on his blog from 24 September entitled “Eparticipation in Europe – living in a bubble” he successfully notes that whilst most of the money is at a EC level, the need or expectation is at a local one, secondly that those into e-participation have built a self-sustaining community focused on e-participation as an end in itself.

Andrea states that:

“Of course opening additional channels to citizens to intervene more effectively in the policy-making process makes a great deal of sense.

The problem remains of whether this is exactly what people are looking for. In a democracy each of us expects to outsource policy making and participation to one or several democratically elected representatives. While putting us in closer touch with our representatives is a valid objective, so that they get a better feel about our wants and needs is essential, the value of enhancing our individual ability to directly influence parliamentary processes is more questionable.”

This aligns well with my own theory that e-democracy is one of the antimonies of e-government. It was assumed by some to be an integral part of e-government, frequently whispered about but never delivered. With e-government being the natural heir of neo-liberal New Public Management, one could not follow the other – one cannot have marketization of the polis delivering deliberative or direct democracy. All e-particpation can currently offer is an electronic version of the less-than-satisfactory process we have now.

So how do we join the two?

Leave a Comment » | citizen, e-government | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

If you build it…

September 26, 2010

As a researcher employing social media tools as research instrument, a report from the Research Information Network in July 2010 was an interesting comparison with my own experiences presented at Ethicomp 2010 in Tarragona, Spain.

The RIN report entitled ‘If you build it will they come‘ recognises the current limited use being made by what is also a small group of researchers. Having personally endured some personal heartache (since both aren’t fully accepted in academia) from the employment of both an action research methodology and social media in his research, I was pleased to see the conclusion on page 53 state:

“Researchers themselves are the most important enablers and communicators of emerging best practice. It is important that they should consider the full range of available tools and services as an intrinsic part of the research and scholarly communication process, and seek to learn from each other about new developments and practices that prove beneficial. Where web 2.0 tools and services have proved useful, the researchers involved can play a valuable role in exchanging information, thereby increasing awareness of the range of available tools and services (generic and discipline specific) and their utility for particular activities and settings. Better sharing of experience about how new offerings might be usefully and effectively deployed may be key to encouraging uptake and learning about effective use.”

Having written conference papers about both methodology and tools, I think I’ve done my initial share, but I do hope to continue in developing their use and promoting them in the future.

********************************************************************

The organisers of ETHICOMP 2011 in Sheffield, England have issued a call-for-papers.

********************************************************************

Leave a Comment » | Social media | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

Social skeptics

September 23, 2010

As a post here from March 2008 demonstrates I was considering ‘social capital’ amongst the metrics in my research. At that time I obviously hadn’t fallen over Professor Ben Fine from SOAS, who for a number of years has been critical of the concept. It was only when reading a review of his latest book “Theories of Social Capital - Researchers Behaving Badly“, that I became glad that I hadn’t followed that route too far, finding as I did, the concept rather ineffable.

Searching further in the realm of “social capital” I also discovered a whole web site devoted to it from the University of Sienna. Probably not reading for the average ICT Manager but maybe of interest to those examining reasons for using the Internet and social media?

Measure for measure, I am still promoting (dis)satisfaction with individual transactions as the primary indicator of how successful delivery over a channel is, and with longitudinal recording of usage the way to monitor channel shift. There are a number of tools to help with that, and those I know about are on my list on the home page, but the primary outcome is culture change in acting upon the feedback. Do that and one will have transformed service delivery.

Leave a Comment » | engagement, Metrics, Social media | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

No contact

September 21, 2010

Purely by chance, when checking a reference in my dissertation, I thought I’d look up what was happening with the Contact Council, one of a number of committees set up by the Cabinet Office during the previous regime. However, what I did find was that it is no more. It has been disbanded.

It was revealed in the 2009 Channel Strategy Guidance that its aim was to build a “comprehensive channels performance data ‘dashboard’ to aid departments and other public sector organizations to create and implement effective channel strategies”.

I presume another budget-saving cut. However, in the absence of NI14 and the Audit Commission, what would be the point of it remaining? It did come out with some good practice, some time after those practices had been promoted here and elsewhere but I’m not sure that without some drive from higher up the Whitehall food-chain it would have embedded that across government.

We could still do with a champion of service delivery good practice. Any volunteers?

Leave a Comment » | Metrics, NI14 | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

Getting satisfaction

September 19, 2010

A paper from China by Liu, Zhou & Chen presented at the Service Operations and Logistics and Informatics (SOLI) 2010 IEEE International Conference on 15-17 July 2010 confirms one outcome of my research and also what has been said here in the past three years.

However the paper, entitled Customer satisfaction measurement model of e-government service, fails in one particular area, that I have been quite keen to stress. Whilst measuring satisfaction with the web site is one thing, there are other the channels, including some electronic ones that need to be part of the view, if one is to identify channel shift, process failure and other issues that all need to be accounted for when examining the delivery of services across multiple channels.

My model/conceptual framework (below) employs (dis)satisfaction collected, along with usage statistics over time, to assist in improving service delivery across all channels. If one wants to get citizens to use a newer channel, it has to have added value for them, over the existing one(s). If a complex transaction is delivered in a complex manner over the Internet, they are still likely to use face-to-face or telephone. If feedback can be used to make matters simpler, highlight issues and, importantly, improve processes, the citizen is likely to use Internet channels, as they are more convenient.

However, some processes are hard to understand at source i.e. face-to-face, so if they are transferred to the Internet without refinement they will remain equally hard, if not harder. Examining the root-cause of failure at source and improving it across all channels will assist not only Internet delivery, but mediated delivery, too.

Footnote – should I also worry that the Chinese have fallen into the neo-liberal trap of describing their citizens as customers. I’m sure Mao Zedong would have something to say…

Leave a Comment » | citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, Metrics, transformational change | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.