Search

The globalisation of crime means there is an increasingly vital need for effective sharing of knowledge by police organisations across international borders. However, identifying the complexities and challenges of this aspect of international collaboration has been relatively neglected in previous research. The research reported in this paper therefore set out to identify the major barriers and facilitators of international knowledge sharing. Research teams in ten European countries produced ten case studies of knowledge sharing across borders, either involving direct cooperation between police forces in different countries or through international agencies such as CEPOL or INTERPOL. The integrative findings showed that the major influences on knowledge sharing could be theoretically categorised in terms of organisational factors (e.g., technological and staff capabilities), inter-organisational factors (e.g., quality of relationships, shared visions and systems), inter-country factors (e.g., bilateral conventions, legislation) and knowledge characteristics (e.g., clarity, legal sensitivity). Practical implications include standardising technology systems across countries, improving inter-organisational trust through exchanges and physical co-working, developing police members’ knowledge and skills with regards to collaborative working and creating joint agreements and visions. Research implications highlighted the need to test the findings in non-European contexts and to comparatively focus on specific types of collaboration.

Electronic government and electronic participation continue to transform the public sector and society worldwide and are constantly being transformed themselves by emerging information and communication technologies. This book presents papers from the 14th International Federation for Information Processing’s EGOV conference (IFIP EGOV 2015), and its sister conference, the 7th Electronic Participation (ePart) conference, held in Thessaloniki, Greece, from 30 August to 2 September 2015, with the support and sponsorship of the University of Macedonia. Through the years, both of these conferences have established themselves as leading scientific events in their field, providing a forum for scholars to present and discuss their work. Included here are 31 accepted ongoing research papers, grouped under the following headings: eParticipation; policy modeling; open government and smart cities; general e-government; and e-government services; as well as 6 Ph.D. colloquium papers, 5 accepted posters and 3 workshops. With their combination of scientific credibility and rigor and with high relevance to practice, the papers presented here will be of interest to all those whose work involves electronic government and electronic participation., Multi Actor Systems, Technology, Policy and Management

A growing interest in e-Government practices is currently expressed within public administrations. This paper describes the evolution of our study in the field of impacts of digitization on the management of administrative procedures. We present a full description of the methodology used, the assumptions and the analysis model on which our study is based. Due to its complexity and its interdepartmental characteristic, the building permit procedure is selected to be the representative administrative process of concern. As Swiss public administrations is the central subject of our research, a description of the relevant legal framework of the country is presented. Specifically, the case study of the Canton of Valais is described in detail. The experience gained from the semi-structured interviews conducted for this case study is exposed.

This article introduces and explores the potential of an active electronic data safe (AEDS) serving as an infrastructure to achieve transformational government. An AEDS connects individuals and organizations from the private and the public sector to exchange information items related to business processes following the user-managed access paradigm. To realize the transformational government’s vision of user-centricity, fundamental changes in the service provision and collaboration of public and private sector organizations are needed. Findings of a user study with a prototype of an AEDS are used to identify four barriers for the adoption of an AEDS in the light of transformational government: (1.) offering citizens unfamiliar services having the character of experience-goods; (2.) failing to fulfill common service expectations of the customers; (3.) failing to establish contextual integrity for data sharing, and, (4.) failing to establish and run an AEDS as a multi-sided platform providing an attractive business model.

Literature and policy reports suggest that open data can be used as a tool to enhance transparency. However, several researchers have challenged the idea that the release of government data will result in increased transparency and the idea that transparency automatically leads to more trust in the government. Moreover, transparency may have undesired effects. Limited research has been conducted on these sometimes conflicting findings and challenges, and on how open data policies should deal with this. It is not clear what encompasses an effective open data policy and how this influences transparency. The papers in this special issue contribute to this area. In the introduction of this special issue we present the state-of-the-art with regard to definitions, developments, research, challenges and barriers related to open data transparency and open data policies. Finally, a summary of the papers included in this special issue is provided., ESS, Technology, Policy and Management