e-governance and citizen information - Universitat Oberta de ...

E-governance and Citizen Information 30 Theoretical Framework. The Network AdministrationHowever, the concepts of “centrality of the citizen” or “centrality of demand” are often usedin a rhetorical and quite ambiguous approach. In each case, we should understand how theyare specifically operationalised and what type of actions, programs or initiatives or proceduresare established to identify and/or characterise citizens' needs or demands (with surveys,focus groups, etc.). Since these “user” configuration processes can be very different,general formulations are not very useful for analysis.In addition, within e-government studies, two types of analysis stood out: comparative studiesof government portals and studies on good practices. These analyses were developedby university and research centres, as well as consultancies from the private sector and internationalorganisms (Accenture, 2003 and 2004; Gartner Group, 2000; Demchak et al.,2000; SIBIS, 2003; Wong and Welch, 2004; Dunleavy et al., 2003).For different reasons, the comparative studies of government portals acquired a central rolein what can be considered as the first stage in the development of e-government. This waspartly due to the fact that portals quickly became a new space for the management and communicationswith citizens. And from the perspectives of analysts, the strength of these studiesis that they have the advantage of allowing comparison of a large number of cases witha relatively low cost in terms of resources and time. However, their weakness lies in the factthat an analysis does not allow us to understand where the Administration is changing, sincethese analyses are generally focused on the external transformations and those that aremost visible from the portals.We can make a similar criticism of the “good practices” studies developed mainly by consultancies,(Accenture, 2003, 2004; Gartner Group, 2000). The focus was mainly on the designof initiatives, without an analysis of the uses and global results of the technological incorporationprocesses. Two criticisms show the basic problems of these approaches: A deterministicvision of technology, conceived as an efficient recipe per se for changing the state ofaffairs; and a “depoliticised”, or at least decontextualised conception of the Public Administration,where innovation would arrive without the mediation of contexts and actors. One ofthe consequences is the perception of both the problems and their solutions, which can beextrapolated with no major difficulties to different institutional contexts (Aibar and Urgell,2003; Fountain, 2001).Nevertheless, in recent years the studies that incorporate organisational changes havestarted to grow in importance. Therefore, for example Layne and Lee (2001) establishesa model with four stages: a) cataloguing, which involves the offer of information; b)transaction, which allows complete electronic transactions and therefore starts a twowayinformation flow; c) a vertical integration stage, which involves the integration of dif-http://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic