Executive Summary
Over the past two decades, innovation in the public sector has grown in importance. The challenges posed by globalisation, the fast-paced progress in digital technology, the economic development and the demographic changes leading to more complex and more diverse societies, made it clear that new approaches are highly needed. On top of that, governments across the world are facing a greater public demand for more responsive and better public services and a more effective, efficient, inclusive and participatory government, while coping with fiscal pressures and budget constraints. Governments are required to find innovative solutions to achieve the balance between the efficient allocation of financial resources at their disposal and the satisfaction of the greater public expectations. Public sector innovation has been recognised as the main determinant of facing these challenges and achieving specific objectives in the public sector. More specifically, governments have realised that information and communication technology (ICT) is crucial for their organisation and tasks and have invested a lot of money and effort in ICT-enabled innovations, primarily in the most transformative strategy: the e-Government. Looking how to best deploy ICT, governments realised that e-Government can be a powerful tool not only to improve the performance of public administration’s activities and procedures in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, but also to innovate the public sector as a whole and achieve broader governance objectives.
The present dissertation work aims at underlining the positive impact of public sector innovation on the creation of public value through innovative and modern solutions and programmes, consistently embedded in effective public policies. The work illustrates the crucial role played by information and communication technologies to enact and promote innovation in the public sector. The focus is on the deployment and utilisation of ICT on the part of governments, in the form of e-Government, and its potential to strengthen the government-citizen relationship and enhance public participation through e-Participation.
The first chapter gives a comprehensive overview of innovation in the public sector by providing a definition of the term “innovation” and illustrating the different forms that innovation can take in the public sector. Through the description of the history of innovation in the public sector, it is underlined how research in the field of innovation in the public sector has been taken seriously only since the 1990s, after a long period of underestimation and disregard, in which the public sector has been negatively perceived and considered as
hostile to innovation. The last part of the chapter deals with the factors fostering public sector innovation, with a special attention on ICT’s diffusion and its functions in the public sector.
The second chapter focuses on the adoption and use of new and modern information and communication technologies by governments, through the creation, development and implementation of e-Government. After explaining the meaning of electronic government and the stages of its development, the discussion focuses on the status of e-Government development at global level, through the analysis of data provided and surveys carried out by the international organisation The United Nation. In this part of the chapter, particular attention is placed on the European landscape and the European initiatives and programmes issued to promote e-Government and digitalisation of public services. The description of e- Government development also highlights the significant shift in the mid-2000s from the government-centric approach, where the main concern was how to best deploy ICT and how to ensure a greater efficiency and effectiveness of public administration’s activities and government tasks, to a citizen-centric approach, where focus was put more on the context in which e-Government develops and progresses and on the outcomes for public users and their satisfaction with government performance. This new approach has required governments to better understand the citizens’ needs and demands and think of solutions and measures to encourage the take-up of online services. For this reason, the most common approaches for increasing the e-Government services take-up on the one hand and the potential barriers for e-Government implementation and usage of digital services on the other hand are described.
The last part of the second chapter deals with the importance of the constant monitoring of the performance of online services and the clear evaluation of costs and benefits for both citizens and government.
The third chapter presents itself as a case study on e-Government in Austria. This country has immediately recognised the considerable potential of e-Government and is established as one of the leading European countries in digital services. The presentation of history of e-Government in Austria shows the involvement and commitment of various actors from different government levels, from the federal government to cities and municipalities, towards the implementation of online services, based on a better knowledge of citizens’
needs. The second part of the chapters describes the approach followed by the Austrian government to foster the usage of online public services in the whole country. In the last part the best examples of e-Government services, winners of international prizes, are described.
The fourth chapter underlines the important role of citizens in designing, developing and implementing online public services. Nowadays, citizens are no longer seen only as consumers of services, but rather as a significant source of innovation. Over the last years, e-Government has proved to be a powerful tool to engage citizens in the policy-making process and achieve broader democratic values through the e-Participation. The chapter gives an overview of the concept of e-Participation by describing the three main stages for its adoption, such as e-information, e-consultation and e-decision-making. In the end, the focus is on e-Participation level in Austria and the various initiatives and projects launched by the Austrian government to promote and enhance public engagement and active participation.
The final chapter summarizes the main topics and results of this dissertation work, focusing on the numerous benefits that public sector innovation, in particular e-Government and digitalisation of public services, can deliver for countries’ economic and social development.
