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Research indicates that evidence-based policy making is most successful when public administrators refer to diversified information portfolios. With the rising prominence of social media in the last decade, this paper argues that governments can benefit from integrating this publically available, user-generated data through the technique of social media analytics (SMA). There are already several initiatives set up to predict future policy issues, e.g. for the policy fields of crisis mitigation or migrant integration insights. The authors analyse these endeavours and their potential for providing more efficient and effective public policies. Furthermore, they scrutinise the challenges to governmental SMA usage in particular with regards to legal and ethical aspects. Reflecting the latter, this paper provides forward-looking recommendations on how these technologies can best be used for future policy making in a legally and ethically sound manner.
Die fortschreitende Diffusion von E-Government ist ein Phänomen, dem in der internationa-len Forschungsliteratur bereits viel Aufmerksamkeit zu Teil wurde. Erstaunlich wenige Studien widmen sich bislang jedoch dezidiert dem Faktor Interdependenz, der eigentlichen Ursache von Diffusionsprozessen. In dieser Arbeit werden Interdependenzbeziehungen anhand dreier spezifischer Mechanismen der Diffusion, namentlich „Nachahmung“, „Wettbewerb“ und „Lernen“, untersucht. Auf Basis einer empirischen Analyse mit Daten zur Einführung von E-Government-Komponenten in 183 deutschen Städten über den Zeitraum von 1995 bis 2014 konnte ein Einfluss der Mechanismen „Nachahmung“ und „Lernen“ auf das Innovationsverhalten von Kommunen festgestellt werden. Für das Vorliegen von Wettbe-werbsdynamiken ließen sich demgegenüber keine Anhaltspunkte finden. Für zukünftige Forschungen zur Diffusion von Innovationen wird angeregt, verstärkt an die mechanismen- und prozessbasierte Perspektive von Diffusion als theoretischem Rahmenkonzept anzuknüpfen.
This thesis is analyzing multiple coordination challenges which arise with the digital transformation of public administration in federal systems, illustrated by four case studies in Germany. I make various observations within a multi-level system and provide an in-depth analysis. Theoretical explanations from both federalism research and neo-institutionalism are utilized to explain the findings of the empirical driven work. The four articles evince a holistic picture of the German case and elucidate its role as a digital government laggard. Their foci range from macro, over meso to micro level of public administration, differentiating between the governance and the tool dimension of digital government.
The first article shows how multi-level negotiations lead to expensive but eventually satisfying solutions for the involved actors, creating a subtle balance between centralization and decentralization. The second article identifies legal, technical, and organizational barriers for cross-organizational service provision, highlighting the importance of inter-organizational and inter-disciplinary exchange and both a common language and trust. Institutional change and its effects on the micro level, on citizens and the employees in local one-stop shops, mark the focus of the third article, bridging the gap between reforms and the administrative reality on the local level. The fourth article looks at the citizens’ perspective on digital government reforms, their expectations, use and satisfaction. In this vein, this thesis provides a detailed account of the importance of understanding the digital divide and therefore the necessity of reaching out to different recipients of digital government reforms. I draw conclusions from the factors identified as causes for Germany’s shortcomings for other federal systems where feasible and derive reform potential therefrom. This allows to gain a new perspective on digital government and its coordination challenges in federal contexts.