Hoorcollege 1
Governance
- A change in the role of the state from intervention and control to steering and coordination
Digitalisation
- Digital transformation that includes a number of interconnected and evolving technologies
Digital affordances
- Faster + cheaper
- Programable using code
- More accommodating to a different range of types of data and technologies being incorporated into
the same network -> Internet of Things
- Instantaneous communications possible through multiple platforms
- Digital code is traceable and replicable
Substitute
- The technology joins the existing technologies as a second option, normally displacing it partially
Replace
- The technology rivals existing technologies to the extent that the rivals disappear
Transform
- The technology offers something totally new that wasn’t available before
Influence of digitalisation on governance
1) Adoption (Homburg)
2) Evolution (West)
3) Impacts (Gil-Garcia et al.)
They all think that technologies and social dimensions should be together (samenwerking tussen
mens en computer)
HOMBURG -> Adoption
- Why would governance adopt technologies in the first place?
- Advocates a ‘social shaping of technology-perspective’
- Factors that drive adoption
- Citizen, stakeholder pressure, organisational search and interaction between the two
- Framing where ideas get embedded
- Social integration where staff and public accept the changes
Factors that influence adoption at meso level
1) Pressure on adoption decisions
- Perceived expectations of citizens
- Benchmarks
2) Organizational search
- Municipalities start scanning their environments for relevant knowledge and experiences
3) Activation: moderation between pressure and organizational search
4) Framing
5) Social integration
It views development of technology as a process that occurs independently, inevitably and
autonomously, separate from politics, economics and power.
,E-governance
1) Technological opportunity and technological developments (thus taking into account technological
determinism)
2) Technologies being inscribed by policy ideas, values, rules and assumptions
3) How, at a more operational level, enthusiasms held by specific stakeholders fuel ICT investments
Fases van gebruik elektronica tussen overheid en samenleving
1) Emerging presence
2) Enhanced presence
3) Interaction
4) Transactions
5) Intergrated service delivery
6) Personalized service delivery
WEST -> Evolution
- As human society gets more and more technological and the impacts are only going to be magnified
- We know, for example, what impact the printing press and television had
- Set standards about what technology should be able to deliver for us if we are using it correctly
- Helpful because they give us a way to prepare and they also provide a kind of benchmark to see
how we are performing against expectations
3 unanswered questions about digitalisaton
1) How much are the internet and other digital delivery systems transforming the public sector?
2) What determines the speed and breadth of e-government adoption?
3) What are the consequences of digital technology for public sector performance, the political
process and democracy?
Overheid gebruikt internet -> e-governance
- Biggest selling point for e-governance is convenience
Reasons why political change tends to be small in scale and gradual
1) Government actions are mediated by a range of factors: institutional arrangements, budget
scarcity, group conflict, cultural norms, and prevailing patterns of social and political behavior, each
of which restricts the ability of technology to transform society and politics
2) Group conflicts over resources
Stages of e-government
1) The bill-board stage: websites are used to display information. Reports and publications are posted
and databases are offered for viewing by visitors.
2) The partial service-delivery stage: government agencies are slow to incorporate truly interactive
features onto their websites.
3) The portal stage with fully executable and integrated service delivery: fully executable and
integrated online services. Offers considerable convenience to visitors. It is characterized more by a
service-delivery mentality than by a vision of transforming democracy
4) Interactive democracy with public outreach and accountability-enhancing features: government
websites move to a goal of systemwide political transformation.
GIL-GARCIA ET AL. -> Impacts
- What do technologies actually do?
- Ensemble view: technologies aren’t just fixed -> they are ensemble with humans
, Different deterministic approaches
1) Technological determinism
- Can bring about powerful change
- Assumes that technology has its own agency
- It is either a single independent variable or the main variable in a causal mix
2) Social determinism
- Focuses on the limiting factors of technologies
- Human action is always what creates social change
- Technology is itself a social product
Technological determinism
- Human action is caused by technology, culture or other structural factors
- Materialism
- Linear cause-effect between technology and one or more social entities or human capabilities
- Form of reductionism, reducing the complexity to explain social processes to a single independent
variable
Voluntarism
- Human action is the product of individuals having freewill to decide and govern themselves and
thereby social structures
- Idealism
Social determinism
- An analytical category allowing distinctions and classifications according to the privilege given to a
particular causality and its directionality
- A reaction to the strong technological determinism of the late nineteenth century and in much of
the twentieth -> represents a causal link going in the opposite direction of technological determinism
(technology has no power by itself that can generate a change -> human action is always what build
implements and uses technology and thereby what produces social change)
Types of technological determinism KATZ
1) The basic: strong determinism -> technological innovations were generating cultural and
institutional changes and machines make history and impose patterns that guide social
relations
2) The mystic: humanity renounces spiritual values, with utilitarian consequences: human
beings surrender themselves to the dictatorship of the artifacts in exchange for the benefits
of modernity
3) The postindustrial: new technological items: ICTs
Governance
- A change in the role of the state from intervention and control to steering and coordination
Digitalisation
- Digital transformation that includes a number of interconnected and evolving technologies
Digital affordances
- Faster + cheaper
- Programable using code
- More accommodating to a different range of types of data and technologies being incorporated into
the same network -> Internet of Things
- Instantaneous communications possible through multiple platforms
- Digital code is traceable and replicable
Substitute
- The technology joins the existing technologies as a second option, normally displacing it partially
Replace
- The technology rivals existing technologies to the extent that the rivals disappear
Transform
- The technology offers something totally new that wasn’t available before
Influence of digitalisation on governance
1) Adoption (Homburg)
2) Evolution (West)
3) Impacts (Gil-Garcia et al.)
They all think that technologies and social dimensions should be together (samenwerking tussen
mens en computer)
HOMBURG -> Adoption
- Why would governance adopt technologies in the first place?
- Advocates a ‘social shaping of technology-perspective’
- Factors that drive adoption
- Citizen, stakeholder pressure, organisational search and interaction between the two
- Framing where ideas get embedded
- Social integration where staff and public accept the changes
Factors that influence adoption at meso level
1) Pressure on adoption decisions
- Perceived expectations of citizens
- Benchmarks
2) Organizational search
- Municipalities start scanning their environments for relevant knowledge and experiences
3) Activation: moderation between pressure and organizational search
4) Framing
5) Social integration
It views development of technology as a process that occurs independently, inevitably and
autonomously, separate from politics, economics and power.
,E-governance
1) Technological opportunity and technological developments (thus taking into account technological
determinism)
2) Technologies being inscribed by policy ideas, values, rules and assumptions
3) How, at a more operational level, enthusiasms held by specific stakeholders fuel ICT investments
Fases van gebruik elektronica tussen overheid en samenleving
1) Emerging presence
2) Enhanced presence
3) Interaction
4) Transactions
5) Intergrated service delivery
6) Personalized service delivery
WEST -> Evolution
- As human society gets more and more technological and the impacts are only going to be magnified
- We know, for example, what impact the printing press and television had
- Set standards about what technology should be able to deliver for us if we are using it correctly
- Helpful because they give us a way to prepare and they also provide a kind of benchmark to see
how we are performing against expectations
3 unanswered questions about digitalisaton
1) How much are the internet and other digital delivery systems transforming the public sector?
2) What determines the speed and breadth of e-government adoption?
3) What are the consequences of digital technology for public sector performance, the political
process and democracy?
Overheid gebruikt internet -> e-governance
- Biggest selling point for e-governance is convenience
Reasons why political change tends to be small in scale and gradual
1) Government actions are mediated by a range of factors: institutional arrangements, budget
scarcity, group conflict, cultural norms, and prevailing patterns of social and political behavior, each
of which restricts the ability of technology to transform society and politics
2) Group conflicts over resources
Stages of e-government
1) The bill-board stage: websites are used to display information. Reports and publications are posted
and databases are offered for viewing by visitors.
2) The partial service-delivery stage: government agencies are slow to incorporate truly interactive
features onto their websites.
3) The portal stage with fully executable and integrated service delivery: fully executable and
integrated online services. Offers considerable convenience to visitors. It is characterized more by a
service-delivery mentality than by a vision of transforming democracy
4) Interactive democracy with public outreach and accountability-enhancing features: government
websites move to a goal of systemwide political transformation.
GIL-GARCIA ET AL. -> Impacts
- What do technologies actually do?
- Ensemble view: technologies aren’t just fixed -> they are ensemble with humans
, Different deterministic approaches
1) Technological determinism
- Can bring about powerful change
- Assumes that technology has its own agency
- It is either a single independent variable or the main variable in a causal mix
2) Social determinism
- Focuses on the limiting factors of technologies
- Human action is always what creates social change
- Technology is itself a social product
Technological determinism
- Human action is caused by technology, culture or other structural factors
- Materialism
- Linear cause-effect between technology and one or more social entities or human capabilities
- Form of reductionism, reducing the complexity to explain social processes to a single independent
variable
Voluntarism
- Human action is the product of individuals having freewill to decide and govern themselves and
thereby social structures
- Idealism
Social determinism
- An analytical category allowing distinctions and classifications according to the privilege given to a
particular causality and its directionality
- A reaction to the strong technological determinism of the late nineteenth century and in much of
the twentieth -> represents a causal link going in the opposite direction of technological determinism
(technology has no power by itself that can generate a change -> human action is always what build
implements and uses technology and thereby what produces social change)
Types of technological determinism KATZ
1) The basic: strong determinism -> technological innovations were generating cultural and
institutional changes and machines make history and impose patterns that guide social
relations
2) The mystic: humanity renounces spiritual values, with utilitarian consequences: human
beings surrender themselves to the dictatorship of the artifacts in exchange for the benefits
of modernity
3) The postindustrial: new technological items: ICTs
