One-stop Government Research Articles

Digital government and corporate leverage: Evidence from China

Corporate leverage is an indicator of economic health, and this topic has attracted a great deal of attention since the international financial crisis of 2008. This paper constructs a model of enterprise decision-making under a digital government and theoretically analyzes how the government digital reform impacts corporate leverage and the mechanism of this impact. Theoretical analysis has previously shown that digital reforms by governments help to ease the information asymmetry between banks and enterprises, which in turn affects the actual economic activities of enterprises. Based on these findings, the “one-stop government service” natural experiment used in this paper and the empirical analysis using a multiphase difference-in-differences (DID) method show that digital government can inhibit the short-term debt financing of enterprises while improving their long-term debt financing. This study further finds that the digital government can improve the level of long-term debt for long-term use, thereby reducing corporate leverage. By enriching the theoretical and empirical research on government digital reform, this paper contributes significant theoretical and practical insights to the literature on corporate leverage in the context of government factors.

Research on the influencing factors of the citizen adoption process of China's national integrated online government service platform

PurposeThe Chinese government hopes to achieve the goal of benefiting citizens by building a National Integrated Online Government Service Platform (NIOGSP). However, citizens' low adoption of the platform makes it difficult for the government to achieve its goal. Research on the influencing factors of citizen adoption of NIOGSP can help the government fully understand the concerns and needs of its citizens and take targeted measures to increase citizen adoption.Design/methodology/approachFirst, this research builds a model of the citizen adoption process, including attention, retention and motivation, based on an observational learning model. Next, research variables are determined based on social cognitive theory, literature review and real-world needs. Finally, based on the questionnaire survey and structural equation model, the influencing factors of each stage of the citizen adoption process model are studied and the relationship between the three stages of the model is verified.FindingsResults show that perceived usefulness (PU) and self-efficacy (SE) positively affect attention. SE positively affects retention, while perceived privacy (PP) negatively affects retention. PU, social influence, PP and anxiety positively affect motivation.Originality/valueThe conclusion of this study can provide reference for governments in various countries to establish and improve online one-stop government. In addition, this study verifies the citizen adoption process model and finds that there is no obvious causal relationship between attention and retention, but both have positive effects on motivation.

Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc., in China: Transferring Knowledge (a)

While much of the work on outsourcing to China focuses on the low cost and its tradeoffs, this case examines in depth the interaction between human capital and a firm's cost and capabilities. Suitable for the MBA, EMBA, GEMBA, and executive education programs, the case presents a manufacturer of semiconductor assembly equipment looking to achieve growth in its wire bonding tools segment—in particular, capillaries and dicing saw blades—through geographic expansion. At the time, it manufactured capillaries in Yokneam, Israel, and blades in Santa Clara, California. In the A case the team is charged with designing and opening a new facility in Suzhou, China. Expanding operations to China meant cost savings, and it was where K&S's market had expanded. But it wasn't clear whether it made sense to move the capillary process, the dicing blade manufacturing, or both. And if K&S did move to China, should it keep the Israeli- and American-based factories open as well? And once those decisions were made, what exactly would the knowledge transfer look like? Excerpt UVA-OM-1410 Rev. Mar. 28, 2013 KULICKE AND SOFFA INDUSTRIES, INC., IN CHINA: TRANSFERRING KNOWLEDGE (A) Shay Torton, a general manager for Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc. (K&S), and Ilan Gilboa and Shlomit Drori, from K&S Israel, were members of a committee put together in early 2002 to manage the firm's expansion processes. K&S, a manufacturer of semiconductor assembly equipment, was looking to achieve growth in its wire bonding tools segment—in particular, capillaries and dicing saw blades—through geographic expansion and entry into new markets. At the time, it manufactured capillaries in Yokneam, Israel and blades in Santa Clara, California. The team, mindful of the substantial expense involved, had been charged with designing and opening a new facility in Suzhou, China. The strategic shifting of manufacturing to more cost-effective areas had been well researched (see Exhibit 1 for an economic comparison of different regions). The city of Suzhou was chosen for several reasons: its proximity to several K&S customers and to Shanghai, relative low cost of living, ability to manufacture six days a week, abundant worker supply, and low labor costs. An 80 square-kilometer industrial park offered a reliable infrastructure, plentiful public transportation, and an easy one-stop government approval service. Much conversation at the senior executive-level was about the possibility of transferring both capillary and dicing blade production to Suzhou. . . .

Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc., in China: Transferring Knowledge (a) and (B) (Abridged)

This version condenses the two parts of “K&S Industries Inc. in China: Transferring Knowledge (A) and (B)” into a single-use case. Suitable for the MBA, EMBA, GEMBA, and executive education programs, the case presents a manufacturer of semiconductor assembly equipment looking to achieve growth in its wire bonding tools segment—in particular, capillaries and dicing saw blades—through geographic expansion. At the time, it manufactured capillaries in Yokneam, Israel, and blades in Santa Clara, California. While much of the work on outsourcing to China focuses on the low cost and its tradeoffs, this case examines in depth the interaction between human capital and a firm's cost and capabilities.The expansion committee team is charged with designing and opening a new facility in Suzhou, China. Expanding operations to China meant cost savings, and it was where K&S's market had expanded. But it wasn't clear whether it made sense to move the capillary process, the dicing blade manufacturing, or both. And if K&S did move to China, it would keep the Israeli-based factory open but close the American-based. If both were moved, what order would make sense given that one existing factory would be closed down and the other kept open? And once those decisions were made, what exactly would the knowledge transfer look like? Excerpt UVA-OM-1500 Rev. Jul. 10, 2014 KULICKE AND SOFFA INDUSTRIES, INC., IN CHINA: TRANSFERRING KNOWLEDGE (A) AND (B) (ABRIDGED) Shay Torton, a general manager for Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc. (K&S), and Ilan Gilboa and Shlomit Drori, from K&S Israel, were members of a committee put together in early 2002 to manage the firm's expansion processes. K&S, a manufacturer of semiconductor assembly equipment, was looking to achieve growth in its wire bonding tools segment—in particular, capillaries and dicing saw blades—through geographic expansion and entry into new markets. At the time, it manufactured capillaries in Yokneam, Israel, and blades in Santa Clara, California. The team, mindful of the substantial expense involved, had been charged with designing and opening a new facility in Suzhou, China. The strategic shifting of manufacturing to more cost-effective areas had been well researched (see Exhibit 1 for an economic comparison of different regions). The city of Suzhou was chosen for several reasons: its proximity to several K&S customers and to Shanghai, relative low cost of living, ability to manufacture six days a week, abundant worker supply, and low labor costs. An 80 km2 industrial park offered a reliable infrastructure, plentiful public transportation, and an easy one-stop government approval service. Much conversation at the senior executive level was about the possibility of transferring both capillary and dicing blade production to Suzhou. . . .

Evolution of government portals in India: mapping over stage models

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the e-government stage models that have been developed in last one decade give a true indication of e-government growth in a developing country like India. Design/methodology/approach – This exploratory study was conducted through a survey questionnaire from 300 portals of government departments and public sector undertakings (PSUs) in India. Findings – Results show that on e-government stage model; only 28 per cent of the surveyed government department have achieved the transactional stage whereas 58 per cent have reached at least a minimum level of vertical integration. On the other hand, 74 per cent PSUs are at transactional level and 69 per cent have achieved at least a minimum level of vertical integration. Practical implications – For achieving a one-stop government portal, integration stage can be achieved before the transaction level. Reason behind this being nature and requirement of the portal. There are fundamental differences in social and political factors of various countries that demand more customized local models. Originality/value – This study is the first to examine the evolution of government portals in India. The results lead to a number of insights such as there are few government portals that do not follow the proposed stage models and achieve the integration level before attaining the transaction level.

Post-NPM Governance Reforms: Insights and Implications

Since the 1980s, public administration in the ‘developed’ West was under the fascination of ‘neo-liberalism’ with its emphasis on the crucial role of the ‘Market’ as against the ‘State’ as the key control apparatus of society and economy. What emerged as the ‘governance’ philosophy came to be called the ‘New Public Management (NPM) with two theories of administrative reform underlying it, the public choice theory and neo-taylorism. The NPM as a model for public sector reforms stretched rapidly into many countries. However, later on, various concepts emerged in reaction to NPM contradictions. This paper is an attempt to recapitulate and reflect on the post-NPM governance concepts and reforms such as Joined-up Government (JUG), Whole-of-Government (WG), One-stop Government and Government 2.0 that have special bearing upon governance in general and e-Governance in particular.

An investigation of national policies on transformational government (t-Gov) in Europe

Electronic government (e-government) is high in the agenda of a large number of countries worldwide for more than a decade now. Recently, the concept of transformational government (t-Gov) was introduced to determine the stage of e-government evolution characterised by the radical restructuring of the public sector towards efficiency. The aim of this paper is to understand t-Gov and investigate the level of t-Gov sophistication in Europe by assessing the e-government policies of 18 European Union member states. We first review the relevant literature, to conclude t-Gov embraces nine defining elements namely user-centric services, joined-up government, one-stop government, multichannel service delivery, flexibility, efficiency, increased human skills, organisational change and change of attitude of public servants, and value innovation. We also review e-government assessment frameworks that could be used to evaluate t-Gov sophistication. We thereafter critically examine and compare the degree of t-Gov sophistication of 18 European Union member states. Here, the results suggest that most strategies partially only exploit the full potential of t-Gov. For example, all strategies address user-centric services and most address efficiency, breaking out of silos, and joined-up government. On the other hand, however, no policy addresses constant value creation and value innovation and only a few address flexibility and organisational change and change of attitude. Using a published e-government assessment framework we finally compare progress across Europe with regards to t-Gov.

One-Stop Government Portals

E-government is seen as a promising approach for governments to improve their service towards citizens and become more cost-efficient in service delivery. This is often combined with one-stop government, which is a citizen-oriented approach stressing integrated provision of services from multiple departments via a single access point, the one-stop government portal. While the portal concept is gaining prominence in practice, there is little known about its status in academic literature. This hinders academics in building an accumulated body of knowledge around the concept and makes it hard for practitioners to access relevant academic insights on the topic. The objective of this study is to identify and understand the key themes of the one-stop government portal concept in academic, e-government research. A holistic analysis is provided by addressing different viewpoints: social-political, legal, organizational, user, security, service, data and information, and technical. As an overall finding, the authors conclude that there are two different approaches: a more pragmatic approach focuses on quick wins in particular related to usability and navigation and a more ambitious, transformational approach having far reaching social-political, legal, and organizational implications.

An inter-organisational perspective on challenges in one-stop government

Fragmentation and isolated development are main problems that hinder successful e-government. This paper has an inter-organisational perspective on challenges in one-stop government. We present a conceptual framework that characterises an inter-organisational relationship and its dimensions. The conceptual framework is used for analysing data from an inter-organisational one-stop government project. When applying the framework we focus on some interesting issues and explain some of the challenges that our interviewees identified. By addressing these inter-organisational aspects we reached further understanding of the problems associated with this case, which can provide added value to discussions of e-government challenges, barriers and problems in general.

Understanding and scoping life events

The concept of 'life events' has been recently introduced as a straightforward metaphor to map citizens' needs to public services in order to achieve one-stop government. However, despite its widespread adoption, there is currently no systematic work towards understanding and defining life events. The aim of this paper is to create a common understanding of the life-event concept. First, it investigates the life-event concept and proposes a suitable definition. Second, it proposes a preliminary framework for modelling life events based on a simple, systemic model for public services. This framework is validated by means of an example. Finally, available options for implementing a life-event portal are outlined while ideas for the further direction of this work are suggested.

The user at the centre of the development of one-stop government

Policy makers initiated different e-government strategies which were supposed to be a perfect answer to a developing ICT environment and to create new channels through which government and citizens could interact. However, this approach has come under criticism. Recently, there is a paradigm shift towards new concepts such as "user-centred e-government" and "multichannel government". In our research we focus on the needs and expectations of citizens towards electronic public services. A successful implementation of one-stop government requires a threefold approach: profound understanding of preferences of different types of users towards different channels and different kinds of public services.

Gläserne Bürger - transparenter Staat? Risiken und Reformpotenziale des öffentlichen Sektors in der Wissensgesellschaft

The way the public sector handles data and knowledge is of vital importance for modern administration and (e)Democracy – especially since eGovernment involves data collection, processing and transmission, the exchange of information and even sensitive political convictions especially with eParticipation and eVoting. Nowadays networked digital registers and joint information systems are set up in all public institutions and make great demands on data protection. While there are complex regulations in Austria like Sector-specific Personal Identifiers, the challenge lies in making them reconcilable with customer friendly one-stop government and inter-authority assistance. It is imperative to embody continuous privacy monitoring by independent control entities, effective legal protection and process traceability. Technically speaking eGovernment enables each individual to access his or her own data – the state has to provide a regulatory framework, so citizens can exercise their informational right of self-determination regarding the use of their private data. Freedom of information which is guaranteed by the constitutional law, potentially promotes trust, consequently civil society and citizens’ participation. The legal obligation to supply online information at an early stage – as presently just determined in isolated cases, mainly regarding environmental protection and regional planning – strengthens checks and balances in both the executive and legislative powers, discursive opinion-forming and decision-making, as a result the legitimacy and in the long run the acceptance of decisions. This vision of a forward-looking activating eState requires the interaction of law, technology and creation of awareness for citizens and ‘public servants’. At present, innovative eGovernment projects would be an excellent opportunity to adjust new ICT systems to a modern information law that combines privacy and transparency.

Developing a one-stop government data model

In previous research work we defined a conceptual model of a one-stop public administration and we created a prototype to illustrate it. In parallel we participate in a European research project that is developing an integrated e-government platform. In order to do so the project consortium created a governmental markup language (GovML) that describes public services and life events in XML format. It also defined metadata schemas in RDF for searching, locating and retrieving governmental digital resources. We decided to integrate our personal research and the results of the consortium work in order to develop a data model for One-Stop Government. In this paper we explain how we extended our conceptual model to support GovML and RDF, and how we were able to model administrative services at the data and meta-data levels.

One-Stop Government in agriculture

The paper provides some of the interim results of the Fifth Framework PRISMA project dealing with the impact ICT on government and citizen services in Europe. In the paper, the concept of one-stop government is described, the current state of the adoption of ICT both in Europe and the Czech Republic is briefly outlined and recommendations for the Czech agriculture derived from the major trends within the development of the use of ICT for better citizen services as well as for enhancing competitiveness of rural businesses.

Electronic Service Delivery – A driver of public sector modernisation

Efforts to improve the delivery of public services with ICT are older than the recent explosion of the Internet and the emergence of the concept of e-Government. Innovative Electronic Service Delivery could well become a driver of the modernisation process in government. The opportunities are still clouded by a lack of clear visions and of generic reference models of Electronic Service Delivery. Also, instead of taking a joined-up approach to citizen services, parochial approaches still prevail in many countries. This contribution deals first with some of the early efforts to create one-stop government services. From there a reference model for electronic services is sketched. It identifies several phases of a typical citizen-government transaction, and it provides a checklist of the various requirements for Electronic Services Delivery. It furthermore comprises an organisational architecture for citizens' services which enables single-window access to all administrative services via targeted front offices.

An Architecture for Integrated Public Service Delivery based on Life-events

One-stop government refers to the integration of public services from a citizen's - or customer of public services - point of view. In this paper, a life-oriented framework to realizing one-stop government is presented. The proposed framework consists of three layers: the front-office that includes a portal where services are provided in the concept of life events ; the back-office where core processes are performed; and the mid-office where life events are correlated with core processes. The resulting architecture enables each public authority to define authority-related life events by integrating its own public services and to provide these life events via its portal. It also enables a central authority to define life events by integrating core processes performed at different public authorities and provide these life events via a central portal.

Integrated Service Modelling for Online One-stop Government

One-stop government is an important development within the current initiatives of e-government. It refers to a single point of access to electronic services and information offered by different public authorities. Online one-stop government requires all public authorities to be interconnected and that the customer (citizen, private enterprise or other public administration) is able to access public services by a single point even if these services are provided by different public authorities or private service providers. It further requires that the customer be able to access these services in a well-structured and understandable manner meeting his/her perspectives and needs. Developing a national one-stop government portal calls for an integrated service modelling that requires a holistic reference framework. This paper discusses the general requirements for one-stop government. It then introduces the requirements for providing electronic public services in a one-stop platform. This is followed by an inv...

A European perspective towards online one-stop government: the eGOV project

e-Government reflects current visions for public administrations towards modernization and reorganization. Therefore, online one-stop Government targets the improvement of customer-to-government interactions. It provides electronic public services of distinct public authorities to citizens and businesses in a customer-oriented manner from a single point of access. The customer-oriented approach towards online one-stop Government further offers online public services 24 h a day from anywhere in an easy-to-use and simple way according to the customers’ needs. Structuring public services around citizens’ life-episodes and businesses’ specific situations represents such an approach. To speed up innovative developments in the field, the European Commission has provided substantial funding. eGOV is such an EC-funded project that aims at developing an integrated platform for realizing online one-stop Government. Key innovations of eGOV are: a global access point to enter different governmental services and information at distinct levels of public administration and with different devices; and the development of online one-stop Government process models. To develop an integrated one-stop Government platform, different requirements have to be fulfilled. Here, an holistic development approach provides an important guideline to address different aspects impacting advanced one-stop Government systems. With such an holistic approach, despite the technical developments, integrated process models for online public service delivery are put forward. Furthermore, the legal aspects framing one-stop Government developments and the social impacts of such developments for different user groups are investigated.