A Stakeholder Based Approach to Public Value
Walter Castelnovo Department of Theoretical and Applied Science, University of Insubria, Varese, Italy walter. castelnovo @ uninsubria. it
Abstract: Despite the widely shared expectation concerning the positive impacts that e‐Government can have on government and society as a whole, the evaluation of the e‐Government initiatives so far implemented worldwide has provided very little evidence for it. This led some scholars to question whether e‐Government can determine positive effects on government and society at all. E‐Government initiatives implemented during the past two decades have been largely influenced by the principles of New Public Management and aimed at two main goals: government efficiency and citizens’ satisfaction. However, whereas the private sector value system is mainly based on efficiency, profitably and customer satisfaction, the public sector is characterized by a more complex value system that also includes transparency and accountability, equal treatment of all service recipients, democratic participation, citizens’ well‐being, empowerment of individuals and communities. The traditional efficiency based approaches to e‐Government, typical of the New Public Management paradigm, cannot account for all these values and this helps explaining, at least partly, why e‐Government appears to have so far had only a limited impact on society. This leads to consider a different approach to e‐Government based on the concept of public value that appears to better account for the public sector value system. In the paper I discuss a public value based approach to the evaluation of e‐Government initiatives based on their capacity of generating value for citizens as they play( even simultaneously) different, and possibly conflicting, stakeholder roles. After a brief discussion of the so‐called e‐Government paradox in section 1, in section 2 I consider the reasons that support a public value approach to e‐Government. In section 3 a taxonomy of stakeholders is considered that can be used to evaluate the impacts of an e‐Government initiative. Finally, in section 4 I show how the public value based approach can be used to evaluate an e‐Government initiative.
Keywords: e‐Government, e‐Government paradox, public value, evaluation, stakeholders
1. Introduction
Despite considerable investments in e‐Government initiatives made worldwide during the past years, whether e‐Government succeeded in achieving the expected benefits in terms of increased efficiency, effectiveness and quality in the delivery of government services and better governance is still under discussion. This led some scholars to explicitly point to a sort of“ e‐Government paradox”( Bertot & Jaeger 2008; Foley & Alfonso 2009; Castelnovo 2010, 2013; Savoldelli, Codagnone and Misuraca 2012) that under many respects can be considered as similar to the“ productivity paradox”( Brynjolfsson 1993; Brynjolfsson & Hitt 1998; Bresnahan, Brynjolfsson and Hitt 2002) and the“ performance paradox”( Abhijit 2003).
In its more simplified form the productivity paradox amounts to the observation that there is no relationship between ICT investments and productivity. Similarly, in its more simplified form the e‐Government paradox amounts to the observation that there is no relationship between investments in e‐Government initiatives and the improvement of Public Administration. This also includes the citizens’ satisfaction toward the services delivered by Public Administration that does not seem to rise in line with objective service improvements( what is known as the“ delivery paradox” discussed at length by Blaug, Horner and Lekhi( 2006) and by Horner and Hutton( 2011)).
During the years an extensive literature has been devoted to the productivity paradox, and some explanations of it have been suggested( Brynjolfsson 1993; Gunnarsson, Mellander and Savvidou 2004; Foley & Alfonso 2009). There are three main arguments that have been used to explain the productivity paradox:
• Lags due to learning and adjustment: it takes time before the productivity‐enhancing effects of a new technology can be realized.
• Mismanagement of information and technology: little or no account has been taken of the complementarity between ICT and changes in work practices and skill upgrading.
• Mismeasurement of inputs and outputs: it is not always clear what should be measured in evaluating the possible benefits determined by ICT investments.
In this paper I will consider the third argument above and I will discuss whether it can be used to explain the e‐ Government paradox as well. More specifically, I will argue that the evaluation of e‐Government initiatives based on the traditional evaluation techniques usually applied in the private sector does not account properly
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