5. Conclusions
Walter Castelnovo
The productivity paradox( and the e‐Government paradox as well) roughly amounts to the observation that there is little or no relationship between ICT investments and productivity. According to one of the explanations discussed in the literature, the productivity paradox arises because of a mismeasurement of inputs and outputs due to the fact that it is not always clear what should be measured in evaluating the possible benefits determined by ICT investments. The traditional efficiency based approaches to e‐Government, largely influenced by the principles of New Public Management, tend to measure the effects of e‐Government initiatives simply in terms of increased efficiency and users / customer satisfaction, thus failing to account for other relevant aspects of the public sector value system.
In this paper I argued for an approach to the evaluation of e‐Government initiatives based on the concept of public value that provides a better way of thinking about the goals and performance of public administration. Under such an approach, the evaluation of an e‐Government initiative is based on its capacity of generating value for citizens as they play different, and possibly conflicting, stakeholder roles. By considering different aspects of public value and the way in which they can impact on different stakeholder groups, a public value based approach allows a better understanding of the possible impacts of e‐Government on society, especially those impacts that cannot be measured directly in terms of efficiency and user satisfaction.
Moreover, being based on a whole‐of‐system perspective, the public value approach can help to better understand another possible explanation of the productivity paradox( and the e‐Government paradox as well), namely the one referred to as the“ redistribution argument”( Brynjolfsson 1993). This argument suggests that little or no benefit can be seen from ICT investments at the aggregate level because those investing in the technology benefit privately but at the expense of others.
The approach to evaluation described in this paper requires that a government initiative is evaluated with respect to its capacity to deliver value to all the stakeholders involved, not only to those directly impacted by it. By assuming such an approach, the paradox simply does not arise. On the one hand, if the evaluation shows that an e‐Government initiative delivered value only to some stakeholders, possibly at the expenses of others, this can be ascribed either to a deliberate political choice or to the inability of the decision makers to foresee unexpected consequences of that initiative. In either case there is nothing paradoxical. On the other hand, if the evaluation shows that an e‐Government initiative did not deliver any value to the stakeholders, this simply means that the initiative failed to achieve the expected results. Also in this case there is nothing paradoxical.
References
Abhijit, J.( 2003).“ Performance Paradox: Information Technology Investments and Administrative Performance in the Case of the 50 U. S. State Governments”. In Proceedings of the Twenty Fourth International Conference on Information Systems, pp. 389‐400.
Benington, J.( 2011)“ From Private Choice to Public Value?”, in Benington, J. and Moore, M.( eds.). Public Value: Theory and practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 31‐51 Benington, J. and Moore, M.( 2011). Public Value: Theory and practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Bertot, J. C. and Jaeger, P. T.( 2008).“ The e‐Government paradox: better customer service doesn’ t necessarily cost less”.
Government Information Quarterly, 25( 2), pp. 149 – 154.
Blaug, R., Horner, L. and Lekhi, R.( 2006). Public value, citizen expectations and user commitment, A literature review. London: The Work Foundation, [ online ], http:// www. theworkfoundation. com / assets / docs / publications / 116 _ citizen _ lit _ review. pdf
Bonina, C. M. and Cordella, A.( 2009).“ Public Sector Reforms and the Notion of ' Public Value ': Implications for eGovernment Deployment”, AMCIS 2009 Proceedings, [ online ], http:// aisel. aisnet. org / amcis2009 / 15
Bresnahan, T. F., Brynjolfsson, E. and Hitt, L. M.( 2002).“ Information Technology, Workplace Organization, and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm‐Level Evidence”. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117( 1), pp. 39‐376
Brewer, B.( 2007).“ Citizen or customer? Complaints handling in the public sector”, International Review of Administrative
Sciences, 73. pp. 549‐556 Brynjolfsson, E.( 1993).“ The Productivity Paradox of Information Technology”, Communications of the ACM, 36, pp. 67 – 77 Brynjolfsson, E. and Hitt, L.( 1998).“ Beyond the Productivity Paradox: Computers are the Catalyst for Bigger Changes”.
Communications of the ACM, 41, 49‐55 Castelnovo, W.( 2010).“ Is There an E‐Government Paradox?”, in O’ Donnell, D.( ed.), Proceedings of the 10th European
Conference on eGovernment, Academic Publishing Limited, Reading, UK, pp. 99‐106
100