Mariagrazia Fugini, Piercarlo Maggiolini and Ramon Salvador Valles
Conversely, some projects find no easy classification, such as projects of sustainability for requalification of urban areas. In such a context, the exploitation of a general term like e‐Government allows overcoming these classification issues.
The challenge of our framework consists in classifying all the sub‐concepts and the related ICT applications included in the current acknowledged and still confused term of e‐Government, as also discussed in its basic principles in( Orlikowski 2001, Lee 2010). The aim of the paper is to explore how ICT tools for e‐Government activities may introduce divergences with respect to traditional activity goals( e. g., the issue of“ inclusion of individuals” arising when ICT‐based services are introduced). The paper refers to services to employment in the job marketplace, not only because we have experienced such projects directly( Fugini 2009, Cesarini 2008), but mainly because these services are an exemplary case since they include all the sub‐concepts of e‐Government( Boswell 2012). By proposing a unifying framework, the paper wants to achieve a definition of effective e‐ Government functions. The use of ICT could give the impression of increased efficiency and effectiveness of government functions. However, this is not true: are we witnessing an excusable term misunderstanding( e‐ Government could be simply substituted with e‐Administration) or even an ideological operation? Such operation should transform the citizens in“ consumers”, and hence the whole politics in a consumer process based on the choice – through the vote – by the individual of those who are able to offer the most interesting services. This would cancel the idea – dated back to Aristotle but still valid in our opinion – that the individual wellness is first of all the result of the wellness of the“ city”.
Then, considering services to employment, and discussing why these services are representative of our hypotheses, we analyze services supporting the job marketplace. Basing on our experience within EU and National projects for employment services, we refer here to the Catalan services to employment on which we worked in the SEEMP European project( Fugini 2009). Considering the Catalan system( Servei d’ Ocupació de Catalunya 2012), we discuss what the improvement of functions should be towards a true e‐Government system. We observe that the employment market is paradigmatic for a full view of e‐Government. We draw some generally‐valid conclusions about the applicability of our framework to federated ISs as a necessary( although not sufficient) condition to significantly improve e‐Government. We focus on building a framework for classifying e‐Government projects according to several dimensions like e‐Government activities, stakeholder relationship types and IS typologies. The framework can improve the understanding of e‐Government scenarios and of e‐Government project design, reengineering and evaluation activities.
2. Classifications of PA functions, information systems and social systems
Public administrative functions can be classified as follows:
• Internal administration, for example: human resources and financial management.
• Service delivery, for any administered entity( citizens and socio‐economic agents), such as water services, street cleaning and garbage removal services, healthcare and education, justice administration, public security, and so on.
• In the field of the job marketplace, we have services of professional education and, most important, examples of information services able to support job offer / request matching and search for employment in general.
• Government( of collectivity and of territory), through tools ranging from urban plans to laws and policies regulating the job marketplace.
On the basis of such classification, we specify the typologies of PA IS.
2.1 Classification of PA information systems The trend in IS development moves according to two directions: Administrative and Statistical IS s.
Administrative IS. These execute well‐defined and precise functions of PA management. The systems are fed by documents, as sub‐products of administrative acts, which represent the Information Sources. These systems clearly define who uses information and the reasons why such information is used, evidencing the reasons for creating information. Population registries, civil status registries, land registries, car registries, or company registry at the Chambers of Commerce are examples of Administrative IS. Although it can sound odd, we include
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