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Access our papers
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Our research team has produced a range of academic papers and conference presentations on the emerging issues of e-government and how we develop our theoretical and empirical understanding of these issues.
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Latest papers
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Understanding Governments and Citizens On-line: Learning from E-commerce
by Helen Margetts (Oxford) and Tobias Escher (Oxford).
This paper has been presented at the
Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA)
in Chicago (30. August - 2. September 2007).
Economists studying commercial activity on-line argue that the most significant difference between on-line and off-line commerce is the ability of firms to ‘know who your customers are and treat them differently’ (Vulkan 2006), customizing prices and offerings. This difference comes from the huge amount of data generated by on-line transactions, in terms of historical records, usage statistics and real-time data. Yet in political life, governmental organizations and political parties have been far slower to use such data to improve their service offerings and devise innovative policy interventions, such as differential pricing and personalized information provision. Likewise, political scientists lag behind economists in terms of analyzing new on-line relationships between citizens and political organizations, for example through the use of experiments and modelling of transaction data. This paper investigates ways in which political scientists might also further understanding of on-line political behaviour, using analysis of webmetric data and the results of laboratory experiments where subjects are incentivized to simulate social choices on-line. The findings might be used by governmental organizations to feed into service improvements and policy innovation processes.
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Download paper
Understanding Governments and Citizens On-line »»
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(300kb/pdf)
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Governing from the Centre? Comparing the Nodality of Digital Governments
By Tobias Escher (UCL School of Public Policy), Helen Margetts (UCL and Oxford Internet Institute),
Ingemar J. Cox (UCL Computer Science) and Vaclav Petricek (UCL Computer Science)
This paper has been presented at the
Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA)
in Philadelphia (31. August - 4. September 2006).
What difference does e-government make to the capacity of governments to interact with citizens? How does it affect government’s place in social and informational networks - the ‘nodality’ of contemporary government? What is the structure of ‘government on the web’ and how do citizens experience government on-line?
This paper uses methods from computer science (particularly webmetrics) and political science (a ‘tools of government’ approach) to go further than previous work in developing a methodology to quantitatively analyse the structure of government on the web, building on Petricek et al (2006). It applies structural metrics (via webcrawling) and user metrics (via user experiments) to the web sites of comparable ministries concerned with foreign affairs in three countries (Australia, the US and the UK).
The results are used to assess the on-line presence of the three foreign offices along five dimensions: visibility, accessibility, extroversion, navigability and competitiveness. These dimensions might be developed further as indicators for use by both researchers (to assess e-government initiatives) and by governments (to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their on-line presence). Governments which are successful in developing their web sites in this way are likely to have greater visibility to citizens, businesses and other governments, strengthening nodality as a policy tool.
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Download Paper
Governing from the Centre? Comparing the Nodality of Digital Governments »»
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(1,425kb/pdf)
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Click here to visit the project website »»
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The Web Structure of E-Government - Developing a Methodology for Quantitative Evaluation
By Vaclav Petricek (UCL Computer Science), Tobias Escher (UCL School of Public Policy),
Ingemar J. Cox (UCL Computer Science) and Helen Margetts (UCL and Oxford Internet Institute)
This paper has been presented at the E-Applications Track of the
15th International World Wide Web Conference in Edinburgh (23rd - 26th May 2006) and is also being published in the conference proceedings.
In the presentation we give an overview about the main findings of our project. It reports our metrics as calculated for the Foreign Offices of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. In addition it summarizes the results of our user study that included 135 subjects and which was conducted in order to analyse how well our metrics correlate with the performance of real users of these sites.
In the paper we describe preliminary work that examines whether statistical properties of the structure of websites can be an informative measure of their quality. Our aim is to develop a new method for evaluating e-government. E-government websites are evaluated regularly by consulting companies, international organizations and academic researchers using a variety of subjective measures. We aim to improve on these evaluations using a range of techniques from webmetric and social network analysis.
To pilot our methodology, we examine the structure of government audit office sites in Canada, the USA, the UK, New Zealand and the Czech Republic. We report experimental values for a variety of characteristics. These measures are expected to correlate with (i) the navigability of a website and (ii) with its “nodality” which is a combination of hubness and authority. There appears to be some correlation between the values measured and the league tables reported in the literature. However, this multi-dimensional analysis provides a richer source of evaluative techniques than previous work.
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Download Presentation
Web Structure of E-Government
(updated 31.05.2006) »»
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(830kb/pdf)
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Download Paper
Web Structure of E-Government
(updated 01.03.2006) »»
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(1,425kb/pdf)
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Click here to visit the project website »»
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Government IT performance and the power of the IT industry: A cross-national analysis
By Patrick Dunleavy (LSE), Helen Margetts (UCL and Oxford Internet Institute), Simon Bastow (LSE), and Jane Tinkler (LSE)
Paper presented at the Annual American Political Science Association conference, Chicago 1st September 2004. Panel 25-2 'Digital Policy Issues: Inequality, E-government', 4th Sept. http://www.apsanet.org
This paper examines the relationship between the power of the IT industry and government IT performance across countries. Using a qualitative comparative analysis approach 'fuzzy set social science', we characterise the power of the IT industry and government IT performance using three variables each, and argue a negative association, meaning that in countries with a powerful IT industry, government IT performance tends to be less satisfactory.
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Download Government IT performance
and the power of the IT industry »»
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(206kb/pdf)
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Download Press coverage of this paper
in the Guardian Life section »»
(March 2005)
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(15kb/pdf)
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Incentivization of e-government,
by Helen Margetts and Hala Yared - an academic enquiry commissioned from the School of Public Policy from the UK National Audit Office - was published on 20th November 2003, to accompany the NAO report Transforming the performance of HM Customs and Excise through Electronic Service Delivery
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Download Incentivization of e-government »»
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(398kb/pdf)
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Click here to visit the NAO website for whole report »»
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'E-government and Policy Innovation in Seven Liberal Democracies'
by Professor Patrick Dunleavy (LSE and ANU), Professor Helen Margetts (UCL), Simon Bastow (UCL), Jane Tinkler (LSE).
This paper explores the extent and character of electronic government initiatives in seven countries: Japan, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. In this complex sector there are no 'perfect' cases, no typical representatives of a wider population. The point of our comparative work is to introduce a requisite degree of diagnostic diversity to help explore the variety of causation patterns operating to differentiate national government characteristics from one another. The primary research methodology used has been detailed Web research and systematic documentation analysis across the three governments, extensive interviewing with over 110 officials and IT industry personnel across our countries (mainly focusing on central governments), and some in depth unobtrusive measures censuses and survey work within the UK carried out by the authors for the UK National Audit Office during 1999 and 2001 (see Dunleavy and Margetts, 1999; 2002).
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Download PSA 2003 »»
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(288kb/pdf)
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'Leaders and Followers: E-government, Policy Innovation and Policy Transfer in the European Union'
E-government and Policy Innovation in Seven Liberal Democracies
by Professor Patrick Dunleavy (LSE and ANU), Professor Helen Margetts (UCL), Simon Bastow (UCL), Jane Tinkler (LSE).
This paper looks at the impact of electronic government - widespread government use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) - on the transaction costs of policy innovation. e-government has great potential to reduce the transaction costs of innovation for those organisations that use it creatively. Government agencies rely heavily on private sector computer services providers for ICT expertise. Over time, governments develop distinctive ‘contracting regimes’, where trends in public management reform, contracting styles and markets of computer services providers produce a variety of patterns of contract relationships.
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Download Leaders and Followers »»
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(262kb/pdf)
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'Cultural Barriers to E-Government'
by Professor Helen Margetts (UCL) and Professor Patrick Dunleavy (LSE)
Published by the National Audit Office 4th April 2002 (HC 704-III) in conjunction with the Value for Money report 'Better Public Services Through E-Government' (HC 704)
www.nao.gov.uk/publications/nao_reports/index.htm »»
This paper explores key cultural barriers existing within government and in government's relations with citizens and businesses that constrain successful delivery of electronic government services. The authors use cultural theory to investigate differing perceptions or attitudes to implementing new technology in government organizations, and how these distinctly cultural attitudes influence supply and demand for e-government services in society. There is a self-evaluative quiz for readers to test their own attitudes towards e-government implementation and change, and their potential effectiveness as an e-government reformer.
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Download Cultural Barriers »»
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(376kb/pdf)
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'Policy Learning and Public Sector Information Technology: Contractual and E-Government Changes in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand'
by Professor Patrick Dunleavy (LSE and ANU), Professor Helen Margetts (UCL), Simon Bastow (UCL), Jane Tinkler (LSE), and Hala Yared (UCL)
Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Political Science Association 2001, 28 August -1 September, Hilton Hotel, San Francisco, US
www.apsanet.org »»
This paper explores the complex relationship existing between e-government change at national level, ICT government contracting regimes, and the characteristics of different public administrative regimes. The authors examine the relationship between these factors in three main case study countries, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand with supporting evidence from the Netherlands and the US. They focus on the extent of homogenizing effects of large-scale government IT markets on public administrative regimes, the resilience and distinctiveness of these regimes across different countries, and factors influencing successful transition to e-government service delivery models in these countries.
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Download APSA 2001 »»
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(316kb/pdf)
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'The Cyber Party'
by Professor Helen Margetts (UCL)
Paper to workshop ‘The Causes and Consequences of Organisational Innovation in European Political Parties’ at European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions of Workshops, Grenoble, 6-11 April 2001.
www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr »»
This article explores the pressures and possibilities for political parties in the age of widespread use of the Internet. It identifies internet-fuelled trends in political activity which affect party organisational development and proposes the ‘cyber’ party as a new ‘ideal type’ of political party. Cyber parties are organisations rather than institutions, to which voters with multiple preferences offer support according to context. They are characterised by technologically-aided relationships between party and voters rather than formal membership. The article considers some of the possible threats posed by the emergence of the cyber party. It concludes that a cyber party that develops a stronger relationship with its voters (rather than mourning the ‘golden age’ of the mass membership party), could be a positive development in democratic terms. Parties which do not respond to competitive pressures to increase their nodality through innovative use of available technologies may be more likely to face decline.
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The Cyber Party 2001 »»
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(122kb/pdf)
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'The Advent of Digital Government: Public Bureaucracy and the State in the Internet Age'
by Professor Patrick Dunleavy (LSE) and Professor Helen Margetts (UCL)
Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Political Science Association 2000, 4th September, Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, US
www.apsanet.org »»
This paper looks in detail at the impact of e-government change on public administration in the UK, particularly structures and processes associated with New Public Management (NPM) models. The authors describe the key characteristics of NPM change in the UK, and investigate the complexities of the relationship between public administrative regime change and achieving policy goals. They present four possible scenarios for change towards e-government models, focusing particularly on the transformational impact of e-government on existing NPM structures and processes in the UK. The paper draws on examples from abroad such as Australia and the US.
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Download APSA 2000 »»
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(183kb/pdf)
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'The Advent of a Digital State and Government-Business Relations'
by Professor Patrick Dunleavy (LSE), Professor Helen Margetts (UCL), Simon Bastow (UCL), and Jane Tinkler (LSE)
Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Political Science Association 2000, 10-13 April, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
www.psa.ac.uk »»
This paper focuses on the relationship between government organizations and large-scale private sector IT contractors working for government. The authors characterize the government IT contracting market in the UK, and investigate the extent to which these private firms are established at the heart of government working and decision-making. The paper examines incentives for public agencies to use private sector firms in large-scale systems integration and management of IT infrastructure, and the implications for the UK State in the future as private firms consolidate their position as critical players in government.
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Download PSA 2000 »»
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(218kb/pdf)
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