Abstract
The scope of problems and trends that governments need to cope with vary widely in size, intensity, and complexity. Social networks, gender issues, environmental concerns, political movements, etc. reach beyond local, regional or national borders. How can government support communication, action and services across traditional borders and what governance networks are needed in such diverse cultural / technical / political contexts?
Keywords
cross-border issues, networks, governance capabilities
Description
Grounding the research on Crossing borders and the need for governance capabilities
The shift from government to governance is a much-heard reflection upon changes that have been visible in the public sector over the past decades; probably, the notion already moved beyond being a buzz word. The discourse behind it, however, is not yet hollowed out; the arguments that started the debate are still valid.
The coming of the post-industrial order provides a significantly different set of issues than the society that preceded it. Currently, we are facing problems that are caused by globalisation, individualisation, changes of gender patterns, a breakdown in the full employment society and ecological crises. A common denominator of these problems could be described as 'crossing borders': the border of the nation-state is loosing importance; traditional borders between social groups and between the sexes have seized to exist; environmental problems exceed our regional or national control. A second issue is the general poor functioning of public organisations. Many authors argue for the inefficiency in the spending of public money, bureaucracy, over-standardisation of procedures and a lack of democratic values. This is mostly due to a conception of governance that was developed in times of prosperity. During economic setbacks in the 1980's, serious reforms were necessary to keep the public sector manageable.
How did the transition to new forms of governance take place? The perception that the public answer to the effects of the changing borders was inadequate, led to a strengthening of civil organisations that became a part of so-called governance networks. Even though these were at first considered as road-blocks to public steering capacity, awareness has arisen that policy network matter. In fact, networks are considered as one of the three fundamental forms of governance, next to hierarchy and markets. A second trend is mostly an answer to the poor functioning of public organisations; building upon Thatcher's introduction of New Public Management in the 1980's, many forms of privatisations, Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and decentralisations have taken places over the past decades. It needs to be stressed, however, that national and international governance systems differ greatly in terms of their institutional set-up in this respect. The UK, for instance, are argued to have reformed more on the second dimension, whereas the Netherlands are a better example of the former. Any study of governance should thus take institutions and culture into consideration.
Where does eGovernment appear? One trend that has not yet been mentioned is the increase in the development and use of new technologies. Based on the idea that technologies are socially shaped and that they can shape the social in turn, IT can be considered an important driver in the shift from government to governance. IT enables the crossing of borders, no matter whether it concerns borders of countries or borders of policy networks. Hence, in our opinion that important elements of the shift to governance can only be put in practice now - after having been discussed for decades - because of the presence of adequate technological means.
What's next? We have governance networks, but do not have the capabilities to steer them properly. We have been shifting goods between the public and the private sphere, but do not know yet what the right balance is. We have access to technology, but do not know how to use it. Even more so, we do not know what the input of technology will do to our governance systems.
Research question
- What is the input of technology to governance systems?
- How can we steer governance networks properly if it occur in the future?
- Which kind of capabilities do we need?
- And what is the key elements of it
Link to the final eight scenarios
In several scenarios (cf. D2.1), expected new governance are repeatedly mentioned. For example, Government itself operates more and more like businesses do when it comes to the execution of their operational tasks. Non-core activities have been outsourced to private parties in public tendering procedures (Scenario: Orchestrating Government). As a way of keeping up with the demands for quality where possible, government has left the execution of many services to private parties, including the biggest economical sector: healthcare. (Scenario: Individualized society). However, some scenarios as well show unwanted future: the deployment of ICT within the public sector was not able to make alterations of governmental organization. Hence people lost their trust in government (Scenario: government keeps on trying). Hence, the capabilities for government shift into new governance are vital for effective eGovernment deployment.
Link to the gaps and gaps storyline
The identified gaps (cf. D3.1) explicitly show the need for the research effort done for the proposed Cross Borders and the need for governance capabilities. The relevant gaps are: New types of governance, Distribution of decision-making power to local government, using ICT to design government structures, lean government, competition among regions and nations, government networks, virtual borders and citizens, geographic border disappear, outsourcing of public services, crisis management etc.
Link to the roadmapping workshops
In Barcelona workshop, participants emphasized the gaps of government networks, competition among regions, competition among nations, and new type governance. On the one hand, participants mentioned that networked government is a vital element for certain pan-European eGovernment services (e.g. ehealth, pension and social security, cyber war etc.). On the other hand, participants as well pointed out that the balance between government competition and cooperation is an important research topic to be targeted in the coming years. The workshop in Brussels as well verified the high relevance of this research theme if the described scenario occurs. Participants intensively discussed the research questions mentioned in the previous section, e.g. how technology (e.g. semantic interoperability) can provide an expected flexibility for different governance system, and how we can steer the governance network and its relationship with technology etc.
