E-government and citizen's engagement with local affairs through e-websites: The case of Spanish municipalities

International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 469–478

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International Journal of Information Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijinfomgt

E-government and citizen’s engagement with local affairs through e-websites: The case of Spanish municipalities夽 Juan-Gabriel Cegarra-Navarro a,1 , José Rodrigo Córdoba Pachón b , José Luis Moreno Cegarra a,∗ a b

Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Facultad de Ciencias de la Empresa, Cartagena, Murcia, Spain School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham Hill, Egham, Surrey TW200EX, UK

a r t i c l e

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Article history: Available online 29 March 2012 Keywords: E-government ICT Citizen engagement Adoption Websites Spain

a b s t r a c t As a mixture of new technologies, processes and services oriented to the citizen, e-government has become one of the most important keywords for the public sector reform with proponents claiming that it guarantees transparency, accountability and better communication between local and national administrations and their public. Few if any studies have investigated the factors that might contribute to the establishment of trusting relationship between city councils and citizens. This paper examines the relative importance and significance of three types of information communication technologies (ICTs) towards the use of e-government and the development of civic engagement. We conduct an empirical investigation of 179 Spanish official town websites (web sites in the municipalities). The research findings suggest that implementing ICT not only involves a step towards an increase in the use of e-government services by people, but also provides numerous opportunities for their civic engagement. The main conclusion of this study is that although ICT can leverage the adoption of e-government, it cannot create alone engagement with traditional activities of the local government. What is missing from this relationship is a mediating variable (adoption of e-government by government officers), which in turn can greatly help to better understand how ICT impacts relationships between governments and their citizens. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In general terms, local government institutions can be considered repositories of knowledge in the form of laws, regulations or specific cases. These institutions provide and deliver public services that are of key importance to citizens and business. In countries like Spain, the factors that influence the nature and structure of the Spanish Public Administration (e.g. demand, costs, regulations, organisation, etc.) are undergoing rapid change. Recent reforms have regionalized the Spanish Public Administration in order to improve the response time and increase the participation of communities in the development and management of electronic online services at regional and local levels (Cohen & Nijkamp, 2004). According to a report recently released by the Press Office of the Spanish Ministry for Public Administrations (MAP in Spanish, 2011)

夽 The dates of this research were taken from a research program supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education (REF: ECO2011-28641-C02-02) and the R&D Project for Excellence. Andalusian Ministry of Education (REF: SEJ-6081). ∗ Corresponding author. Fax: +34 968326409. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J.-G. Cegarra-Navarro), [email protected] (J.R.C. Pachón), [email protected] (J.L.M. Cegarra). 1 Fax: +34 968326409. 0268-4012/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2012.02.008

in September 2011 Spain found itself among the ten most advanced countries in this area and ranked fifth at the European level in terms of both availability and sophistication of on-line public services (SIPA, 2011). The progress of e-government in Spain has undoubtedly been favoured not only by the greater awareness and predisposition to engagement shown by potential service users but also by the planning and legislative efforts made by Spain’s public sector in the last few years (Gonzalez, Gasco, & Llopis, 2007). In Spain, most if not all municipalities (so-called municipios) are engaged in the development and delivery of efficient services to the public. These include collecting and paying money according to the laws and bylaws of Spain as well as resolutions of city councils. A key component of local services is that of official town websites (OTW). These are highly visible manifestations of city developments and are used for service delivery and information. They enable local governments to provide citizens, business and other organizations with convenient access to local services and opportunities of collaboration via information communication technologies (ICT) (Lean, Zailani, Ramayah, & Fernando, 2009). Despite the fact that the majority of municipal governments have their own ICT and web sites to provide public information to citizens (Moon & Norris, 2005), there has been neither emphasis on offering online financial and service transactions nor on providing opportunities for electronic and interactive political and policy

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participation (Criado & Ramilo, 2003; Morris and Moon, 2005). As Criado and Ramilo noted in a previous study of Spanish local government websites (2003), a low level of two-way interaction between local governments and citizens could be characteristic. To address this, the Law on Citizens’ Electronic Access to Public Services published in June 20072 in Spain sought to strengthen the commitment towards e-government implementation and use by autonomous communities and local authorities through the improvement of coordination mechanisms between various levels of government in providing e-government services (eServices) to citizens. There is thus a need to investigate in more detail the reasons of this lack of two-way engagement through e-government in Spain and in particular how e-government websites implementation and management can be improved. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the use of ICT in government has been widely termed ‘e-government’, but its scope, impacts and possibilities are still yet to be fully assessed. Tapscott (1996) initially asserted that electronic government (egovernment) is an internetworked government, which links ICT with legal systems internally and, in turn, links such government information infrastructure externally with everything digital and with everybody – the tax payer, suppliers, business customers, voters and every other institution in the society. Abramson and Means (2001) define e-government as digital governmental information or a way of engaging in digital transactions with the public (citizens and businesses) and employees. Fraga (2002) suggests that e-government is the transformation of internal and external relationships in the public sector through net-enabled operations. Durrant (2002, p. 101) defines e-government as “a permanent commitment by government to improve the relationship between the private citizen and the public sector through enhanced, cost-effective and efficient delivery of services, information and knowledge”. Heichlinger (2004) defines it simply as a set of activities supported by information systems with the aim of improving the relationships between government institutions and citizens. For Holmes (2001), e-government is about developing a citizen-centred government environment which serves citizens (customers) at any time and regardless of their physical location. The above definitions suggest a variety of processes and services that can be supported by the use of ICT in government affairs, as well as the diversity of perspectives that can be adopted to assess their impacts in both governments and citizens. These perspectives also provide us with an illustration that e-government is a way for public administration to become: more open and transparent; enabling democratic participation; more service-oriented, providing personalised and inclusive services to each citizen; productive, and delivering maximum value for taxpayers’ money as well as for any ICT investment. Researchers agree that e-government has considerable potential to contribute to learning efficiency, gains and cost reductions for local government (e.g. Badri & Alshare, 2008; Carter & Belanger, 2005; Criado & Ramilo, 2003; Lean et al., 2009; Warkentin, Gefen, Pavlou, & Rose, 2002). The opportunity to access new knowledge, learn about government and conduct online transactions can reduce red tape and simplify regulatory processes, therefore helping citizens to engage more in issues that are important to local communities (e.g. public transport or street design issues). Just recently, in countries like the US there are a number of e-government projects to help communities address their local problems with the use of websites (Bertot, Jaeger, & McClure, 2011). In this way a form of civic engagement is promoted which focuses on public concerns and which includes both political involvement

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in political institutions as well as community involvement in associational or voluntary activities or institutions (Bennett, 2008; Jennings & Zeitner, 2003; Putnam, 2000). Despite these trends and premises, worldwide only a few cities continuously engage with citizens in policy dialogues or partner with community organizations to strengthen citizen engagement and participation at the neighbourhood level (Ho, 2002). What seems to be dominating research in the use of e-government websites is the study of the dynamics of networks of communication that emerge in political campaigns, most of which are dominated by incumbent groups (Araya, Barria, & Campos, 2010; Hindman, 2009). Whilst the study of such dynamics may offer in-depth insights into political engagement and interaction with ICT, few, if any, studies have considered the relationship between the use of e-government and civic engagement in cities. In this paper we consider how and which ICTs are more likely to lead to successful use of e-government by official town websites and how e-government use can be related to civic engagement. Factors that might influence the use of e-government local websites are discussed in the next section from which we derive a set of hypotheses. Details of the empirical study are presented in a third section whilst the results of testing the hypotheses are presented in a fourth section followed by a discussion and conclusions.

2. Conceptual framework Civic engagement in general may be defined as individual and collective forms of action that are designed to identify and address matters of public concern (Hays, 2007). Another way of describing this concept is the sense of personal responsibility individuals should feel to uphold their obligations as part of any community (Putnam, 2000). This means that civic engagement can take many forms—from organizational involvement to electoral participation to individual volunteerism. This paper is particularly concerned with the latter. That is, it focuses on those aspects of civic engagement that are mediated through involvement in associational or voluntary activities or institutions (Putnam, 2000), rather than formal political institutions. More specifically, it is concerned with civic engagement facilitated by local governments to deal with local affairs concerning pollution issues, school affairs and street design issues (Lim, 2007). From this perspective, civic engagement includes efforts to directly address an issue, work with others in a community to solve a problem or interact with the local institutions. In the last decade, there has been a growing theoretical debate about the effects of ICT – particularly online technologies – on civic engagement. This debate is essentially polarized between those who hail online technologies as facilitating social spaces in which virtual solidarity and activism are produced (Wellman, Haase, Witte, & Hampton, 2001) and those who bemoan online activities as indicative of the rise of consumerism over citizenship, the fragmentation of social relations and the consequent erosion of civic engagement (Levine, 2000). In this regard, Barraket (2005) highlights that although the empirical research to support either position in this debate remains limited, works such as that conducted by Horrigan (2001) suggest that some people are using ICT to engage in new forms of collective activity, and to access more traditional forms of civic activity in new ways. In this light, local governments may indeed support a process of creative encounter between them and citizens by a coordinating mechanism based on ICT, so that cross-cultural engagement may ensue from the resulting complementary talents around such ICT (Go, Lee, & Russo, 2003). Nowadays, gaining access to information is one of the main motivations for individuals to access the Internet (Criado & Ramilo,

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2003; Torres, Pina, & Acerete, 2005). Through the use of ICTs, individuals can consider the advantages and disadvantages of many alternative solutions (e.g. increased flexibility, better control over processes, and improved time management). This, in turn, facilitates the easy transcription of relevant information, and enables the users to enter, capture, classify and record valuable information and knowledge which, apart from being valuable in a direct manner to the provision of quality public services also provided support to egovernment (Criado & Ramilo, 2003; Torres et al., 2005). Indeed, authors such as Carter and Belanger (2005) and Grimsley and Meehan (2007) have also suggested that a greater degree of control over the functionality and friendliness of e-government systems by users can enhance their satisfaction and use, leading them to increase their trust and the public value they attribute to these systems. The above provides an illustration that the adoption of e-government facilitates, in part, the necessary shift by local governments from being provider-oriented to citizen-oriented. Such a change also responds to altered financial and user requirements such as further cost containment and increased access to relevant information as discussed above. This changing environment requires new approaches to the development and management of ICT infrastructure and services (Caloghirou, Kastelli, & Tsakanikas, 2004). Part of these organizational capabilities result from the interaction of ICT and information accumulation within organizations. For example, Amit and Zott (2001) and Barua, Konana, Whinston, and Yin (2001) state that ICT applications are needed to create organisational information capability, which is an essential resource for the exchange of strategic and tactical information with all stakeholders in an electronic business. There is a significant amount of research in the area of ICT classification, development and implementation. Timmers (1998) classifies ICT based on the vertical or horizontal integration of various companies and industries, and considers eshops, eprocurement, eactions, emalls and marketplaces. For Chaffey (2009), technologies can impact the supply and sell-sides of businesses with many applications of e-commerce, customer relationship management (CRM) and procurement. Rayport and Jaworski (2001) suggest two main criteria to classify ICT: (a) the sources of content organisation (which may refer to products, services and information); and (b) the focus on ecommerce business strategy, which can be on the supply side (e.g. supply chain movement) or on the demand side (e.g. better customer experience). To better exploit the potential of ICTs, organisations should formulate and continuously review their business strategies which should be directed to attend the needs and expectations of their users. E-government can be considered a mixture of technology and processes that can support both the acquisition of materials and information by government (supply), as well as the provision of services to the public (sell). In this paper we follow the suggestion of Cegarra, Dewhurst, and Briones (2007) that links ICT with online e-government services to/from the public in terms of three subdimensions: • The Internet, which enables citizens to have access to instantly available information about products and services across time and distance, • Groupware, which provides collaborative groups formed by civil servants and sometimes citizens with the ability to link large amounts of information in a dynamic manner, • Collective systems, which facilitate flows of information that may be controlled by citizens, including those making decisions on behalf of their governments. These dimensions will enable us to assess: (a) the degree of influence that ICT implementation could have in the adoption and use

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of e-government services in local administrations; (b) the role that each type of technology plays in such adoption, with consideration of websites; and (c) how civic engagement can be best nurtured and further developed from the implementation of e-government.

2.1. The Spanish context To date, e-government in Spain encompasses any type of mutual communication or interaction between citizens, business and public organisations; because of this, e-government is conceived as the use of ICT for controlling electronically public administration’s processes from both internal and external perspectives (ClaverCortés, Juana-Espinosa, & Tarí, 2008; Criado & Ramilo, 2003). As mentioned before the Spanish public sector is making continuous efforts to strengthen e-government commitment among autonomous communities and local authorities and to improve coordination mechanisms between various levels of government in providing electronic services (eServices) for citizens (De-MiguelMolina, 2010; Reyes et al., 2007; Torres et al., 2005). Examples of these efforts are the Avanza23 and Avanza Local Plans, whose aims are to promote and diffuse e-government at local level (SIPA, 2011). Areas covered in these initiatives include the diffusion and implementation of the dedicated ‘Avanza Local Solutions Platform’, the availability of specific applications for use by Local Government, and the release of best practice studies which could contribute to the development of a catalogue and customisation of municipally oriented software applications. Initiatives like these could help municipalities engage with their citizens via electronic means whilst at the same time supporting the achievement of cost reductions and efficiencies in the delivery of services. Although initiatives like the above give testimony of how local and regional governments in Spain have been continuous adopters of ICT in recent years, the digital informative transparency of Spanish city councils is very poor (De-Miguel-Molina, 2010). As Gandía and Archidona (2008) noted, Spanish city councils often use their web sites to diffuse information of a general nature and with promotional or political purposes that do not contribute directly with relevant informative content. Neither do they allow users to take advantage of the relational and interactive capacity of the internet. A possible explanation for the low disclosure levels among Spanish city council web sites may relate to the website strategy and implementation adopted by Spanish city councils, and how such strategies have been associated with specific technologies (Gandía & Archidona, 2008). In Spain, ICT adoption since the year 2000 has proceeded through several phases including Internet, Groupware and Collective systems (Cegarra et al., 2007). However, the nature and scope of e-government initiatives are distinct from earlier applications and management of ICT in the public sector. Previously, local governments adopted ICT primarily to enhance managerial efficiency by improving the storage, processing, analysis and retrieval of data, and by improving work automation in both intra-agency and interagency contexts (Fountain, 2001; Moon & Norris, 2005). It is now that Spanish local and regional governments have started paying more attention to Internet and Groupware applications of ICT and providing information and public services to other public agencies, businesses and citizens using the web (Cegarra et al., 2007; De-Miguel-Molina, 2010). In a similar way to a model of e-government development proposed by Layne and Lee (2001), Torres et al. (2005) identify three types of connections between local governments and e-government. These are connections to:

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• Publish, where ICTs open up new possibilities for City Halls to be more transparent to citizens, giving access to a greater range of information collected and generated by City Halls. For example, visiting City Hall websites enables citizens to have instantly available information (e.g. legal issues, economic data, and local grants) at any time. As Gandía and Archidona (2008) also noted, Spanish city councils develop their websites with an aim which is eminently promotional and uses it to disseminate information of a general nature (i.e. about political parties, composition of the bodies of government, local news, calendars of events relevant for the citizens, socio-cultural offerings, local festivals, tourist information, etc.). • Interact, where ICT adoption may enable fundamental changes to the relationships between City Halls and citizens. Vertical and horizontal integration of information and services within and between government departments can take place in order to help citizens and other stakeholders get seamless services (e.g. procurement of goods and services between City Departments and citizens). At this level for example, a local government website may facilitate the interaction between citizens and civil servants, permitting the development of measures linked to e-democracy and direct contact between policymakers and the public (Gandía & Archidona, 2008). • Transact, which refers to the extent that City Hall services are reengineered from an offline to an eservice (e.g. online assessment and payment of taxes, registration of new companies). As Ke and Wei (2006) suggest, these municipal web sites support initiatives which are tied to e-government in order to enhance the delivery of public services to benefit citizens, business partners and employees. In this regard, there are many good initiatives in e-government in Spain, for example by the regional government of Castilla-La Mancha, which is seeking to extend reach and accelerate the rollout of e-government services such as pensions, tax, passports, driving licenses, vehicle registration, etc. (Rodriguez, 2011). Therefore, the existence and use of basic Internet and intranet systems is key for any use of e-government and defines the publish level of connection between public administrators and egovernment. The interact level of connection between citizens and public administrators requires collaboration within and between organizations and this can be facilitated through the implementation of groupware technologies. The transact (highest) level of connection between citizens and public administrators requires the implementation of collective systems aimed at improving efficiency, for example through online forms and transactions (Kambil, Nunes, & Wilson, 1999). Based on the above we propose: H1. Information communication technologies are positively associated with e-government use. Drawing parallels with e-commerce, e-government has the potential for increasing government openness and transparency (Bennett, 2008; Holmes, 2001). As Bertot et al. (2011) point out for the case of America, local government websites can offer information on neighbourhoods as well as on a variety of programs and policies that affect them, which in turn contribute to civic engagement in different venues, with varied forms of participation related to problem solving in communities. One of these types participation that can be reflected in websites is the initiation of contacts by citizens with governments or other citizens. In this regard, using a web survey with a non-random sample, Kang and Gearhart (2010) found that the use of city websites for both practical services and direct democracy by citizens were significantly associated with their ‘offline’ participation in activities like voting or attending meetings. Araya et al. (2010) also found that in Chile the availability of the Internet enabled non-incumbent

political groups to gain presence and engage more actively with their and other constituencies. Therefore, we propose that: H2. E-government is positively associated with civic engagement. Conversely, the availability of an online environment for e-government could plausibly enhance knowledge of local government, policy, and community through the provision of information, and could promote participation through information about activities or events offline as well as through communication online (Smith, 2010). Therefore, e-government may provide new venues for ICT, enhancing citizen awareness and knowledge of government policies, processes, programs, and performance, as well as community affairs. This knowledge, in turn, may facilitate communication between citizens and government officials online or offline. Through time, this information may also encourage discussion or participation in civil society around policy or community issues, including joining a group online and face-to-face interaction with neighbours (Mossberger & Jimenez, 2010). This consideration allows us to frame the second hypothesis of the work. H3. The impact of information communication technologies on civic engagement is mediated through e-government use. The size of a municipality (in terms of population) is an important characteristic of technology implementation and adoption (Claver-Cortés et al., 2008). It has been speculated that this may be so because larger municipalities can allocate greater financial and personnel resources to the adoption and use of technology (Moon & Norris, 2005). Other researchers consider that as an organization increases in size, its task coordination may become more complex, and therefore its reliance on the movement of information might also increase, hence increasing the need for computerised systems (Yap, 1990). This is also the case for many governments which have invested heavily in ICT to support the operations of their (big) central institutions and their associated services (Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, & Tinkler, 2008). In terms of web-based technology adoption, recent studies suggest that there are several levels of web adoption and suggest that the size of an organization is—in principle related to the level of web adoption (Cohen & Nijkamp, 2004; Teo & Pian, 2004). Therefore, we propose the hypothesis. H4. The use of e-government is in principle positively related to the size of organizations. 3. Method 3.1. Data collection The Spanish local government was used to investigate the above hypotheses. The local government is considered the closest tier (level) of government to citizens because it is mostly concerned with the daily life of people. Spain is divided into 17 Autonomous Communities, which in turn are divided into 50 provinces. Each province comprises a number of municipalities (Municipios), the governance of the municipalities belongs to the City Council. The Council is a collegiate organ that leads the municipal administration. It is conformed by a group of Councillors who are elected by popular vote. For our study, the Spanish local government was also chosen because Spanish City governments have an opportunity to use ICT to upload online city council and board meetings for public viewing. This would give citizens more information about what is going on inside City Hall, and put them in a position where they could hold leaders accountable for decisions that are made. In addition local governments in Spain have been the recipient of special attention in the last few years in terms of support and funding for ICT implementation; and government policies in Spain and elsewhere have been actively directed towards the local government

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(De-Miguel-Molina, 2010). Therefore, the Spanish local government is an appropriate setting for an investigation of ICT and its impact on e-government implementation. A survey was designed and administered to evaluate the involvement of local governments in e-government activities, including web site development and electronic services. Although, Spain is divided into 8.108 municipalities, in this research, based on the National Statistics Institute (INI, 2010), the survey was carried out to 397 municipal governments (official sites) with population over 20,000 inhabitants (based on the statistical year 2010). Before conducting the surveys, civil servants who were in charge of city’s official e-government website were contacted and asked by our team to participate in the study. They were informed by telephone of the objectives of the work. They were also assured of its strictly scientific and confidential character, as well as the global and anonymous treatment of the data to be obtained through the survey.

3.2. Measures Before undertaking the survey, a series of telephone interviews with council managers of a pilot sample of three jurisdictions was undertaken to learn about their understanding about ICT. These managers were responsible for the day today technical operations at City Hall and all identified the following aspects of ICT: provision of online information for citizens pertaining to ordinances, bill payments, vehicle stickers, garage sale permits, access to library facilities, as well as internal communication and support services. In addition, they identified three broad categories of ICT that were relevant to online services namely: (a) internet and intranet systems; (b) groupware and (c) collective systems. For our survey, we used Churchill’s (1979) approach to questionnaire development. We combined scales from several other relevant empirical studies with new items to make an initial list of 32 items (24 measuring the existence of ICT, 1 city size, 4 measuring the range of e-government and 3 relating to civic engagement). Several items were modified through interviews with colleagues. Table 1 provides an overview of the final 32 questions used in the questionnaire. For the purposes of this analysis, the municipalities were divided into three population categories: (1) small jurisdictions or those which contained less than 50,000 inhabitants; (2) medium jurisdictions which contained 50,000 to 249,000 inhabitants and (3) large jurisdictions which contained 249,000 or more. These are shown in Table 1. The measures relating to the existence of an ICT scale consisted of 24 items adapted from a scale designed by Cegarra et al. (2007) to measure information technology systems (Table 1). By examining the official site of the City Hall of each city, the presence (1) or otherwise (0) of these 24 ICT applications were identified and three variables: internet (P1 –P8 ), groupware (P9 –P16 ) and collective systems (P17 –P24 ) with a minimum value of zero and a maximum value of eight were defined. The information about e-government use or “eG”, was collected through telephone interviews with the person in charge of the official city website. As noted above, a total of 397 web managers were contacted and respondents were asked about electronic activities carried out by users of the official city website. Using a simple structured questionnaire, web managers were asked to select one of the following four options: (a) with respect to the traditional front office, citizens do not use the official city website: (b) in case they use the official city website by far the main use of it is the access to information published by the City Hall; (c) in case they use the official city website by far the main use of it is the two-way communication (interaction) with the City Hall; and (d) in case they use the official city website by far the main use of it is complete online forms or transactions with the City Hall.

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Table 1 Summary of survey items. E-government use None (0) Browsed Official City Web (1) Communicated with the Official City Web (2) Completed online forms or transactions through the Official City Web (3) Civic engagement: with respect to other local governments indicate the degree in which your citizens attended the following meetings (1, strong down and 7, strong up) Public meeting in which there is a discussion of town affairs Public meeting in which there is a discussion of school affairs Citizen consensus conferences on critical street design issues City’s website  Yes P1 . Internet connection  Yes P2 . Website or homepage  Yes P3 . Catalogue and/or stocklist on Internet P4 . Banners or links with other sites  Yes  Yes P5 . Counters and trackers P6 . Site map  Yes  Yes P7 . Search engine  Yes P8 . Bulletin board systems  Yes P9 . Email  Yes P10 . Open discussion forums P11 . Open voting systems  Yes  Yes P12 . Open distribution lists  Yes P13 . Online calendars or agendas  Yes P14 . Repository of documents  Yes P15 . Newsgroup (USENET) P16 . Access to shared data base  Yes  Yes P17 . Tools to provide vendor recommendations  Yes P18 . Tools to estimate costs  Yes P19 . Tools to provide timeframes  Yes P20 . Affiliate programs with tracking (e.g. cookies)  Yes P21 . Customized billing systems P22 . Customer service management solutions  Yes P23 . Complete shopping cart solutions  Yes P24 . Payment and verification systems  Yes City size Small (no. inhabitants between 20,000 and 50,000) Medium (no. inhabitants between 50,000 and 249,000) Large (no. inhabitants >249,000)

 No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No  No

Three survey questions were used to measure civic engagement (Table 1). Based on Kapucu (2011), the survey instrument measures citizens’ involvement within their local communities through a range of questions related to how often citizens had attended a public meeting in which there was a discussion of town or school affairs, and how often citizens had attended a citizen consensus conference on related to a critical street design or improvement issue(s). As noted above, in the actual study, surveys were administered via telephone interviews to 397 public administrators. Of the 397 administered questionnaires, 179 were completed and used in the analyses. These telephone interviews were conducted between January and February 2011 with a response rate of 45.21% and a factor of error of 5.4% for p = q = 50% and a reliability level of 95%. The responding jurisdictions represent all geographic regions of Spain and a comparison between municipal governments which had answered and municipal governments which had not answered yielded no significant differences relevant to the number of inhabitants and Internet, Groupware and Collective systems, which suggests that non-response bias is not a problem (Armstrong & Overton, 1977).

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3.3. Validation of measures In order to get a more robust evaluation of the quality of the measurement model, a confirmatory analysis was performed using the covariance matrix as input via the LISREL 8.80 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2001) robust maximum likelihood method. Fit indices that are less sensitive to non-normal data (Satorra–Bentler 2 , comparative fit index and incremental-fit index) were used to interpret the model fit. The fit statistics for the resulting 6 items, which are summarized in Table 2, indicate a reasonable data fit with Satorra–Bentler 2(8) = 20.76; comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.95; incremental-fit Index [IFI] = 0.95; goodness-of-fit Index [GFI] = 0.90; root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = 0.071. The ratio of chisquare/degree-of-freedom is 2.59, the RMSEA fit index is below 0.08, and the GFI, CFI and IFI indices are above the common standard of 0.9 (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, Black, 1998). Although a significant chi-square value indicates that the model is an inadequate fit, the sensitivity of this test to sample size confounds this finding and makes rejection of the model on the basis of that evidence alone inappropriate (Bagozzi, 1980). However, a ratio of less than three (2 /df < 3) indicates a good fit for the hypothesised model (Carmines & McIver, 1981). In addition, for all the measures, Bagozzi and Yi’s (1988) composite reliability index and Fornell and Larker’s (1981) average variance extracted index are higher than the evaluation criteria of 0.7 for composite reliability and 0.5 for the average variance extracted. These results suggest the use of three scales to measure the City’s website (AVE = 0.91, SCR = 0.97), and, another three to measure Civic engagement (AVE = 0.53, SCR = 0.77). Discriminant validity was determined by comparing the square root of the AVE (i.e. the diagonals in Table 3) with the correlations among constructs (i.e. the lower triangle of the matrix in Table 3). On average, each construct related more strongly to its own measures than to others (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). The construct’s correlation matrix, shared variances, means and standard deviations are shown in Table 3.

4. Structural equation modelling results Once the psychometric properties of the measures had been checked, the next step was the evaluation of the hypothesised relationships developed from consideration of the relevant literature (see Table 4), discussed in the text as H1, H2, H3 and H4. The fit of the model is satisfactory (Satorra–Bentler 2(18) = 49.91; 2/d.f. = 2.77; GFI = 0.90; CFI = 0.96; IFI = 0.96; RMSEA = 0.075), thereby suggesting that the nomological network of relationships fits our data—another indicator of support for the validity of these scales (Churchill, 1979). With respect to the test of hypothesis H1, our results support a significant effect of the City’s website on the E-government use, with a standardised coefficient of 0.74 (p < 0.01), thus, these results provide substantial support for H1 (City’s website as a form of ICT → E-government use). In testing H2, Table 4 shows a significant effect of the E-government use on the Civic engagement, with a standardised coefficient of 0.19 (p < 0.05). Therefore, these results also provide substantial support for H2 (E-government use → Civic engagement). We also estimate the Sobel’s Critical Ratio suggested by Sobel (1982), to test the indirect effect of independent variables on the dependent variable by way of the mediator. If the effect of the independent variables differs significantly from zero, then indirect mediation is assumed (Preacher & Leonardelli, 2003). Table 4 illustrates the significant results of Sobel’s test for the indirect effects of City’s website on Civic engagement through E-government use which indicate that City’s website had a positive and significant indirect impact on Civic engagement ( = 0.19, p < 0.05). These

results provide substantial support for H3 (impact of ICT on civic engagement as mediated by e-government use). With regard to hypothesis H4, Table 4 shows an insignificant effect of City size on the E-government use with a standardised coefficient of −0.01. This result is worthy of further investigation and this analysis does not provide any support for H4 (i.e. City administration size → E-government use). One conclusion that might be drawn from this is that there is no group of cities with more favourable attitudes to implement E-government use.

5. Discussion We now discuss the implications of our findings. Regarding H1, the results support that, in order to effectively implement e-government, local governments need to provide and support internet-based systems, groupware-based systems and collective systems as a prior step to delivering effectively any type of egovernment service to citizens. These results confirm previous findings in the information systems and political science literature about the importance of ICT in helping in the adoption of e-government projects by their users (Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, & Tinkler, 2006; Holmes, 2001; Layne & Lee, 2001). The findings also support the view of Torres et al. (2005), that city Halls are trying to make a full use of the available technology and they are implementing ICT extensively in order to bring a number of benefits in relation to traditional procedures like having a call or support centre for citizens. However, this is not to say that implementation of ICTs alone will ensure e-government. As Heeks (2006) contends, e-government systems bring with them a number of design assumptions about how government should work which need to be validated in relation to a particular context of implementation if project failure is to be avoided. Heeks suggests that it is essential to identify and address different gaps between the realities and expectations about organisational, technological, procedural, cultural and human aspects of e-government projects. Our findings suggest that with ICT being introduced in municipal organisations (i.e. websites), managers could build on an existing culture of awareness of and sensitivity to information and technologies in order to positively contribute to e-government success and use. Adopting a hybrid implementation approach (technical and organisationally oriented) can help managers to identify different assumptions about information and ICT and to address them to develop feasible rather than idealistic plans. These considerations should be taken into account by municipality managers when designing strategies to fully commit to e-government as suggested in policy documents (SIPA, 2011). With regard to H2, our results show a positive association between e-government and civic engagement. This means that civic engagement in local governments depends upon citizen awareness and knowledge of various aspects of government – what government does and who does what, and this knowledge can be made clearer accessible and transferable through e-government websites. This insight corroborates the notions of Gaventa (2004), that for instance local government websites can facilitate civic engagement by increasing access to relevant and timely information. However, as this author also suggests, only if website information and services are properly aligned with citizen demands and needs can this potential source become a powerful civic engagement tool for success. Often civic engagement occurs at the local level, with citizens becoming involved in block clubs, district councils, local schools, or in volunteer efforts in their immediate surroundings (Barraket, 2005; Jennings & Zeitner, 2003). Civic engagement does not automatically occur though ICT, and a number of conditions must be satisfied before citizens can actually

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Table 2 Construct summary, confirmatory factor analysis and scale reliability. Construct

Standardised loading

Civic engagement Public meeting in which there is a discussion of town affairs Public meeting in which there is a discussion of school affairs Citizen consensus conferences on critical street design issues City’s website Internet systems (P1 –P8 ) Groupware systems (P9 –P16 ) Collaborative systems (P17 –P24 )

Reliability (SCRa , AVEb )

t-Value

0.64 0.84 0.69

8.42 8.84 9.83

AVE = 0.53 SCR = 0.77

0.97 0.93 0.96

30.65 23.45 63.96

AVE = 0.91 SCR = 0.97

The fit statistics for the measurement model were: Satorra–Bentler 2(8) = 20.76; 2 /d.f. = 2.59; GFI = 0.90; CFI = 0.95; IFI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.071. The asymptotic covariance matrices were generated to obtain the scaled chi-square (Satorra & Bentler, 1988) and robust estimation of standard errors. 2 a Scale composite reliability (SCR) of pc = ( i ) var() +  ii ] (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988). i )2 var()/[(  b Average variance extracted (AVE) of pc = ( i )2 var()/[ i 2 var() +  ii ] (Fornell & Larcker, 1981).

Table 3 Construct correlation matrix.

1. E-government use (range 0–3) 2. Civic engagement (range 3.33–7) 3. City’s website (range 0–8) 4. City size (range 1–4)

Mean

SD

CA

Correlation matrix 1

2

3

4

1.59 6.12 3.12 1.58

1.15 0.68 2.57 0.85

n.a 0.70 0.97 n.a

n.a 0.12 0.57a 0.23a

0.72 0.22a −0.02

0.95 0.36a

n.a

Mean = the average score for all of the items included in this measure; S.D. = standard deviation; CA = Cronbach’s alpha; intercorrelations are presented in the lower and shady triangle of the matrix. The bold numbers on the diagonal are the square root of the average variance extracted. a <0.01; n.a. = not applicable.

engage their governments and be involved in community affairs. On the technology side, conditions can be enhanced (but not fully determined) by the availability of friendlier and more transparent e-government systems which reflect the public value that citizens are willing to attribute to online services (Grimsley & Meehan, 2007). By engaging people in talking about government through testing these systems, citizens could have opportunities to express their views about politics, policy, and community among other aspects. From a practical point of view, this association between egovernment and engagement in H2 leads us to caution local governments to consider e-government as a source of valuable knowledge and not just a cost reduction opportunity. Using egovernment as a method of learning increases the capacity to understand new ideas and strengthens creativity and the ability to spot new opportunities (Córdoba & Cegarra, 2010). For example, local governments may encourage residents to become knowledgeable about their neighbourhoods by providing information on neighbourhood characteristics (such as demographic information, local economic condition, business information, or maps). Further, e-government projects may feature information on neighbourhood-related issues (such as affordable housing, safety, etc.). With new possibilities given by e-government, governments can also re-think the assumptions that they currently make about

how governments should run (Holmes, 2001). More collaboration and interaction can be developed within and across governments (Fountain, 2001) and this can also positively contribute to relationships between local, regional and national governments. With respect to the test of hypothesis H3, our results also support that ICT has an indirect effect on civic engagement through e-government. What this could mean for the local administrations is that e-government is useful for the discovery of citizen needs in real time (live). As reported by Irani, Love, Elliman, Jones, and Themistocleus (2005) the incorporation of citizens’ feedback into the improvement of e-government services is crucial to produce new or revised knowledge and with this to increase citizens satisfaction with e-government systems. From a practical perspective and following suggestions from Irani et al. (2005) the goal of egovernment is to develop understanding of ways in which citizens use ICT. E-government provides information about the wishes and needs of citizens, and by using e-government, local administrations may reduce their response time to citizen requirements through their website services and facilities. The more a local government aligns technology applications with reasonably meeting citizens’ needs and demands, the more benefits (including cost reduction or even profit) e-government projects can deliver. We think that this is an important finding, as currently and due to the global economic crisis many overloaded public administrators are cutting

Table 4 Model statistics. Links

Path coefficients

t-Values

R2

Sobel test statisticsc

City’s website → E-government use (direct effect) City size → E-government use (direct effect) E-government use → Civic engagement (direct effect) City’s website → Civic engagement (indirect effect) City size → Civic engagement (indirect effect)

0.74a 0.01 0.26b 0.19b 0.002

8.89 0.10 2.28 2.23 0.10

0.56 0.56 0.07 0.07 0.07

3.44a 0.12

a b c

<0.01. <0.05. Sobel test statistic computed via http://www.danielsoper.com/statcalc/calc31.aspx (accessed September 21, 2011).

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back on technology investments by simply publishing information or sending emails without implementing other forms of interaction (e.g. online form or transactions). If this is the case it is possible that public administrators are under-investing in (or underestimate) approaches and technologies to improve civic engagement. Underinvestment can also come in the form of reducing all forms of interaction to what e-government websites can quickly do, which would limit the impact and benefit that governments provide to different audiences (for instance disabled or elderly people). Further research is needed to investigate which types of e-government services and systems (for publish, interact and transact) could be more beneficial to civic engagement in different contexts. In testing H4, our results did not indicate any significant effects of city size on e-government use although there was a negative correlation in Table 3 it was not significant. These results contradict the findings of previous studies when they suggest that larger cities tend to be more innovative, possibly because they face a more diverse environment that always demands innovative solutions, or because they have more organizational freedom to try new ideas (e.g. Smith & Taebel, 1985). Our survey shows that larger cities favour or appreciate the benefits of e-government no more than smaller ones. A possible explanation for this would be that this new means of communication that we have termed as e-government, despite being technologically pervasive and sophisticated, is still in its early stage of engagement in Spanish local governments (Criado & Ramilo, 2003; De-Miguel-Molina, 2010), and in this regard there is no basis for differentiating between larger and smaller cities yet (Cohen & Nijkamp, 2004). This insight gains momentum if one considers that many larger and smaller municipalities are currently experiencing significant cuts in their budgets. Perhaps one might also think that a small city first decides to publish, and then gradually interact and transact. But our findings seem to contradict this thought and suggest that smaller cities can do all of these at the same time as equally bigger cities. It could also be possible to argue that other forms of electronic interaction (e.g. blogs, social networking sites) are meeting the demands of citizens regardless of their geographical location and of the size of their constituencies. Future research is also needed to analyse whether these are differences between small and large city websites and how websites of small and large city are being orientated to engage citizens. This study has some limitations. First, although the constructs have been defined as precisely as possible by reference to the literature and validated by practitioners, they can realistically only be regarded as proxies for an underlying phenomena that in themselves not fully measurable. Second, only a single research methodology was employed and further research through interviews and observational case studies could be undertaken for triangulation. Third, any extrapolation of the conclusions might not be generalisable beyond the sample frame, which could be addressed by cross-sector and cross-cultural studies. Finally, we assumed that use of e-government was similar for different actors and participants, and that therefore their assessment could be done in the same way as evaluating electronic online services. In other words we do not include the possibility of actors and participants being able to consider alternate uses of ICT available to them. Therefore, this assumption should be reviewed and explored further and might involve actors and participants whose concerns and interests might differ from ours. Taking into account this limitation, it would also be interesting to extend the survey to different actors and participants, since they might have a different level of knowledge concerning computers and technology tools, and finally, despite most City Halls in Spain having internet access, there is a lack of awareness of the existence and/or value of e-government services to citizens’ engagement, and this provides an opportunity for further research.

6. Conclusions We have reported an investigation into the relative importance and significance of city size and three types ICT (internet systems, groupware and collective systems) on the use of e-government through an empirical investigation in 179 Spanish City Hall websites. Our main conclusion is that despite Spain currently ranking third in e-government indexes, and that e-government has experienced an impressive development in the quality of services provided to citizens in this country, local government still represents the Achilles heel of Spanish society as to the advancement of e-government is concerned (UNPAN, 2010) in relation to citizen engagement. To support the above conclusion our paper offers two important contributions. The first one derives from the results of the hypothesis testing. We have examined how three types of ICT (internet, groupware and collective systems) can help local governments contribute to ease the alignment processes between e-government and civic engagement through an empirical study of 179 Spanish City Hall websites. We have found that issues related to adequate ICT implementation and citizen participation in this process contribute to improve their degree of engagement with their governments. The results from this study suggest that use of e-government by local governments will depend to a good extent on how local governments handle Internet, groupware and collective systems. Not only will the Internet make local governments more transparent and provide access to a greater range of information and services but integrated with groupware systems will create opportunities for partnership and collaboration between City Halls, other City Departments/Divisions and the Public. Our survey shows that Spanish municipalities have embarked upon a wave of e-government initiatives that make use of ICT (e.g. Avanza Local). Put in another way, local governments are devoting substantial resources to transforming the government by use of ICT, by establishing internet, groupware and collective systems they are offering online services, financial transactions and promoting the vertical and horizontal integration of e-services (Claver-Cortés et al., 2008). This finding corroborates the notions of De-Miguel-Molina (2010) that the current policy in Spain for e-government is to assign the development and execution of electronic services to the private sector in order to increase egovernment presence and use. If organized appropriately, this sort of e-government projects could open doors for citizens interested in learning about their community, local politics and other public institutions, and thus contribute to increase their opportunities for engagement. Moreover, our findings also have relevance for other issues that communities face, not just technology diffusion. This study also indicates that adequate e-government implementation is a necessary precursor for civic engagement and citizens to be able to use and benefit from ICT. Through e-government, the vertical and horizontal integration of local governments can be realized by enabling citizens to get seamless services. A citizen-oriented (hybrid) approach to implement e-government projects provides an additional avenue through which citizens can learn about ICT and become familiar with new technologies. Our work also suggests that e-government use may be particularly promising because they allow citizens to tap into civic resources to gain technological experience and know-how. This is in broad agreement with the conclusions of other researchers like Gandía and Archidona (2008) who assert that Spanish local politicians and managers should modify the strategies of communication of their municipal web sites. They would have to surpass the current ornamental context with a determined informational policy in which digital informative transparency, service to the citizens, and the development of web

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sites oriented to the relational capacity that the new technologies offer prevail (Claver-Cortés et al., 2008; Gonzalez et al., 2007). The second contribution of our paper is that we have grounds to question and complement existing models which relate ICT and e-government and which focus primarily in delivery of online services and the management of resistance to change by users (Andersen & Henriksen, 2006; Holmes, 2001; Tan & Pan, 2003). Since e-government results from the interaction between government employees and citizens, it is important to know how government employees perceive e-government, and to what extent they are aware of all aspects related to the e-government projects, to their viability and potential impacts. We have provided empirical evidence of the links between ICT and e-government from the perspective of government employees. With our paper we are warning local administrations about the traditional ways of measuring, assessing or evaluating e-government projects. We think that this is an important finding, as previous works with the exception of Koh and Prybutok (2003)’s approach e-government in a macro or national level or focus on users acceptance of e-government systems (Carter & Belanger, 2005; Grimsley & Meehan, 2007), rather than in a micro one. In addition, the majority of previous works are assessed relying on secondary data, citizens’ feedback or policy makers of e-government projects. Therefore, understanding the nature and role of the government employees in order to know what they can see, feel, obtain and value for projects as Avanza Local is a necessary and complementary step towards understanding if new ICT will be used by citizens and how it might be used to implement e-government projects.

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