The Role of Organizational Design in Local Open Government

Description

Open government aims to integrate citizens into the public value creation process. This paper aims to fill in two gaps in the existing body of open government literature. First, little is known about the implementation of open government initiatives to and their implications for organizational design. Second, there is still little open government literature that considers municipalities. Hence, we examine how the pre-existing organizational design of a municipality shapes the implementation of a web-based open government platform. The empirical context showcases how the City of Linz implemented the application “Schau.auf.Linz”, an interactive mapping and reporting platform for urban maintenance needs. The platform builds on the existing structures and policies of the municipality. It functions as an additional, transparent channel of communication. Number of inquiries processed by the responsible department convincingly speaks for the success of the “Schau.auf.Linz“ platform. We suggest that the continuous adaptation of the municipalities’ organizational design to the service-oriented new public management paradigm prior to the launch of “Schau.auf.Linz” was a key enabler for the successful implementation of the platform.

Period	10 Jun 2014
Event title	Collective Intelligence Conference 2014
Event type	Conference
Location	United StatesShow on map