Governance Models for the Delivery of Public Services Through the Web 2.0 Technologies

Abstract

The growing participation in social networking sites is altering the nature of social relations and changing the nature of political and public dialogue. This article contributes to the current debate on Web 2.0 technologies and their implications for local governance through the identification of governance models to be adopted by local governments if Web 2.0 technologies are implemented for providing public services. Also, this article analyzes whether the political competition could be an attribute that could explain the governance models to be adopted by municipalities. To achieve this aim, an e-survey during the period of May–July 2014 has been performed by policy makers responsible of strategies for e-government in Spanish municipalities. Findings indicate that policy makers are mainly prone to implement Web 2.0 technologies under the “Bureaucratic Model” framework, keeping the leading role in this implementation. Nonetheless, political competition seems to be essential to understand the findings of this article. Thus, majority governments are prone to implement collaborative models of governance, whereas minority governments are in favor to implement noncollaborative models of governance.

Keywords

Web 2.0 technologies governance models public services political factors

Introduction

The Web 2.0 should be viewed as a networked platform, spanning connected devices to encourage collaboration, in terms of the creation, organization, linking, and sharing of content (Chang & Kannan, 2008; O’Reilly, 2007). The use of these Web 2.0 technologies is altering the nature of social relations (Christofides, Muise, & Desmarais, 2009; Li, 2011) and changing the nature of political and public dialogue (Osimo, 2008). In the public sector, these technologies are helping to empower citizens and expand democracy (Bonsón, Royo, & Ratkai, 2015).

Under this framework, citizens will no longer be mere “end users” but will become partners and cocreators of information and services (Huijboom et al., 2009). Nonetheless, although recent studies indicate that citizens are willing to participate into public e-service development, but their ability to do so is limited (Holgersson & Karlsson, 2014). This means governments will need to fundamentally change the way in which public services are provided (Chan, Lau, & Pan, 2008), promoting citizens into the heart of the value chain (Tuomi, 2002) and expecting them to provide insight and knowledge and thus improve public services.

It is forcing policy makers to be aware that the existing public service culture of hierarchical control and direction must change radically to encourage and reward engagement. Under such a coproduction paradigm, citizens will make greater contributions in the form of “time, expertise, and effort” to achieve “an outcome, share more responsibility, and manage more risk,” doing so “in return for much greater control over resources and decisions” (Horne & Shirley, 2009, p. 3). Therefore, Web 2.0 could require government organizations to give up significant control over the content and applications or in the way of communication and relationship with stakeholders (Graells-Costa, 2011).

In this regard, the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in public administrations is forcing a reconsideration of the administrative structures of governments and the fostering of open, user-driven governance (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010; Bertot, Jaeger, Munson, & Glaisyer, 2010), which creates a political economy that demands an organizational polity and feeds the drive toward networked services (Rethemeyer & Hatmaker, 2008). Therefore, nowadays a challenge for policy makers is the implementation of governance models to achieve efficient use of Web 2.0 technologies for providing public services, which should improve citizens’ involvement in the design and creation of public services without losing the control of the delivery of public services. This is the main reason why, in the last years, it is acknowledged that the service-focused uses are the holy grail of social computing, possibly the most difficult to implement successfully but most impactful if successful (Chang & Kannan, 2008).

Nonetheless, despite the great significance of the future implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in public administration and calls for studies to analyze the impact of legal, institutional, and political challenges regarding the use of information technologies in local governance (Criado, Sandoval-Almazan, & Gil-Garcia, 2013), little research has been conducted in the field of political science to analyze the use of these technologies to reform public service delivery. This analysis is especially relevant in local governments because they are mostly concerned with the daily life of people (Cegarra, Córdoba, & Moreno, 2012), manage large budgets, and provide a wide variety of services (Saiz, 2011), which lead local governments to be a central focus on public sector reforms (Sriramesh & Rivera-Sánchez, 2006). In addition, local government is an important subject for the study of social media and interactivity because of traditions of citizen participation at the local level (Oakerson, 1999).

In addition, the success of government initiatives is dependent on managerial leadership and political support within the local government (Jaeger & Matteson, 2009). In fact, the political competition has been told as a relevant attribute that could influence on the management model of public services (Bel & Fageda, 2007) and on the public policies of governments regarding the introduction of new technologies (Tolbert, Mossberger, & McNeal, 2008). In this regard, the governance model used in the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in the delivery of public sector services could be linked to the presence of political competition.

Therefore, this article contributes to the current debate on Web 2.0 technologies and its implication for local governance, collecting the perceptions of policy makers responsible of strategies for e-government in local governments regarding two main concerns. The first one is related to the governance models and the change of roles that these technologies could give place into the interaction between local governments and their stakeholders. The second one is the identification of governance models of Web 2.0 technologies in the delivery of public services according to the presence of political competition. To achieve these aims, a questionnaire has been designed and sent to policy makers responsible of strategies for e-government in local governments in order to collect their opinions about the governance model to be adopted in the management of Web 2.0 applications for the delivery of public services. The findings of this article could be of general interest to policy makers and public managers of municipalities interested in implementing Web 2.0 technologies for public services delivery.

The remainder of this article is structured as follows: The second section discusses the opportunities that Web 2.0 and social media tools offer for the coproduction of public services, their influence on public sector governance in local governments and the possible governance models of Web 2.0 technologies in local governments according to political competition. The third section describes the methodology of our study and the results of the research. Finally, the discussion and conclusions bring the article to an end.

Web 2.0 Technologies: A New Way for Coproduction of Public Services and Public Sector Governance

Web 2.0 technologies encourage a new form of coproduction of public services, and this implementation could impact on traditional forms of local governance. The following subsections analyze the incorporation of Web 2.0 technologies into e-government.

Web 2.0 Technologies in Delivering Public Services and Public Governance

According to Dixon (2010), there is currently little evidence to support claims that e-Government 2.0 has radically changed government. Nonetheless, Hood and Margetts (2007) indicate that these new technologies have introduced new competition for “nodality” in social and informational networks and have offered the potential for “coproduction” and even “cocreation” of government services (Margetts & Dunleavy, 2013). Also, recent studies indicate that the online collaborative public service delivery increases its quality with the users’ growth contrary to the traditional off-line service delivery, although the current developer’s interest lies in delivering complementary services to the government run services rather than substitutive services (Szkuta, Pizzicannella, & Osimo, 2014).

Under this context, without shifting the organizational culture of public administrations toward more openness and transparency, successful implementation of open government initiatives, like that of social media, seems illusive (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010). Therefore, it is now more difficult than ever before to maintain the parallel structure of traditional organizations working with old-fashioned practices and digital structures to deliver public service innovation while protecting organizational inertia. So, the attention to the changes that are necessary in the policy environment to ensure the success of the new technology as well as the changes in the institutional change and how it is produced through public organizations will be critical for future studies of social media and government (Bertot, Jaeger, & Hansen, 2012; Criado et al., 2013). Therefore, scholars and practitioners have demanded an analytical framework for analyzing governance models so as to properly evaluate their impact and identify emerging best practices and appropriate applications (Nam, 2012).

Linders (2012) identifies three governance models in the age of social media, termed “Citizen Sourcing” (G2C), “Government as a Platform” (C2G), and “Do It Yourself Government” (C2C), in accordance with the interaction between citizens and government and with how citizens are involved in the coproduction of public services. To these, a fourth governance model could be added, termed “Bureaucratic Model” (G2G), which facilitates interaction among public administrations and places local governments in the leading role for public services delivery under the Web 2.0 technologies framework.

Under the Bureaucratic Model of governance (G2G), the government designs the strategy for the use of Web 2.0 technologies and manages the network. Everything that is produced and included in the network is produced by the local government, with little interest in adapting to citizens’ specific characteristics. Therefore, this model of governance is the follower of the Weberian bureaucracy model of production in which public managers emphasize internal productive efficiency, functional rationality and departmentalization, hierarchical control, and rule-based management (Kaufman, 1977).

Governments that strictly manage public services according to the Bureaucratic Model only seem to use Web 2.0 technologies to provide an innovative channel for its online representation and for broadcasting of government information about public services via social media sites (The White House, 2009) but not aiming at obtaining citizen participation. In brief, under this governance model, governments are only focusing in their own interests in using the social media as another means to disclose information regarding political actions, public services, or social activities that have been organized for the community, what has been called as “screen-level bureaucracy” (Bovens & Zouridis, 2002).

In the model termed Citizen Sourcing (G2C), citizens help governments improve public sector delivery in a participative framework, which can strengthen their relationship with government and soothe the conventional tension between the two sides (Nam, 2012). Citizens share their opinions with government, which often attempts to engage them in preparing policy-making decisions by enabling feedback through social media channels (Linders, 2012). Citizen Sourcing is, therefore, conducive to civic learning and may change the government’s perspective on the public to be considered as “makers and shapers” of policies and decisions (Lukensmeyer & Torres, 2008).

On the other hand, under the label “Government as Platform” (C2G), the government urges citizens to actively collaborate in the design and creation of public services. Social media channels are used to increase interactivity with citizens or to work in collaboration with government stakeholders on innovative ideas to fulfill the mission of government (The White House, 2009). In “nudging,” government uses behavioral economics to design policies and services in such a way that they preserve freedom of choice but encourage the “socially optimal” option. Under this scenario, government is not responsible for the resulting activity but can leverage its platform and influence to foster greater public value (Linders, 2012).

Finally, under the “Do It Yourself Government” (C2C) environment, citizens govern themselves with little or no interference from the government. In this regard, they are interconnected through social media applications, whereby online customer feedback mechanisms replace “top-down, central controls over and regulation of local delivery in hospitals, schools, and local governments” (Dunleavy & Margetts, 2010, p. 21). Under this framework, digital communities form an important addition to the government-centric form of public service provision by fostering both the exchange of experiential information and the social–emotional support (Meijer, 2011).

As with any such theoretical framework, some public administrations will apply a single governance model. Others may progress through all the models proposed over the years, and even others may simultaneously present characteristics of more than one governance model, because these governance models should not be viewed as mutually exclusive (Kooiman, 2003).

The role of local governments in the four governance models proposed could be arrayed along a spectrum, as a continuum of top-down to bottom-up processes (Span, Luijkx, Schols, & Schalk, 2012). The local government adopts the role of “executor (commissioner)” when it is the main producer of local public goods, with very little coproduction. The role of “partner (coproducer)” is embedded in market relationships in which the local government is primarily accountable for production but organizes coproduction through contracts with other producers. Finally, the role of “initiator (facilitator)” is played by local governments that act only as a “network” to facilitate the production of local outcomes, which they do not finance or regulate. The resulting environment will be one of greater complexity and confusion (Linders, 2012).

In this regard, it would be interesting to know how policy makers perceive the governance model for public services under the Web 2.0 era. This constitutes the first part of the empirical research described in the next section of this article. Therefore, the following research question is derived:

Research Question 1: What governance model and role of government do policy makers in large Spanish municipalities consider appropriate in delivering public services through Web 2.0 technologies?

Web 2.0 Technologies in Delivering Public Services and Political Competition

Ya Ni and Bretschneider (2007) indicate that when public sector decisions regarding public services are going to be taken, public decision makers have to balance efficiency with political considerations. Nonetheless, within the relatively scarce empirical evidence on decisions regarding the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in providing public services, most of which is focused on local government (De Oliveira & Welch, 2013), there is little empirical information on the effects of the political environment.

According to Smith and Fridkin (2008), political competition plays a key role in the decision of politicians to devolve institutional power to citizens. Depending on the outcome of local elections, the resulting government can expect more or less support of the plenary of the local government (government body in which all political parties are represented according to the result of the last elections). In this regard, majority governments are those with increased political leadership of the government team and robustness in the face of managing public services, whereas minority governments are in the opposite situation. Thus, governments with broad electoral majorities tend to think that they have a mandate for their electoral program and, therefore, are not motivated to remain cued to citizens’ feedback (García-Sánchez, Rodríguez-Domínguez, & Gallego-Álvarez, 2011). Therefore, these governments could usually tend to adopt the Bureaucratic Model of governance when implementing Web 2.0 technologies in public sector delivery.

By contrast, prior research demonstrates that a high degree of political rivalry can create a favorable environment for technological reforms (Ter Bogt & Van Helden, 2000), especially regarding the improvement of government accountability and the delivery of e-services (Weinberger, 2002). Indeed, it is said that to have meaningful e-governance there has to be political pluralism, which occurs only when permitted by the state (Sriramesh & Rivera-Sánchez, 2006). All this means that higher political competition can create a favorable environment for citizen involvement in the coproduction of e-services. Therefore, under this framework, collaborative models of governance are likely to be adopted when Web 2.0 technologies are introduced for providing public services. In fact, though Web 2.0 technologies may be associated with political rationality and constituency support, as political competition increases, the checks and balances of political control will prevent overreliance on transparency and collaboration models, which will make policy makers to adopt collaborative models of governance. Thus,

Research Question 2: Large Spanish municipalities that operate in a more competitive political environment are prone to adopt collaborative models of governance of Web 2.0 technologies for political reasons because of political checks and balances.

Policy Makers’ Perceptions on Web 2.0 Implementations in Spanish Local Governments

Sample Selection

Local governments are considered the closest tier (level) of government to citizens (Cegarra et al., 2012), manage very large budgets, and provide a wide variety of services (Russell & Bobko, 1992), which lead local governments to be a central focus on public sector reforms (Oxley, 2011; Smith & Fridkin, 2008; Spector, 1992). In this context, local government is an important subject for the study of social media and interactivity because of traditions of citizen participation at the local level (Norman, 2010). Indeed, Peters (2001) argues that local governments tend to use more mechanisms that permit direct citizen involvement, in part because they are more manageable at that scale (see also Sirianni, 2009).

In addition, the success of government initiatives is dependent on managerial leadership and political support within the local government (Jaeger & Matteson, 2009). In this regard, local government policies regarding social media tend to be more explicitly on account management compared to other levels of public administrations (Hrdinová, Helbig, & Peters, 2010). Therefore, social networks are becoming increasingly relevant in the local government context (Gibson, 2010) and have been adopted by a great volume of them in many countries like United States, for example (De Oliveira & Welch, 2013). And the largest cities, which are examined in this article, have generally been at the forefront in the adoption of e-government innovations (Scott, 2006).

This article focuses on Spanish local governments due to the managerial devolution process implemented in Spain in the 1990s (Gallego & Barzelay, 2010) and the rapid introduction of new technologies by these local governments, which has been fostered with the promulgation of legislation in Spain in the last years (e.g., the Information Society Services and E-Commerce Act No. 34/2002, the Local Government Modernization Act No. 57/2003, or the Electronic Access to Public Services Act No. 11/2007). Also, recent research has indicated that large local governments in Spain have adopted social media applications such as Twitter and Facebook for interaction with citizens in the last years (Balcells, Pradó-Solanet, & Serrano, 2013; Criado & Rojas-Martín, 2013) and also other technologies such as blogs or apps (e.g., the municipalities of Vitoria or Gijón).

This use of social media applications is mainly driven to accomplish a broadcasting objective more than to create citizens’ collaboration and participation (Criado & Rojas-Martín, 2013, p. 33). So, in Spain, Twitter is considered a main tool for keeping informed to citizens about the municipal problems and to make local government activities more visible (Balcells et al., 2013), but it is only a unidirectional means of communication (Estebaranz & Ramilo, 2013). Also, prior research in Spain has demonstrated the existence of heterogeneity in the degree of visibility and diffusion of public policies through the social webs of local governments (Campillo & Ramos-Soler, 2013). So, instead of official social media to promoting citizen and employee involvement, some social media applications such as blogs are being used increasingly for Spanish public employees who have created an unofficial blog for sharing experiences in their daily job (Criado & Rojas-Martín, 2013).

Despite previous comments, social media are a widespread technology used by Spanish local governments in Spain (Orange Foundation, 2014), and Spanish local governments seem to own good official social media applications running according to Social Media Analytics and Reputation Management performed by the web Alianzo (http://www.alianzo.com/es/).

In addition, according to recent studies, the e-services provided by local administrations in Spain account for 66% of all public services (Orange Foundation, 2014), and the 79% of Internet users in Spain use some type of social network (IAB Spain Research, 2014) mainly as a means to chat with friends or organizations as well as to generate content—this figure is over the mean of European Union (57%; Orange Foundation, 2014).

In accordance with numerous prior empirical studies of the use of new technologies in local governments (Bonsón, Torres, Royo, & Flores, 2012), we chose to examine exclusively municipalities with relatively large populations. These were selected because they are usually among the first to adopt new technologies (Bonsón et al., 2012) with the aim at providing efficient services to the public (Cegarra et al., 2012), and their delivery of services is more complex (Torres, Pina, & Acerete, 2005). In addition, the quantity and variety of services delivered by these administrations are very comparable. Under this rationale, the present empirical study is based on a sample of large Spanish municipalities (those with a population of over 50,000 inhabitants). In total, 145 Spanish municipalities meet these conditions and account for over 50% of the total population of Spain (see Table A1 in Appendix; Spanish National Statistics Institute [SNSI], 2014).

Data were obtained by sending a link to perform an e-survey, and it was sent to the policy makers responsible of strategies for e-government in all the local authorities studied, via e-mail during the period of May–July 2014. The contact details were obtained from the Spanish central government’s website. Of the 145 municipalities that comprised the survey sample, 6 of them stated that the municipality had not yet introduced communication channels such as social networks, and thus neither had experience of Web 2.0 nor dedicated human resources to this area. Therefore, the questionnaire was sent to 139 local governments, and 45 complete replies were received from policy makers. To date, therefore, the minimum response rate is 32.37%. Nonetheless, some policy makers of local governments have responded some items without finishing the full e-survey. In consequence, for some questionnaire items, the response rate exceeded the above-mentioned minimum (see Table 1). This sample size is reasonable, and according to Roscoe (1975), a sample size between 30 and 500 is considered satisfactory. Data were compiled over the research period utilizing an appropriate sampling technique.

Table 1.

Results for Items Related to the Governance Model and the Role of Local Governments in the Use of Web 2.0 Technologies.

Questionnaire	Frequency	Response Rate (%)	Median	Mean	Mode	Standard Deviation	Maximum	Minimum
Research Question 1: Governance model and role of local governments in the use of Web 2.0 technologies
(a) Initiator (facilitator) (C2C)—“Do It Yourself Government” model
1.1. For Web 2.0 technologies to be efficient as a means of interaction between local governments and citizenry, citizens should be represented by associations but they should not interact directly with the local government as individuals.	45	32.37	1	1.73	1	1.56	5	1
1.2. The creation of public/private/user/academic communities for the delivery of public services should be encouraged and developed.	52	37.41	4	3.58	4	0.97	5	1
1.3. The implementation of Web 2.0 in providing public services gives an essential role to users of these services.	53	38.13	4	3.80	4	1.00	5	1
1.4. Social networks and blogs are suitable spaces in which discussion topics and issues of interest for citizens can be put forward.	48	34.53	4	3.83	4	0.95	5	1
(b) Partner (coproducer) (G2C) coproduction—“Citizen Sourcing” model
1.5. Web 2.0 technologies foster effective collaboration between citizens and government.	54	38.85	4	3.67	4	0.95	5	1
1.6. Citizens may participate in the generation of content and information.	52	37.41	3	3.10	4	1.20	5	1
1.7. The local government opens up a problem or activity for resolution or coexecution by citizens in order to tap into the unique skills, talents, and knowledge of the population.	54	38.85	3	3.13	4	1.20	5	1
1.8. User contributions enhance the quality of information, and Web 2.0 describes these contributions.	53	38.13	4	3.96	5	1.14	5	1
(c) Partner (coproducer) (C2G) Informing-and-Nudging—“Government as a Platform” model
1.9. The local government uses Web 2.0 technologies to openly share government knowledge, infrastructure, and other assets for use by the public.	54	38.85	4	4.20	4	0.84	5	2
1.10. Public sector information is released for use by citizens.	50	35.97	4	3.70	4	0.99	5	1
1.11. Greater openness of all kinds of information is obtained.	48	34.53	4.5	4.31	5	0.88	5	1
1.12. The local government uses Web 2.0 technologies to disclose information proactively, to open up the inner workings and performance of government and thus empower citizens to hold their government to account.	47	33.81	4	3.91	4	0.86	5	2
(d) Executor (commissioner) (G2G)—“Bureaucratic Model”
1.13. A plan is created to document security controls, and this plan is reviewed at regular intervals.	45	32.37	5	4.25	5	0.95	5	1
1.14. For Web 2.0 management, external advisors are hired to monitor government policies and procedures with respect to external communications activities.	45	32.37	1	1.96	1	1.73	5	1
1.15. Local governments should designate a senior official responsible for the coordination of their Web 2.0 activities.	48	34.53	5	4.35	5	1.08	5	1
1.16. Local governments must always play the lead role in the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies regarding the delivery of public services.	48	34.53	5	4.42	5	1.43	5	1

Methodology of Research

A questionnaire was designed and sent to all policy makers responsible of strategies for e-government in sample municipalities in order to capture their perceptions on the issues that are analyzed in this article. Policy makers responsible of e-government of sample municipalities were addressed in this survey taking into account not only their significant role in the policy-making process within local government but also their direct involvement in the possible implementation of Web 2.0 technologies in public sector delivery.

The questionnaire was made up of 16 questions (4 items for each one of the roles) covering the role that local governments must play in delivering public services with the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies (see Table 1). A two-phase process was followed to design and pretest the questionnaire items of our study. First, the research team drafted a preliminary version based on the conclusions of previous work in the field of Web 2.0 technologies (Gomes & Sousa, 2012; Linders, 2012; Oxley, 2011; Picazo-Vela, Gutiérrez-Martínez, & Luna-Reyes, 2012). Second, the initial text was presented to two specialists on Web 2.0 technologies and to 10 policy makers, to ascertain their opinions on (a) the understandability of the questionnaire, (b) the clarity of the questions posed and possible ambiguities, and (c) the possible inclusion of other questions relevant to the study aims. The comments and suggestions made were analyzed and, when considered appropriate, incorporated into the text of the questionnaire.

Sample policy makers were asked of having understood the meaning of each questionnaire item and the ultimate goals of this study and were offered the possibility of clarifying any remaining doubts before completing the questionnaire. Respondents were asked to describe their degree of agreement with each statement on a 5-point Likert-type scale (ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Although the Likert-type scale has some limitations (Hodge & Gillespie, 2003; Russell & Bobko, 1992), the measures of Likert-type scales are simple to administer, quantify, and code (Spector, 1992), and the results obtained have proven to be reliable and valid (Li, 2013). In addition, Likert-type scale allows obtaining numerical measurement results directly used for statistical inference and has been proved to be “robust” when this scale is used for parametric statistics (Norman, 2010).

In addition, as for this study, the Cronbach’s α was used based on the average correlation of items within the test to know if the items are standardized and to indicate the internal consistency of the scale used in the study. Cronbach’s α coefficient was conducted using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software, and the results can be seen in Table A2 in Appendix. Results of Cronbach’s α coefficient indicate that Cronbach’s α coefficient for each one of the governance model was approximately .8 or higher, which means that internal consistency reliability for these items was high and no items required to be deleted to improve α (George & Mallery, 2003). A Cronbach’s α of .8 and above indicates good internal reliability (Cronbach, 1951). The overall Cronbach’s α of the questionnaire was high (.835), indicating good internal reliability (see Table A2 in Appendix).

After the questionnaire was completed, due to the perception of the differences between adjacent levels in Likert-type scales (Bertram, 2007), the mean cannot be used to comparing results between questions due to scale problems. In this milieu, the analysis of the central tendency summarized by median, and the mode of the responses has been proved to be useful in order to analyze data obtained using Likert-type scale (Bertram, 2007). In order to understand the results in our article, high median scores (those close to 5 points) mean that sample policy makers agree with the statement included in the questionnaire.

On the other hand, the political competition is measured taking into account if the elected political party is represented in more than 50% in the council of the local government (1 = majority government) or not (0 = minority government). In this regard, the data regarding the attribute of minority versus majority of sample governments have been collected from the official database of the Spanish Ministry of Public Administrations (see https://ssweb.seap.minhap.es/portalEELL/consulta_alcaldes). It collects the outcome of the mayoral elections held on the year 2011.

Based on the data gathered in the questionnaires answered by the respondents and the data obtained from the official database of the Spanish Ministry of Public Administrations, Table A2 in Appendix collects the information necessary to test the Research Question 2. To achieve this aim, the test for Research Question 2 was performed using the k-means algorithm for clusters analysis, which allows grouping policy makers who have similar opinions about Web 2.0 governance models across a set of variables, thus leading to homogeneous empirical types (Rapkin & Luke, 1993). In this way, each cluster in Table A2 in Appendix represents a pattern of respondents regarding their opinion about each one of the items of the questionnaire depending on their political competition attribute. In addition, discriminant maps using canonical discriminant functions are shown to see the different groups according to political competition analyzed in this article. Each opinion of sample policy makers is considered to be a point in the multidimensional space determined by the values of the variables.

Analysis of Results

All official webpages of sample municipalities were revisited in May 2014 to obtain information about the Web 2.0 technologies used by these municipialities (see Table A1 in Appendix). Sample municipalities were divided into three population categories, as recommended by a prior study of e-government in Spain (Cegarra et al., 2012): (1) small jurisdictions or those with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants; (2) medium jurisdictions, with 50,000–249,000 inhabitants; and (3) large jurisdictions, with 249,000 or more inhabitants.

Table A1 in Appendix shows that the Web 2.0 applications most commonly used by the local governments sampled are Really Simple Syndication (RSS) channels (71.11%), Facebook (62.22%), Twitter (57.78%), and YouTube (43.48%). In addition, all respondents to the survey use at least one Web 2.0 application. Nonetheless, the largest and smallest municipalities often use two or three Web 2.0 applications—Table A1 in Appendix—with a maximum of three, whereas the medium-sized municipalities use an average of three but ranging from a minimum of one to a maximum of eight. Accordingly, the medium-sized municipalities seem to be the most innovative in the use of Web 2.0 technologies.

These medium-sized local governments use RSS channels, Facebook, and Twitter, while the largest ones use mainly YouTube and RSS channels. In addition, medium-sized local governments are the only ones offering the possibility of photo sharing (Flickr), professional profiles (Linked in), social media updates (Friend Feed), and a social bookmarks manager (Delicious). The preference for Web 2.0 applications such as RSS channels, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube could be due to local governments’ need to focus on the younger population as their target audience, since these citizens appear to be the main users of the information provided through Web 2.0 applications (Blank & Reisdorf, 2012). In fact, Web 2.0 tools are ubiquitous in their lives (Bennett, Bishop, Dalgarno, Waycott, & Kennedy, 2012), and the ones mentioned are those which young people mainly use in Spain (García-Martín & García-Sánchez, 2013). Older people may be less likely to participate in Web 2.0 because of a lack of confidence or technical ability in this field (Blank & Reisdorf, 2012). Nonetheless, a recent study has demonstrated that to enhance trust in the government directly and/or indirectly through the public agency that provides the public service, social media such as Twitter could be used as an important channel to complement web-based e-government services (Kim, Park, & Rho, 2015).

A qualitative analysis of the Web 2.0 applications used indicates that all the local governments in the sample use these applications to convey information regarding cultural activities and news about the municipality, such as new contracts or agreements. However, none of them use Web 2.0 applications to promote interaction with citizens regarding public services delivery, such as seeking opinions regarding the design and/or monitoring of public services. In addition, our survey does not reveal significant differences in the use of Web 2.0 applications between larger and medium-sized local governments, possibly because this new means of communication is still in its infancy in Spanish local governments (De Miguel-Molina, 2010), and as yet there is no basis for differentiating it on the basis of city size (Cohen & Nijkamp, 2004).

Research Question 1: Perception about the governance model and roles of local governments on the Web 2.0 era for delivering public services.

Although the policy makers who responded to the questionnaire believe local governments could play any of the roles identified in prior research (initiator, partner, or executor), the results obtained reflect their preference to act as executor (or commissioner). Thus, the items related to this role of local government obtained the highest scores in this part of the questionnaire (see the median and mode scores for Items 1.13, 1.15, and 1.16 in Table 1). Accordingly, policy makers in Spanish municipalities are most likely to adopt the Bureaucratic Model of governance to manage Web 2.0 technologies for public services delivery.

In addition, the respondents indicate that they favor greater openness in the information exchanged (median score: 4.5, mode score: 5) and wish to share government knowledge, infrastructure, and other assets for use by the public (median and mode scores: 4). This could mean that, despite their preference for implementing the Bureaucratic Model of governance, these respondents believe no single governance model is ideal for managing Web 2.0 technologies in the delivery of public services. Thus, they also observe that the Information-and-Nudging model could be of interest, because in this governance model, Web 2.0 technologies would only be used as a platform for information dissemination, while the municipal authorities would retain a leading role in the design and execution of public services delivery.

The policy makers surveyed also wish to introduce Web 2.0 technologies to enable proactive information management, so that the public can monitor government activities (median and mode scores: 4). This could be a means of enhancing e-democracy and at the same time helps improve the government’s image. Furthermore, this proactive information is disclosed to citizens in a personalized way to enable them to request public services such as the renewal of identity cards or driving licenses. In summary, these results indicate that policy makers in Spanish local governments believe the government to citizen model defined by Linders (2012) could be an effective means of managing Web 2.0 technologies, with the government retaining the initiative in its communications with stakeholders.

By contrast, the results indicate that the least-favored model of governance of Web 2.0 technologies in providing public services is that of the Do It Yourself Government model (C2C), in which government’s role is merely to initiate or facilitate the creation of new ways to deliver public services, after which the citizens are deemed capable of governing themselves with little or no interference from the government (see the median and mode scores for Items 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4). In this respect, according to “collective individualism,” individuals’ interests are seldom unique and “the Web teaches us that we can be part of the largest public ever assembled and still maintain our individual faces” (Weinberger, 2002, p. 177). Nonetheless, our results indicate that policy makers are opposed to the creation of associations to represent citizens in managing the provision of public services (median and mode scores: 1). This result could reflect the fact that policy makers tend to oppose the creation of lobbies that could, on the one hand, influence the legislative process in favor of a particular stakeholder (Gulati, Yates, & Tawileh, 2010) and, on the other hand, provide the means for people to group together to press for political change (W3C Interest Group, 2009).

Finally, the coproduction model of governance, too, obtained scores lower than those for the Bureaucratic Model and the Informing-and-Nudging model. As shown in Table 1, the lowest scores among the items included in the coproduction model of governance are those related to the participation of the citizenry in the design and coproduction of public services (Items 1.6 and 1.7 of the questionnaire). Thus, these respondents believe that, although effective collaboration between citizens and local governments should be encouraged (median and mode scores: 4), this collaboration should be conducted mainly in terms of enhancing the quality of information (median score: 4, mode score: 5) rather than via the coexecution of public services (median score: 3, mode score: 4).

In conclusion, policy makers responsible of strategies for e-government in Spanish local government favor the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies for providing public services, regardless of the governance model (almost all items scored over 3 points in median and mode scores), but they also consider that the local government should retain control over the design and production of public services and, therefore, play the role of executor and/or coproducer (in the Informing-and-Nudging model). In this regard, the Bureaucratic Model (G2G) and the Government-as-a-Platform model (C2G) are the preferred means for managing and governing this implementation.

Research Question 2: Is the delivery of public services through Web 2.0 technologies influenced by political competition?

In Table A2 in Appendix, clusters analysis is performed with all the items of the study. The data have identified four clusters in our sample: (a) policy makers with a strong feeling for adopting the “Government as a Platform” model of governance (Cluster 1); (b) policy makers who are favorable for adopting the Citizen Sourcing model or the “Do It Yourself Government” model of governance (Cluster 2); (c) policy makers who are favorable for adopting the Bureaucratic Model of governance (Cluster 3); and (d) policy makers who are favorable for adopting the “Government as a Platform” model of governance, although their feelings are not strong (Cluster 4).

Results in Table A2 in Appendix seem to indicate that political competition could be influencing on the perception of policy makers regarding the model of governance if sample local governments implement Web 2.0 technologies for e-services delivery. These differences can be also seen in Figure A1 in Appendix in which a discriminant analysis is performed.

Thus, as for the political competition, policy makers of majority governments seem to prefer collaborative models of governance, whereas minority governments are in favor for implementing noncollaborative models of governance (see Table A2 in Appendix). Indeed, minority governments seem to prefer the Bureaucratic Model of governance, whereas majority governments seem to prefer the Citizen Sourcing and “Do It Yourself Government” models of governance.

In addition, a discriminant analysis can be seen in Figure A1 in Appendix. According to Figure A1, differences exist between opinions of policy makers of majority and minority governments. As it can be seen, the discriminant analysis shows opposite frequencies according to the existence of political competition in the sample municipality. Therefore, Research Question 2 seems to be supported by our data.

Discussions

Web 2.0 technologies contribute an inherent value, rejuvenating civil society and shifting the focus away from unsustainable entitlements toward personal responsibility and solidarity (Linders, 2012). The popular maxim that “power comes with responsibility” would suggest new responsibilities for the newly empowered citizen (Linders, 2011). But this reworking of the social contract is not without controversy.

This article contributes to advance in the administrative structures that Web 2.0 technologies could be reconsidered in governments fostering open and user-driven governance (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010; Bertot, Jaeger, Munson, et al., 2010). A main limitation of our research is the limited number of responses (32.37% as the minimum response rate). Thus, our findings must be interpreted taking into account the level of responses obtained. In this regard, future research should increase the number of responses to the questionnaire to obtain richer data with the aim at undertaking wider analysis of the issue analyzed. Nonetheless, the methodology of research used in this article provides valid and robust results.

Our results indicate that, although policy makers in Spanish municipalities think that there is not a unique model of public network governance, a preference for the Bureaucratic Model and the “Government as a Platform” model was pointed out. Besides, according to their opinions, local governments should play the role of commissioner (executor) rather than that of coproducer or facilitator, and in this hierarchical order. Perhaps this result of our research is produced by the public administration style in Spain, which is based on the “Weberian/Bureaucratic Model” of production characterized by administrative law, which decisively influences the content, logic, and institutional autonomy of the public administration (Kickert, 1997).

Nonetheless, if this network management is performed by bureaucrats, as policy makers indicate they wish to see, this could lead local governments to a failed implementation of Web 2.0 technologies if they only use these technologies as innovative channels for their online representation and for broadcasting of government information, such as it has been demonstrated in local governments in Western Europe (Bonsón et al., 2015). Indeed, a recent study has indicated that citizens do not seem to show much interest toward these contents, and they prefer topics related to municipal management more closely related to their everyday lives, which has allowed to provide insights to municipalities regarding the need of identifying the most relevant topics for citizens in their jurisdictions, of providing useful information for them, and of collecting their opinions on these sensitive topics (Bonsón et al., 2015).

In addition, experience has been shown to be a highly significant factor for networking and network management (Edelenbos, Klijn, & Steijn, 2011). Indeed, based on two different surveys, one of them into local governments in the United States (Reddick & Norris, 2013) and another one conducted among managers who were involved in environmental projects in the Netherlands (Edelenbos et al., 2011), experience of years in e-government and managers who are for some time active within the network have been identified as two main factors that enhance the exploration and development of relationships with a variety of actors in social networks.

In addition, although Norris and Reddick (2013) ascertained from their 2011 survey to U.S. local governments that the adoption of social media had been significantly faster, a pilot consultation campaign that involved a plurality of stakeholders, including policy makers, National Health System employees, and citizens indicated that some training of public employees could be relevant for enhancing their participation effectively in social media dialogues (Ferro, Loukis, Charalabidis, & Osella, 2013). In fact, interviews with 25 county officials held in November and December 2010 in Arlington indicated that one of the main and necessary costs of adopting social media in public administration is related to training the employees who will use them (Kavanaugh et al., 2012), and 250 public servants in a workshop in Mexico City in 2009 identified employee training as a main limiting factor (Picazo-Vela et al., 2012).

Therefore, the lack of training for employees to use Web 2.0 technologies could be a limiting factor to implement these new technologies in providing public services, and it will require training and familiarization of government staff with a new language and style of dialogue with citizens, quite different from the existing ones (Ferro et al., 2013). Thus, it would be relevant that policy makers promote employee training in social media applications before implementing Web 2.0 technologies in e-services. In this regard, future research should analyze if public employees have the necessary knowledge in social media so as to manage the networks in governments that manage these networks under the Bureaucratic Model of governance. Else, if local governments have hired specialized professionals, such as community managers, in order to manage social media efficiently.

On the other hand, findings seem to indicate that political competition could explain the perceptions of policy makers regarding the governance models to be adopted. Results indicate that majority governments are prone to implement collaborative models of governance, whereas the minority governments are in favor for the noncollaborative one. This result does not support prior research, which has been demonstrated that political competition plays a key role to devolve institutional power to citizens (Smith & Fridkin, 2008). Therefore, more research should be undertaken regarding this issue.

Conclusion

To date, most local governments have used their web portals to present their catalogues of public services, but collaboration tools are not commonly found on these websites (Saiz, 2011). This article has mapped the governance models and the role that policy makers think that large local governments should play in this process. In addition, this article has investigated whether the political competition could explain sample policy makers’ opinion regarding the governance model to be adopted if Web 2.0 technologies in the public services delivery are implemented in their municipality.

On the whole, the findings seem to indicate that the main goal pursued by large governments is the representation of the agency function through all available online channels. Indeed, policy makers indicate that wish to retain a predominant role in the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies for the delivery of public services, monitoring and managing the Web 2.0 technologies directly, and they are less favorable to the inclusion of citizens in the generation of content and information. Accordingly, they hold the Bureaucratic Model to be the most appropriate model of governance for this implementation, and they think that large local government should mainly play the commissioner (executor) role of governance. This conclusion confirms other recent research findings according to which social media have their own logic but that this is only manifest when it encounters fertile ground within a government bureaucracy (Meijer & Thaens, 2013). In fact, Cordella and Tempini (2015) indicate that information and communication technologies can be used to support and enable bureaucratic practices in favor of government reforms and service delivery improvements.

Nonetheless, this model of web involvement shows that social media services are by no means immune to government censorship or government-sponsored censorship (MacKinnon, 2008, 2009), and our findings confirm prior research according to which local government still represents the Achilles heel of Spanish society as regards the advancement of e-government (Cegarra et al., 2012) and citizen engagement (Blank & Reisdorf, 2012). But some questions for future research arise: Are these findings influenced by the public administration style of countries? In this regard, can we affirm that certain institutional environments are more favorable for the implementation of social media strategies? or can we affirm that social media change public administrations? Will the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies widen the digital divide? All these questions remain to be addressed, and further study is, therefore, needed.

Footnotes

Appendix

Table A2.

Results of Cronbach’s α Coefficient for Internal Consistency of Items of the Questionnaire and Cluster Analysis.

			Cronbach’s α Analysis		Cluster Analysis
			Cronbach’s α	Cronbach’s α If Item Deleted	Cluster 1	Cluster 2	Cluster 3	Cluster 4
		All items	0.835
		N (frequency)			9	29	3	4
Collaborative models	Do It Yourself Government	Crobanch value	0.812
		Item 1.1		0.819	1.00	5.00	1.00	1.00
		Item 1.2		0.836	2.00	4.00	2.00	4.00
		Item 1.3		0.829	4.00	5.00	3.00	1.00
		Item 1.4		0.768	3.00	5.00	3.00	1.00
	Citizen Sourcing	Crobanch value	0.809
		Item 1.5		0.843	5.00	5.00	2.00	2.00
		Item 1.6		0.779	2.00	5.00	3.00	1.00
		Item 1.7		0.745	4.00	4.00	2.00	1.00
		Item 1.8		0.814	5.00	5.00	1.00	2.00
	Government as a Platform	Crobanch value	0.836
		Item 1.9		0.814	5.00	5.00	2.00	3.00
		Item 1.10		0.867	4.00	3.00	1.00	3.00
		Item 1.11		0.847	5.00	5.00	2.00	4.00
		Item 1.12		0.767	5.00	4.00	2.00	4.00
Noncollaborative models	Bureaucratic Model	Crobanch value	0.798
		Item 1.13		0.823	5.00	5.00	3.00	2.00
		Item 1.14		0.757	5.00	1.00	5.00	1.00
		Item 1.15		0.885	1.00	5.00	1.00	4.00
		Item 1.16		0.771	5.00	5.00	5.00	5.00
		Political competition			Majority governments	Majority governments	Minority governments	Majority governments

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was carried out with financial support from the Regional Government of Andalusia (Spain), Department of Innovation, Science and Enterprise (Research project number P11-SEJ-7700).

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