Appraising the impact and role of platform models and Government as a Platform (GaaP) in UK Government public service reform: Towards a Platform Assessment Framework (PAF)

A flexible framework for requirement management (FFRM) from software architecture toward distributed agile framework

GSD is a Global software development environment where data are distributed to more than two sites. These sites may be located on national or continental borders. Every year it expands its development volume, which has become a trend for the software development business. Because of increasing demand, it has become a common type of business. The value of offshore software development has increased immensely. According to the recent predictions, one-quarter of US software-related business shifts offshore, including integration and management-related services. GSD helps explore resources from other countries, increasing knowledge and enhancing operational efficiency. Therefore, globalization has changed the development nature of software. Different organizations face several challenges, such as coordination and requirement ambiguity, during the change management process in GSD. Traceability accommodates these changes in forward and backward direction. However, it gives rise to several challenges like less client involvement because of its distributed nature and challenging to manage the requirement ambiguity due to increased cost. Therefore, the Flexible Framework for Requirement Management (FFRM) must handle the abovementioned issues.

Interactive Teaching Methods as a Means of Developing Creative Activity of Instrumentalist Students in the Context of Distance Learning

The relevance of the problem is conditioned by the need to adapt musical art to the conditions of distance education. The paper highlights the main approaches to the implementation of interactive teaching methods for instrumentalist students as an effective means of developing creative activity in the context of distance education. In the context of a pandemic, learning is being transformed into a virtual environment, in particular, a remote way of conducting training sessions. This feature requires a separate pedagogical approach to the development of skills in mastering musical instruments. Therefore, the education process needs to be updated and modernised. The purpose of the study was to determine the methods of interactive teaching of instrumentalist students. Theoretical and methodological approaches to the use of interactive teaching methods are substantiated, in particular, the essence of interactive learning is determined, the features of distance learning are determined, and methods for studying the creative activity of instrumentalist students are highlighted. The concepts of interactivity and creativity are revealed. The features of distance learning are analysed, in particular, effective educational technologies and teaching methods are determined, and cloud technologies are identified as the most effective. The method of determining creativity was used to investigate the creativeness of instrumentalist students. The study results became the basis for the effective implementation of interactive learning methods in the process of organising distance learning with instrumentalist students. The practical significance lies in the identification of the most effective interactive methods of development of creativity and the conclusion of appropriate exercises. The expediency of using interactive methods based on the study by researchers as the most effective in the process of distance learning is also substantiated.

Does a smart business environment promote corporate investment? a case study of Hangzhou

As a result of business environment reforms in China’s Hangzou, the cost of business has reduced, the confidence of Hangzhou enterprises has survived the COVID-19 outbreak, and foreign investment continues to increase. Nevertheless, Hangzhou’s business environment has shortcomings, such as insufficient technology, talent, and intelligent infrastructure. Two unresolved questions persist: (i) Has the smart business environment stimulated corporate investment by reducing system costs and boosting corporate confidence? (ii) How do the commercial climate’s shortcomings impact the relationship between the intelligent business environment and business costs/confidence? We examined the impact of a local smart business environment on the corporate investment scale in Hangzhou using factor analysis, cluster analysis, linear regression, and path analyses of data from 297 firm managers. Smart governance improved public administration, financing, and rule of law. The business environment promoted investment by increasing business confidence and decreasing institutional costs. Weak intelligent property protection and legal fairness hindered the positive influence of smart governance on business confidence and system costs. This is the first study combining business environment, smart city, and smart governance concepts to analyze the influence of local smart business environments on business confidence, institutional costs, and investment. Our conclusion on the limitation effect of intelligent business environment on enterprise investment attempts to inspire further research on the intersection of business environments and smart cities. The law of intelligent business environment attracting investment obtained in the context of China, the largest developing country with diversified economic development, is of great significance for other developing countries. Countries can attract investment and promote economic development through intelligent governance. Developing countries should construct smart service platforms, coordinate supervision of public credit, reduce financing constraint, construct a government under the rule of law, improve the quality of land management, and protect intellectual property rights.

Orchestrating a digital platform ecosystem to address societal challenges: A robust action perspective

Orchestration of digital platform ecosystems has been well examined in the context of markets and the private sector where an orchestrator is a resourceful firm exploiting commercial opportunities in an industry. However, little is known about how it occurs when a government organization orchestrates to address societal challenges. We build upon the construct of “robust action”—identified with chess masters who play to advance a broad strategy while simultaneously maintaining flexibility—to explain how orchestration by a government organization might overcome initiation, stabilization, expansion, and meta-governance challenges through digital platform-enabled participative architecture, multivocal inscriptions, and distributed experimentation. Evidence for our theoretical framework is drawn from empirical studies of the Aadhaar, a platform ecosystem orchestrated to address multiple societal challenges stemming from identity and its management.

A Review of Digital Era Governance Research in the First Two Decades: A Bibliometric Study

The emergence of digital technologies has profoundly affected and transformed almost every aspect of societal relations. These impacts have also reached public administration, including its governance. Digital technologies’ rise has paved the way for the surfacing of a new public governance model called the Digital Era Governance (DEG) model (often referred to as e-government, digital government, e-governance, or digital governance) in which digital technologies play a central role. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive and in-depth examination of DEG research over the past two decades. Bibliometric analysis is based on the Scopus database that contains 9175 documents published between 2001 and 2020. In this context, several established and innovative bibliometric approaches are applied. The results reveal the growth of DEG research over the last two decades, especially in recent years, as accelerated by several of the most relevant documents published in reputable journals such as Government Information Quarterly. Most DEG research has been conducted in Anglo-Saxon countries, as confirmed while examining the most relevant authors’ affiliations and collaborations. The results also indicate that DEG has advanced from conventional public services to citizen-oriented e-services by including citizens’ participation and, most recently, even to smart services by facilitating emerging and disruptive technologies. The findings add to the stock of scientific knowledge and support the evidence-based policymaking needed to successfully pursue a sustainable future.

Digital government transformation in turbulent times: Responses, challenges, and future direction

We are living in turbulent times, with the threats of COVID-19 and related social conflicts. Digital transformation is not an option but a necessity for governments to respond to these crises. It has become imperative for governments worldwide to enhance their capacity to strategically use emerging digital technologies and develop innovative digital public services to confront and overcome the pandemic. With the rapid development of digital technologies, digital government transformation (DGT) has been legitimated in response to the pandemic, contributing to innovative efficacy, but it also has created a set of challenges, dilemmas, paradoxes, and ambiguities. This special issue’s primary motive is to comprehensively discuss the promises and challenges DGT presents. It focuses on the nature of the problems and the dilemmatic situation in which to use the technologies. Furthermore, it covers government capacity and policy implications for managerial and institutional reforms to respond to the threats and the uncertainty caused by disruptive digitalization in many countries. To stimulate discussion of the theme of this special issue, this editorial note provides an overview of previous literature on DGT as a controlling measure of the pandemic and the future direction of research and practice on DGT.

Effects of Application of Information on the Expectations of Benefits from GaaP: Moderating Effects from Perceptions of IIT

In the age of digital transformation, this study aims to reveal the determinant factors of the expectations of public officials of the benefits from Government as a Platform (GaaP). This study utilizes information as an independent variable, with the perception of intelligent information technologies (IIT) as a moderating variable, along with practical effects from three types of GaaP (cooperative GaaP, intelligent GaaP, and transparent GaaP) as dependent variables in establishing our research model. We conducted multiple regression analysis and moderating effect analysis to verify the proposed hypotheses. The robust regression relation analysis was adopted to solve outlier problems. Based on the results, we recommend that governments promote favorable circumstances for using information and that all government officials should get used to utilizing IIT in their jobs. The government also needs to adopt the bottom-up approach for adopting IIT or innovation. We also found that leaders need to be careful when considering a top-down approach in the public sector because strong leadership is a double-edged sword.

Determinant Factors for Adoption of Government as a Platform in South Korea: Mediating Effects on the Perception of Intelligent Information Technology

This study aims to shed light on determinant factors for the introduction of Government as a Platform (GaaP) by public officers who can be platform providers or main stakeholders in GaaP. It focuses on public officers in 261 Korean public agencies. In order to verify the research model’s hypotheses, we take advantage of Structural Equation Modeling and the Technology Acceptance Model. As a first result, concerning the direct effect on GaaP, the quality of open data, the scope of the stakeholders, and attitudes to civic engagement have a positive relationship on the perceived usefulness of Intelligent Information Technology (IIT). Second, in terms of the effect of IIT on GaaP, the perceived usefulness of IIT mediates positively on the intention to adopt GaaP based on the quality of open data, the scope of the stakeholders, and attitudes towards civic engagement. Based on these results, policy implications can be described as follows. Besides managing internal open data, governments should actively mine new open data that can create added value for innovation. They need to create an easily cooperative environment with other stakeholders, especially non-public participants, and governments should encourage public officers to more actively accept and utilize IIT in their jobs.

The Evolution of City-as-a-Platform: Smart Urban Development Governance with Collective Knowledge-Based Platform Urbanism

Since the advent of the second digital revolution, the exponential advancement of technology is shaping a world with new social, economic, political, technological, and legal circumstances. The consequential disruptions force governments and societies to seek ways for their cities to become more humane, ethical, inclusive, intelligent, and sustainable. In recent years, the concept of City-as-a-Platform was coined with the hope of providing an innovative approach for addressing the aforementioned disruptions. Today, this concept is rapidly gaining popularity, as more and more platform thinking applications become available to the city context—so-called platform urbanism. These platforms used for identifying and addressing various urbanization problems with the assistance of open data, participatory innovation opportunity, and collective knowledge. With these developments in mind, this study aims to tackle the question of “How can platform urbanism support local governance efforts in the development of smarter cities?” Through an integrative review of journal articles published during the last decade, the evolution of City-as-a-Platform was analyzed. The findings revealed the prospects and constraints for the realization of transformative and disruptive impacts on the government and society through the platform urbanism, along with disclosing the opportunities and challenges for smarter urban development governance with collective knowledge through platform urbanism.

The Priority of Factors of Building Government as a Platform with Analytic Hierarchy Process Analysis

Nowadays, the Government as a Platform (GaaP) based on cloud computing and network, has come to be considered a new structure to manage efficiently data-driven administration in the public sector. When the GaaP concept was first introduced, the ICT infrastructures that could underpin GaaP were not sufficiently developed. However, the recent digital transformation has transformed the previous electronic government, which was system- and architecture-oriented. As part of the next generation of government models, GaaP may reinvent the government at a lower cost but with better performance, similar to the case of electronic government two decades ago. This study attempted to determine the priority of factors of GaaP by using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methodology. Because of the GaaP characteristics, we drew the main components for building GaaP from previous studies and a group interview with experts. The study results show that experts tend to prefer publicness in terms of building GaaP. Most of the factors that the experts weighed with the highest importance are related to the public sector, which revealed that governments should focus on their primary duty, regardless of the origin and characteristics of the platform in GaaP. However, since GaaP allows governments to be more horizontal and innovative, the platform approach can fundamentally shift the existing processes and culture of the public sector. The enhanced activity of citizens with ICT can also accelerate the introduction of GaaP. Finally, the study showed that a data-driven GaaP is necessary to efficiently handle big data, contract services, and multiple levels of on-line and off-line channels. In this public platform, government, citizens, and private sector organizations can work cooperatively as partners to seamlessly govern the hyper-connected society.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in strategic marketing decision-making: a research agenda

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review literature about the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in strategic situations and identify the research that is needed in the area of applying AI to strategic marketing decisions.

Design/methodology/approach

The approach was to carry out a literature review and to consult with marketing experts who were invited to contribute to the paper.

Findings

There is little research into applying AI to strategic marketing decision-making. This research is needed, as the frontier of AI application to decision-making is moving in many management areas from operational to strategic. Given the competitive nature of such decisions and the insights from applying AI to defence and similar areas, it is time to focus on applying AI to strategic marketing decisions.

Research limitations/implications

The application of AI to strategic marketing decision-making is known to be taking place, but as it is commercially sensitive, data is not available to the authors.

Practical implications

There are strong implications for all businesses, particularly large businesses in competitive industries, where failure to deploy AI in the face of competition from firms, who have deployed AI to improve their decision-making could be dangerous.

Social implications

The public sector is a very important marketing decision maker. Although in most cases it does not operate competitively, it must make decisions about making different services available to different citizens and identify the risks of not providing services to certain citizens; so, this paper is relevant to the public sector.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first papers to probe deployment of AI in strategic marketing decision-making.

The making of information nations

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main characteristics of what have come to be called information nations and to identify some of the determinants of success in becoming an information nation.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on a critical review of the literature and of secondary data on information technology and services from studies of the innovativeness of nations.

Findings

Success in becoming an information nation is not necessarily closely connected with investments in information technology and services by firms and policies supporting these investments by governments, or with education policies designed to support the development of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Other factors, such as the vibrancy of capitalism, particularly the funding of new ventures, the culture of the nation and its focus on non-scientific determinants of innovation, such as design, are also important. Governments should be careful not to take credit for achievements when their policies are merely coincident with those achievements.

Research limitations/implications

The main limitations relate to the focus of this article on two sets of nations, South East/East Asia and two Western nations. The review of their performance is relatively high level and needs to be deepened, while the number of nations included in the research needs to be increased.

Practical implications

This paper has substantial practical implications for government policymakers, in terms of whether and how they should make policy at all in this area, and for companies trying to establish a long-term position in the global economy, in terms of being careful not to go against the very strong economic forces which favour certain kinds of activities in certain countries.

Social implications

This paper has significant social implications, because much of the thinking about developing information societies relies on generalisations about the creation of information nations that may not hold. Governments and social commentators are encouraged to approach the idea of making “big policies” in this area with some scepticism.

Originality/value

The content of this paper is not original, but the challenge to policymakers is relatively original, as too often the work of academics is sponsored by governments that are trying to legitimate the value of their own efforts.