ICT and Innovation in the Provision of Public Services: The Case of Slovakia

Abstract

This paper discusses factors which determine the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) in public services. The provision of online public services is becoming increasingly utilized as a means to streamline and facilitate contact between citizens and public-sector bodies. The implementation of decentralization process also makes the accessibility of public services to citizens simpler. In this paper, the online services and factors which determine the level of such services are analyzed using the data set of 1216 services provided by municipalities in Slovakia. Special attention is paid to the examination of financial indicators which describe financial independence of local governments with respect to the assumption that local governments with higher level of expenditure covered by the revenue coming from proper taxes display more effective behavior in the field of public services. Thereafter, based on the results of econometric model and statistical methods key factors affecting the provision of online services are determined. The results of the model show that a higher level of ICT adoption in public services is achieved by larger municipalities which are district seats and which are financially autonomous. This is an important lesson for the policy as the process of fiscal decentralization appears to be a very important means of narrowing the gap between the developed and transition economies.

Keywords:

• computer technology
• innovation
• online services
• public services
• financial autonomy

Notes on contributor

Veronika Černáková is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Economics, Technical university of Košice. She holds a Ph.D. (2012) from the Faculty of Economics, Technical university of Košice, where she studied financing of innovations in public services. Her research activities are focused on innovation in public sector, mainly on the adoption of ICT in the public sector as well as on the local and regional development.

Notes

⁴Testing spatial dependencies before arranging the econometric model is important in terms of choosing correct model type. Due to the spatial location of the dependent variable OSI occurrence of spatial autocorrelation can be assumed, which would require the formulation of spatial regression models. As Moran's test proved independency of residuals we can formulate the linear regression model.

1 Over the last decade, numerous studies have been dealing with the issue of E-government models, e.g. United Nations and American Society for Public Administration (2001), Layne and Lee (2001), Moon (2002), Siau and Long (2005) and Andersen and Henriksen (2006). The implementation of E-government models differs with respect to the range of achievements and complexity. In our study we use a model which is officially used in the implementation process of the National Project Electronic services (Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family of the Slovak Republic, 2009) in Slovakia. This model is an application of the UN's five-stage model. We only use four stages due to the fact that the fifth stage has not been achieved by any kind of service yet.

2 NUTS – Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (from French: Nomenclature des Unités Territoriales Statistiques)

3 R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics (http://www.r-project.org/).

4 Testing spatial dependencies before arranging the econometric model is important in terms of choosing correct model type. Due to the spatial location of the dependent variable OSI occurrence of spatial autocorrelation can be assumed, which would require the formulation of spatial regression models. As Moran's test proved independency of residuals we can formulate the linear regression model.

5 It should be noted that between variables SF_RATIO and R/E no multicollinearity was detected.