https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3308-033X
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ABSTRACT
Current research suggests that the way in which governments interpret e-government has the potential to affect e-government implementation but lacks systematic exploration. To address this gap, this study examines the role of issue definition in affecting e-government implementation. Taking Chinese provincial-level digital public service (DPS) as a case, this study finds that Chinese provincial governments prioritize economic potential over democratic potential when defining e-government. An economic-oriented issue definition of e-government can facilitate subsequent DPS implementation, eliciting a larger number of policy documents and better performance. However, defining e-government more as a democratic issue may not exert a sufficient influence.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented in the 25th International Public Management Network (IPMN) annual conference in 2021, International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM) Conference in 2022. The author would like to thank anonymous reviewers, Xiaohu Wang, Alex Jingwei He, Shaowei Chen and other participants for developmental comments and suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. In studies on policy processes, issue definition and policy framing are often used interchangeably. ‘Defining a policy issue’ and ‘framing a policy issue’ have the same meaning. As noted by Gilardi, Shipan and Wüest (Citation2021), ‘These frames or issue definitions tell us how a policy problem is perceived or understood at any given time’. This study uses these two terms interchangeably.
2. See the following example: http://www.gd.gov.cn/zwgk/zdlyxxgkzl/xzsp/content/post_2163145.html.
3. See the following example: https://www.henan.gov.cn/2010/11-04/304941.html.
4. The timeframe starts in 2015 because DPS reform was initiated in 2015. The timeframe ends in 2019 because the COVID-19 pandemic came about in 2020 and severely disrupted Chinese governments’ normal operations. Most personnel resources, including those responsible for provincial official newspapers, were diverted to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Official newspapers in this period focused mainly on combating COVID-19, making it difficult to fully reflect the government’s intentions regarding e-government development under regular circumstances. This situation may lead to bias in data regarding e-government discourse. Therefore, to ensure that the analysis covers a period when the government operating normally, I focus mainly on the period from 2015 to 2019.
5. There are five levels of government (central state, provincial, prefecture city, county, and township governments) in China. Provincial governments compose the top tier of local government systems. The three lower tiers, local governments, have to follow and implement policies and directives given by provincial governments. There are 31 provincial governments in Mainland China. Provincial governments have the power to coordinate and supervise policy implementation at lower levels within their jurisdictions.
6. This additive score is probably the best performance score for evaluating Chinese provincial DPS that can be provided to the public, as the CNAG is officially authorized by the e-Government Office of the Chinese State Council to evaluate provincial DPS performance since 2015 in the form of an Evaluation Report Series. The CNAG has expertise and the ability to conduct this third-party evaluation, as it has official relationships with the United Nations in their E-government Survey projects, such as in terms of Chinese version translation and promotion. The evaluation schemes and components have remained relatively stable, with only specific tertiary indicators undergoing slight adjustments in accordance with changes in digital advancements. The CNAG has also provided a detailed introduction to the evaluation framework and its minor adjustments for each year. Detailed information on the evaluation scheme can be accessed via the following official link: https://zwpg.egovernment.gov.cn/col/col1327/index.html.
7. For example, annual government working reports may contain keywords such as ‘e-government’, as they cover issues in all major policy areas. However, issues regarding e-government cover only a small area. This means that government working reports are not truly focused on e-government.
8. When using unsupervised machine learning techniques (e.g. LDA) to conduct text analysis, researchers must determine the number of topics they will extract from the corpus. The topic coherence score is an important indicator that can help researchers determine the number of topics covered in a corpus. After calculating the topic coherence score with different numbers of topics, I find that the topic coherence score behaves ideally when the number of extracted topics is 16. Furthermore, this study qualitatively checks the semantic validity and topic exclusivity of the results.
9. Nine of 16 topics can be classified under the economic category. These topics include ‘Economic and Trade Cooperation’, ‘Economic Institution’, ‘Investment and Economic Growth’, ‘Innovation Economy’, ‘Informatization’, ‘Market Regulation’, ‘Administrative Licensing’, ‘Public Resource Deals’, and ‘Tax-Related Issues’. For detailed information on topic categorization, see Appendix C.
10. Three of 16 topics can be classified under the democratic category. Because the topics cover keywords closely related to different aspects of democracy enhancement, they include ‘Government Disclosure’, ‘Anticorruption’ and ‘Rule of Law’.
11. However, the VIF values of two control variables, internet access and population size, are higher than 10. These two variables are commonly included in existing e-government and technological innovation studies. To ensure the robustness of my model, I also delete these two variables and re-estimate the models. The results remain the same.
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Ziteng Fan
Ziteng Fan is assistant professor at Institute for Global Public Policy, Fudan University, China. He studies digital government, public sector innovation and policy process theories. His recent research is published in Public Management Review, Social Policy and Society, Information Technology & People, International Public Management Journal and Policy Studies.