Government on the Web

Productivity is defined as the ratio of outputs to inputs. When applied to the public sector, productivity becomes a key performance indicator that shows how efficiently public resources are employed in providing public services. Until not too long ago productivity in the public sector was assumed to be flat as outputs were given the same price as the cost of producing them. Recent methodological approaches suggest to measure outputs directly in order to count with realistic productivity estimates. Empirical public sector productivity studies are still in its infancy.

This paper investigates the impact of the internet upon individual contributions to collective action. It examines how political participation may be stimulated by one particular characteristic of the internet: its ability to provide real-time feedback information on the participation of others in a political action.

Economists studying commercial activity on-line argue that the most significant difference between on-line and off-line commerce is the ability of firms to ‘know who your customers are and treat them differently’ (Vulkan 2006), customizing prices and offerings. This difference comes from the huge amount of data generated by on-line transactions, in terms of historical records, usage statistics and real-time data. Yet in political life, governmental organizations and political parties have been far slower to use such data to improve their service offerings and devise innovative policy interventions, such as differential pricing and personalized information provision.

A book by Professor Christopher C. Hood (Oxford) and Professor Helen Margetts (Oxford).

Has been published by Palgrave Macmillan on 20th July 2007 (order details).