This article looks at the ways in which a number of charities are leading the United Kingdom's 'Third Sector' in their use of ICT/IS capabilities to deliver innovations in a range of business critical activities. It shows that new ICT/IS capabilities afforded opportunities within different types of charities to deliver change. In the older charities established in the 'pre-Internet' era, these shifts tend to work with and reflect the existing 'enterprise logic' or established 'ways of doing'. In the younger 'Net generation' organisations, the shifts tend to be more fluid in nature, enabling the delivery of new ways of doing and denoting the more flexible model of organisation upon which they were founded. Our research also shows that, in all of the charities, information and data capture and interrogation are intensifying.

The overarching argument here is that only a `whole polity' perspective, an `information polity' perspective, can be satisfactory as both a starting and finishing point for the predictive endeavour being set out in this special edition. The organising image is one of seeing two trajectories at work in the polity, trajectories that hitherto have too often been treated as separate but which are ineluctably intertwined. The first of these trajectories is that of information intensifying government/governance and the second, the trajectory associated with communications intensifying democratic character of the polity as both formally initiated in experimentation and innovation and in the informal, spontaneous democratic impulses that have emerged from the era of social networking, or 'web 2.0'. Drawn together these trajectories make up the wider polity, an information-and communications-intensive polity. Separating them for analytical purposes allows examination of the different paces of change in each of these trajectories, enabling speculative conclusions to be drawn, perhaps more accurately than otherwise, about what to expect in this century's third decade.

This paper reflects on public service behaviour surrounding the early post-implementation period of the 2002 Freedom of Information [Scotland] Act. Drawing from research completed in September 2007 it examines the extent to which freedom of information (FOI) is generating new arrangements for managing information, thereby supporting government’s broader modernisation agenda. By showing how FOI is managed within Scottish public bodies the paper also casts light on the practice of democratic government. It shows, too, how in three key aspects – administration, modernisation and democratisation – the delivery of FOI is infused by political behaviours and constrictions.

Governments around the world have far reaching expectations of service transformation to create citizen-centric government. New Identity Management (IDM) systems are acknowledged as the sine qua non for establishing 'Transformational government'. Whether the introduction of IDM-enabled service transformation will bring us the desired service state, or in fact a surveillance state, as proponents claim, is an important topic of an emerging public debate in the UK. In this chapter we empirically explore what IDM-enabled service transformation means by focusing on the introduction and use of a multi-functional smart card application in UK local government. Although we conclude that service transformation has happened in this particular case, with government-centric, instead of citizen-centric, government as the outcome, it turns out to be a much less revolutionary experience in practice than expected. Instead, we observe an evolutionary development of the smart card: a gradual, difficult and complex process in taking the smart card scheme forward.

The Freedom of Information [Scotland] Act 2002 (FOISA) offers opportunities to local governments to generate strategic and operational level organisational change centred around the management and flow of information. Our research findings show, however, that while FOISA is perceived to contribute to change it is not perceived as a catalyst for radical strategic transformation in its own right. Instead, the tendency is towards its absorption within the existing bureaucratic-administrative culture and organisational arrangements embedded within Scotland's local governments.

Governments are introducing new digital Identity Management (IDM) systems into public service relationships with citizens. These IDM systems not only can support governments in their modernization efforts, they are also expected to lead to significant informational changes in the citizen-government relationships. Thus far however, there is little empirical knowledge available about what changes are occurring in these emerging e-government service relationships as a result of using new IDM systems. With that, important questions arise as to how 'citizen identity information' and 'identity management' are being reconstructed conceptually in new forms of public service provision; and what the managerial, governance and democratic implications are of the deployment of these digital IDM systems in the relationship between the individual and the State. This contribution provides some empirically supported answers to these important questions.

In many countries, the introduction of new forms of identity management (IDM) in government, such as identity cards, smart cards or web-based e-authentication solutions, is receiving a lot of attention. Critics of these initiatives generally point at the expected outcome of substantial information imbalances between government and citizens. Clearly, newly formed, ICT-facilitated information relationships between government and citizens would not only need a reorganization of the e-government service domain itself but also a reconsideration of citizens' rights and responsibilities. However, to be able to address these issues adequately, we first need to gain further empirical understanding about what changes are happening to information relationships between citizens and government as a result of the introduction of new forms of IDM in e-government service provision. So far however there is not much empirical knowledge available about what changes are occurring both within and to these flows of information in new e-government service relationships between citizens and government. Accompanying these changes, important questions arise as to how, and to what extent, new forms of IDM have an effect upon what may be called the 'administrative sorting' activities of governments: those classifying processes caused by administrative systems and depending on the values embedded in those systems, which are necessary to the establishment of service relationships with citizens. What, then, are the effects on the citizen of administrative sorting in digitized service relationships, when set against the traditional concept of citizenship? This article reports on empirical findings derived from case study research on new forms of IDM in UK e-government. Moreover it seeks to conceptualize 'administrative sorting' and 'IDM' in e-government service relationships with citizens, also compared to traditional forms of IDM in the 'paper-based era' of public service provision, and explores what the implications are for the citizen and citizenship.

The rise of 'e-government', both as a recognized field of practice and an identifiable and legitimate field of study, has occurred extraordinarily rapidly throughout the world. The term 'e-government' has come to capture and de-limit in toto what might be termed the agenda for government in the age of the Internet. This article questions the value of the orthodox interpretation, the paradigm, that has so rapidly emerged around e-government, in particular the casual assumption that e-government is ipso facto 'citizen-centric'. In so-doing this article reveals a concern that different questions must be asked in order to understand 'e-government' and its implications fully and fundamentally. If we are to ask these different questions rather than those to which we are drawn under the orthodox e-government frame of reference then this field will become more theoretically informed, particularly in ways that aid our understanding of 'citizenship' in the 'e-ubiquitous' State.

Voluntary organizations are key actors within contemporary democratic polities. To be so raises crucial questions about their performance along three dimensions of democratic behaviour – their citizen engagement, their legitimacy, and their public accountability. These questions of performance are made sharper as the World Wide Web brings forward new imperatives and opportunities for these organizations to perform along each of these three dimensions. This article develops and sets out an analytical framework through which an evaluation can begin of whether and how voluntary organizations are using the Web to support and enhance their engagement along these three democratic dimensions.

This paper is concerned with the ambiguities and confusions that arise when studies of the ‘surveillance state’ are contrasted with studies of the ‘service state’. Surveillance studies take a largely negative view of the information capture and handling of personal data by Government agencies. Studies that examine Government service providing take a largely positive view of such data capture as Government is seen to be attempting to enhance service provision to individual citizens. This paper examines these opposing perspectives through a series of case studies and concludes that a new understanding and methodology should be brought forward so as to create a reconciliation of these two points of departure for research. The call is for an holistic appreciation of data capture activities by Government so that researchers and public policy makers alike can appreciate and reconcile these competing perspectives.

As part of its major programme of 'modernisation' the UK Government is seeking to implement an electronic mixed economy that will deliver public services through private firms, voluntary organisations and 'second party' public bodies. Such bodies have been styled 'intermediaries' by Government. This article is based upon a preliminary, exploratory study of the electronic mixed economy in its early stages of delivery. Focusing largely upon the relationship between a large Government department, the Department of Work and Pensions, and a leading national voluntary organisation, the Citizens Advice service, the authors examine the distinctive arrangements underpinning this initiative together with the emerging policy and management issues to which these arrangements are giving rise.

My main theme in this short essay is that scholars of what I have called the information polity [3,13, 14] should lift up their sights and engage with the ‘macro themes’ of the day, as they have done in the past. It is interesting to me to see how our collective sights have lowered during the past 10 years, or so. We have in that period become more and more concerned with meso and micro themes relating to forms of public management, and systems development and application. We have been somewhat less engaged by the larger issues that governments and their citizens have been concerned about. Where are the papers on citizenship in the information polity; on privacy and control and on their bedfellow, surveillance; on information-intensive government at both general and policy-specific levels; on the challenges for Governments of the evolution of the world-wide web, specifically issues of Internet governance and the so-styled Web 2.0? How should we evaluate the macro threats and benefits with which information age Government confronts us? What ideas, concepts and theories can we rediscover, reinvent or develop that will enable us to speak to these major challenges? This main theme of mine engages with that of Wim van de Donk who has spoken today about reviving some critical spirit into our subject field. Above all, we need to lift ourselves out of the e-government agendas set by Governments themselves and by global Consultancy firms and rediscover our academic tradition of thoughtful and critical theorising, supported by empirical research.

Governments are introducing, managing and using digitized personal identification and authentication systems in their service relationships with citizens in addition to, and increasingly in replacement of, traditional forms of personal identification and authentication. An important question is to what extent these developments are causing innovation in the sense of a renewal of traditional institutions in the government domain. By presenting public debate with regard to the recently proposed UK National Identity Cards initiative we will show that a public administration perspective is needed to be able to detect more fundamental forms of innovation in government.

This book deals with an important, but vexed, question, one which should be of interest both to scholars of the digital society and to governments that must regulate it.This question is the extent to which public service information (PSI) -a collective noun for the myriad data generated by public service agencies in the course of their work -should be regarded as a public good, to be made freely and publicly available, and the extent to which it should be regarded as a commodity, to be bought and sold.The book sets the debate within changing political and ideological contexts, including the impact of public services liberalisation, on the one hand, and the strengthening of human rights legislation, including the right to personal privacy, on the other.The result is a timely contribution to key debates in national and pan-European public policy for the digital age.So far as I know, it is also one of the first books to enter this field.As such, it is very welcome.Many of the papers in this collection first saw the light of day at a conference in Vienna held under the auspices of the EU's COST Action A14 on Government and Democracy in the Information Age.The collection has since been revised and extended for this book.This format has allowed the editors to bring together many acknowledged experts in this field, and the book benefits greatly from their extensive knowledge of policy debates and developments in a wide range of countries.The result is neither an exercise in comparative social science nor a balanced review of a substantive field of public policy: the authors do not seek to explain cross country differences in information policy, nor does the collection, as a whole, provide a forum for protagonists from various sides of this debate to state their various arguments.Rather, this book offers a platform for a wide range of international experts to make a common argument: that open access to PSI -where governments charge no more than the marginal costs of making PSI available widely and freely -is of much greater economic, social and political benefit to their nations than policies which allow, or encourage, the commodification and exclusive exploitation of information.The overall conclusion, ably stated by Herbert Burkert and Peter N Weiss, is that governments should therefore develop policies that support full, open and unrestricted access to PSI.It is important to note, however, that Burkert's and Weiss's argument -along with that of several other contributors -goes way beyond (what is often presented as) the standard case for Freedom of Information.For the purpose of this book, PSI not only includes public service administrative data and information about government policy, but also cultural artefacts produced by public services in the course of their publication, educational and broadcasting activities, and research data, spatial data such as maps, and meteorological data.In other words, it includes information that is offered for sale by many governments in Europe.Nevertheless, Burkert and Weiss argue that governments should encourage the private, commercial sector to meet the needs of citizens for value added information services by making all forms of PSI available for commercial exploitation at marginal cost, and that governments should also avoid the imposition of copyright or other kinds of intellectual property rights.The dilemmas governments face in making information policy is laid bare in the opening chapters in this collection.Charles Raab's chapter deals authoritatively with the many layered tensions in national

This chapter explores how new forms of citizen identification in electronic government may be enabling government agencies to re-shape their relationship to citizens. Just as Freedom of Information legislation comes into force in the UK, so government is becoming freer in its use of information on the citizen as it seeks to respond both to the demands imposed by customer relationship management (CRM) and the demands for enhanced citizen safety and state security. The delivery of new forms of market sensitive electronic public services provide government agencies with both novel and specific methods of citizen identification. These are the subject of a new research project; a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and based at the Oxford Internet Institute, in collaboration with Caledonian Business School1 Emerging from this research is a complex typology of citizen identification by government agencies, combining key variables including technological domain, policy sector, type of citizen relationship, institutional setting and methods of information capture and management through which identity is both initiated and authenticated, and from which access to services is authorized. The technologies currently employed for citizen identification include:

English Voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) are actors of growing significance within the ‘information polity’. One testament to their significance is the UK government's recent proposal for the development of an electronic mixed economy that will see VSOs act as ‘intermediaries’ in the delivery of e-government services, including e-democratic services. As VSOs independently harness information and communication technologies (ICTs) in ways that are enabling them to strengthen their ‘voices’ within both the national and international political system, so interrelated questions about their political identity, democratic legitimacy and accountability become profoundly important within the intermediaries context.

As the UK government seeks to (re)-establish a high-trust relationship with citizens, voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) are being incorporated within the state in ways that are designed to shift blame and risk away from government. This is not a straightforward process: as the government seeks to manage trust relationships through this engagement with VSOs, significant new risks are being generated for e-government. In conceptualising this emerging relationship between government and VSOs as concerned with trust, blame, and risk, this essay brings fresh perspective to the deepening debate about how government and voluntary sector are re-positioning their relationship.