Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed October 9, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 449-472).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Syracuse University, 2007. / "Publication number: AAT 3281715."

M. Tech. Business Administration / The City of Tshwane initiated and implemented a structural and infrastructural change process in recent years, by merging with Metsweding District, Cullinan and Bronkhorstspruit. One of the critical tools that influences the success or failure of a change process is communication. This study investigates how communication during the implementation phase was utilised and it impacted on the attitudes and behaviours of employees of City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality.

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Technology Degree in Information Technology, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2014. / This study reports on the design of a framework for measuring e-government readiness. Particular attention is paid to providing a measurement framework that is feasible for municipalities and supports their efforts to utilize e-government for the benefit of the society and the economy. The evaluation of e-government readiness for municipalities can provide a useful barometer to measure the critical needs of citizens. In addition, it can be useful for improving the effectiveness of government services and could assist information communication technology industry to access information for implementing efficient infrastructures to support the delivery of e-services. The model of e-government readiness measurement as reported in this dissertation is based on heterogeneous factors of supporting e-services, individual citizens, technological infrastructure, government and supporting industry. The readiness measurement process utilized data obtained from a survey of 219 government employees from 4 municipalities in Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The partial least square method was used to determine the relationship between the measured factors. The study results revealed the measurement factors to be significant determinants of municipality e-government readiness with an overall goodness of fit performance of 0.81 and predictive power of 0.68. In addition, a response based segmentation approach of finite mixture partial least squares is applied to uncover unobserved heterogeneity in government employees. The study findings show that the main difference characterising the two uncovered segments of population heterogeneity lies in the internet accessibility using computers. The impact of government readiness and technology readiness on predicting e-government readiness is stronger for the first segment than for the second segment. The segment specific analysis clearly shows that the impact of factors that influence the readiness of e-government can differ vastly, depending on the background of participants. The study findings generally provide a foundation for policymakers and technology practitioners who are interested in propagating e-government readiness awareness across the country. In addition, factors that determine the e-government readiness could provide new insights for future studies on e-municipality service improvement evaluations.

Thesis (MA (Public and Development Management))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / Internal communication has the potential of improving the ability of local authorities to deliver effective and efficient basic services. Local authorities are the pillar upon which governments rely to champion the decentralisation process which has been widely hailed as enabling service delivery to the communities. The Lilongwe City Assembly recognises the need to address internal communication issues, but have neither carried out any meaningful analysis of its internal communication nor has it developed an internal communication plan or guidelines. The communication audit methodology is relatively unknown in the public sector in Malawi and it is hoped that this study brings to light the advantages of giving organisational communication its deserved role in activities of the public sector. It is hoped that this study would be replicated in the remaining 38 local assemblies with a view to improving service delivery. This study assessed the internal communication of the Assembly as part of a broader perspective of organisational communication. Specifically, it measured the effectiveness of internal communication at the Lilongwe City Assembly. The methodology involved measuring the perceived current and ideal amounts of information in eight fundamental areas of internal communication, namely receiving information from others, sending information to others, action on information sent, channels of communication, communication relationships, communication and work satisfaction, timeliness of information received from key sources and sources of information. Findings from a sample of 186 respondents of the Assembly indicated a great need to receive information and to interact with Assembly management more frequently than what is happening currently. The communication between subordinates and co-workers seems to be satisfactory. However, the majority of respondents expressed the need to engage with Assembly management on a number of key issues, including staff welfare, salaries and benefits. In addition, a concern about the inability of employees to master the English language was cited as reducing the capacity of the Assembly to fully implement its work activities. / cmc2010

As Ouvidorias públicas são interlocutoras entre o cidadão e a Administração, pautando-se nos princípios constitucionais da Legalidade, Impessoalidade, Moralidade, Publicidade e Eficiência, atuando como instrumento de participação na gestão democrática e como representantes legítimas dos interesses dos cidadãos. O acesso à informação é base da democracia, encontrando-se assegurado constitucionalmente (art. 5º, XIV e XXXIII) e infraconstitucionalmente (Lei nº 12.527, de 18.11.2011). A liberdade conferida aos cidadãos abarca o direito de acesso a informação, especialmente porque viabiliza a participação popular e, por via de consequencia, torna dinâmica a democracia. Uma sociedade bem informada é capaz de intervir eficazmente no destino do Estado, fazendo valer a soberania da vontade popular. A participação garante ao cidadão o acesso aos atos de gestão do governo, possibilitando à coletividade o exercício do controle social sobre os atos do Estado. O trabalho objetiva examinar a Ouvidoria da UTFPR como um instrumento de participação popular na gestão administrativa. A pesquisa realizada é exploratória e aplicada, tendo por método o estudo de caso. Na coleta de dados, utiliza-se de múltiplas fontes de evidência: documentação, registros em arquivo, questionário e artefatos físicos. Os resultados denotam que a procura pelos serviços da Ouvidoria da UTFPR é crescente, inobstante as dificuldades enfrentadas pelos ouvidores no desempenho de seu mister – pouco ou nenhum espaço físico, impossibilidade de dedicação exclusiva à atividade, dentre outras. Os questionários respondidos por ouvidores, ex-ouvidores e gestores permitem concluir que a Ouvidoria pública universitária da UTFPR é um espaço de comunicação do usuário com a Administração, um instrumento de participação popular na gestão administrativa. No entanto, sua autonomia deve ser robustecida. Como resultado, propõe-se a implementação de avaliação periódica do usuário/cliente, maior divulgação da Ouvidoria, alteração da localização da Ouvidoria no sítio eletrônico da Universidade, investimento em cursos de mediação. / The office of ombudsman intermediate communication between citizens and the Administration, based on the constitutional principles of Legality, Impersonality, and Efficiency, acting as an instrument of participation in the democratic management and as lawful representatives to the citizens´ interests. Information access is based on democracy and is enlisted as a constitutional (article 5, XIV e XXXIII of Brazil´s Federal Constitution) and infra-constitutionally (Law nº 12.527, of November 18th, 2011) right. The freedom granted to citizens comprises the participation in the right to access information, especially since it allows popular participation and consequently, makes democracy more dynamic. A well informed society is able to take effective action in the State´s destiny, enforcing the sovereignty of common will. Public participation grants citizen access to governmental management acts, enabling social control over the acts of the State. The hereby paper focus on examining UTFPR´s Ombudsman as an instrument of public participation in administrative management. The present research is exploratory and applied, using a study case as the method. In the data collection, multiple sources of evidence are used: article records, a questionnaire and physical artifacts. The results show that UTFPR´s Ombudsman service demand is rising, regardless of the challenges faced by the office of the Ombudsman while exercising the constitutionally imposed task – little or no physical room, impossibility of full time dedication to the office, among others challenges. The questionnaires answered by Ombudsman officers, former officers and managers enable the researcher to conclude that the Office of the UTFPR Ombudsman is a place of communication between the user and the Administration, an instrument of popular participation in management. However, its autonomy must be strengthened. As a result of the research, the author concludes that the implementation of periodical evaluation by the user/customer; more Ombudsman disclosure; changes in the University´s website concerning the Ombudsman; investment in courses on mediation, are advisable.

In recent years, an increasing number of people move into cities to search for better opportunities for themselves and their families. This movement is known as urbanisation and makes it difficult for the local government to fully understand citizens’ needs particularly pertaining to public safety matters. During the first phase of the Public Safety Smart City project, it was identified that there is a need for feedback loop to facilitate effective communication of public safety issues between citizens and local government. This means that EL citizens do not have a better channel in place to address their public safety issues to the local government. This could lead to the decisions made by the local government in public safety not fully communicated back to the citizens. The primary objective of the study is to develop a feedback loop model that will assist in more effective reporting of public safety issues between citizens and the local government. The study followed an interpretivism paradigm and the research methodology employed is the qualitative approach. This was influenced by the existing De Fleur model of communication, secondary data and also semi-structured interviews. The interviews were conducted with eleven citizens and four managers from the Department of Public Safety. It was ascertained that the lack of a feedback loop about public safety issues between citizens and local government is likely to increase public safety issues. Findings revealed that this is because citizens are not continuously updated about their reports and also about the state of public safety matters. Furthermore, the methods of communication utilised lead to poor communication of public safety issues. The study concludes that the introduction of an Information and Communication Technology enabled feedback loop between citizens and local government can help in reducing public safety issues and make public safety officials proactive rather than reactive.

Thesis (MPAM.) -- University of Limpopo, 2019 / The purpose of this study was to investigate municipal-citizen communication channels of the Thulamela Local Municipality, and their implications on service delivery. The study adopted a mixed method, qualitative-quantitative sequential approach. Qualitative data was sourced from key-informants comprised of community leaders, Ward Committee members, and a Community Development Workers. Quantitative data was sourced from ordinary community members of Dumasi village. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were used as data collection tools for both the qualitative and quantitative phases. Thematic Content Analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data. Data analysis for the quantitative data was conducted using Cronbach’s Alpha, t-test and ANOVA test. The findings from both studies revealed that respondents perceived Thulamela Municipality’s communication channels to be ineffective. Community members’ reluctance to attend community meetings and lack of proper feedback were identified as the main causes. The findings further revealed that ineffectiveness of the communication channels leads to an increase in the number of community service delivery protests. Several suggestions are made resulting from the findings of this study. These include the designing and implementation of context-specific, municipal-citizen communication channels, in consultation with local communities.

Submitted by Juliana Ferreira (julianasabfer@gmail.com) on 2018-01-06T16:01:21Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação 2.1- avaliação da proposta+conclusao+final- REVISADA.pdf: 5906746 bytes, checksum: 0e38cac22651d3e8fc9d0919fc9e0159 (MD5) / Rejected by Milena Rubi ( ri.bso@ufscar.br), reason: Bom dia Juliana! Além da dissertação, você deve submeter também a carta comprovante devidamente preenchida e assinada pelo orientador. O modelo da carta encontra-se na página inicial do site do Repositório Institucional. Att., Milena P. Rubi Bibliotecária CRB8-6635 Biblioteca Campus Sorocaba on 2018-01-08T11:07:30Z (GMT) / Submitted by Juliana Ferreira (julianasabfer@gmail.com) on 2018-01-09T00:48:08Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação 2.1- avaliação da proposta+conclusao+final- REVISADA.pdf: 5906746 bytes, checksum: 0e38cac22651d3e8fc9d0919fc9e0159 (MD5) Termo de encaminhamento da versão definitiva.pdf: 214426 bytes, checksum: 41e6d886f9d6683d460f0de7d83c35d3 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Milena Rubi ( ri.bso@ufscar.br) on 2018-01-09T11:15:53Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação 2.1- avaliação da proposta+conclusao+final- REVISADA.pdf: 5906746 bytes, checksum: 0e38cac22651d3e8fc9d0919fc9e0159 (MD5) Termo de encaminhamento da versão definitiva.pdf: 214426 bytes, checksum: 41e6d886f9d6683d460f0de7d83c35d3 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Milena Rubi ( ri.bso@ufscar.br) on 2018-01-09T11:16:03Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação 2.1- avaliação da proposta+conclusao+final- REVISADA.pdf: 5906746 bytes, checksum: 0e38cac22651d3e8fc9d0919fc9e0159 (MD5) Termo de encaminhamento da versão definitiva.pdf: 214426 bytes, checksum: 41e6d886f9d6683d460f0de7d83c35d3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-01-09T11:16:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação 2.1- avaliação da proposta+conclusao+final- REVISADA.pdf: 5906746 bytes, checksum: 0e38cac22651d3e8fc9d0919fc9e0159 (MD5) Termo de encaminhamento da versão definitiva.pdf: 214426 bytes, checksum: 41e6d886f9d6683d460f0de7d83c35d3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-11-07 / Não recebi financiamento / Currently open government data run an important job on regards to public transparency, besides being obligated by law. But most of this data are stored in non-standard ways, isolated and independent, making it very hard for its use by third party systems providers. This work proposes the creation of an approach for capturing this open government data in an automated way, allowing its use in various applications. For that a Web Crawler was built for the capture and storing of this open government data, as well as an API for making this data available in JSON format, that way developers can easily use this data on their application. We also performed an evaluation of the API for developers with different levels of experience. / Atualmente os dados abertos governamentais exercem um papel fundamental na transparência pública na gestão dos governos, além de ser uma obrigação legal. Porém grande parte desses dados são publicados em formatos diversos, isolados e independentes, dificultado seu reaproveitamento por sistemas de terceiros que poderiam reusar informações disponibilizadas em tais portais. Este trabalho propõe a criação de uma abordagem para captura de dados abertos governamentais de forma automatizada, permitindo sua reutilização em outras aplicações. Para isso foi construído um Web Crawler para captura e armazenamento de Dados Abertos Governamentais (DAG) e a API DAG Prefeituras para disponibilizar esses dados no formato JSON para que outros desenvolvedores possam utilizar esses dados em suas aplicações. Também foi realizada uma avaliação do uso da API para desenvolvedores com diferentes níveis de experiência

Submitted by Milena Rubi (milenarubi@ufscar.br) on 2017-06-01T17:34:28Z No. of bitstreams: 1 VIEIRA_Daniel_2016.pdf: 25243835 bytes, checksum: f2ce45fadf28ef4fb0273bbec68dec6d (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Milena Rubi (milenarubi@ufscar.br) on 2017-06-01T17:34:34Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 VIEIRA_Daniel_2016.pdf: 25243835 bytes, checksum: f2ce45fadf28ef4fb0273bbec68dec6d (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Milena Rubi (milenarubi@ufscar.br) on 2017-06-01T17:34:39Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 VIEIRA_Daniel_2016.pdf: 25243835 bytes, checksum: f2ce45fadf28ef4fb0273bbec68dec6d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T17:34:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 VIEIRA_Daniel_2016.pdf: 25243835 bytes, checksum: f2ce45fadf28ef4fb0273bbec68dec6d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-07-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / The Smart City (SC) concept aims to promote dynamic and flexible systems to the cities, that interact with each others and help to maintain the stability and scalability of it’s resources and services, usually through sensors and collectors, with high implantation and maintenance costs. On the other hand, the Open Goverment Data (OGD) are data relationated to the governamental activity, available on the Internet. The publications are fragmented in dierent and uncorrelated portals, also do not follow a standard pattern format. Thus, this work proposes a platform to collect and distribute OGD in a centralized way, in order to provide consolidated information to the context of SC. Also, two validations of this proposal are presented, the first one promoting the solidification of the platform and the second one being an experimental study applied at the academic environment, were eight graduation students where supervisionated, divided into two groups, during the development of two SC projects, consisting of comparative and graphic visualization OGD portals. The experimental group used the platform proposed here as a OGD source, and the control group used OGD collected directly through the governmental transparency portals. At the end of the study, with the intention to find benefits in the utilization of a centralized platform, statistical tests were applied to the collected metrics, and expressive advantages to the experimental group were found, related to the quantity of source-code lines and the development time, indicating that the platform oered benefits during the cycle of development of the project. / O conceito de Cidades Inteligentes (CI) visa prover às cidades sistemas dinâmicos e flexíveis, que interagem entre si e auxiliam a manter a estabilidade e escalabilidade de seus recursos e serviços, usualmente utilizando-se de sensores e coletores, com altos custos de implantação e manutenção. Por outro lado, os Dados Abertos Governamentais (DAG) são dados referentes às atividades governamentais, disponibilizados através da Internet. As publicações são fragmentadas em portais distintos e não correlacionados, além de não seguirem um padrão de formato definido. Assim, este trabalho propõe uma plataforma de coleta e disponibilização centralizada de DAG, com o intuito de prover informações consolidadas ao contexto de CI. Ainda, são apresentadas duas validações desta proposta, a primeira promovendo a solidificação da plataforma e a segunda um estudo experimental aplicado no ambiente acadêmico, no qual foram supervisionados oito estudantes de graduação, divididos em dois grupos, durante o desenvolvimento de dois projetos de CI, consistindo em portais de visualização gráfica e comparativa de DAG. O grupo experimental utilizou a plataforma aqui proposta como fonte de DAG, e o grupo controle utilizou-se de DAG coletados diretamente nos portais de transparência governamental. Ao fim do estudo, com o intuito de encontrar benefícios na utilização de uma plataforma centralizada, foram aplicados testes estatísticos às métricas coletadas, e expressivas vantagens em relação à quantidade de linhas de código-fonte e ao tempo de desenvolvimento foram encontradas para o grupo experimental, indicando que a plataforma ofereceu benefícios durante o ciclo de desenvolvimento do projeto.