From Open Innovation to Open Government : a Multi-Level Analysis of Open Government Communities

Abstract

Today, complex social challenges often question the very fabric of modern society with alienated citizens and create deep-seated tensions between them and their government. This PhD Thesis shows how information and communication technologies in general and Open Government communities in particular may contribute to enable unprecedented opportunities for systematically fostering civic engagement in virtual and more collaborative system environments. In opposite to the private sector, where community-based approaches have already become popular strategies for systematically implementing distributed and participatory problem solving, the public sector hesitantly started with more open, citizen orientated, and collaborative service-offerings. As a consequence, also the related research contributions remain relatively silent. Structured in four different research perspectives and based on two empirical Open Government community projects the results enrich various existing streams of literature and provide, in addition, manifold implications for practitioners.