This book examines the role of bureaucracy in modern technologically advanced societies, the traditional models of governance, and the potential of information technology to fundamentally change and improve governance. In the area of public-domain governance, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have empowered public agencies to improve their activities and to strengthen the efficiency of their operations. Technology has enabled optimized transfer of knowledge and information between government agencies, more efficient supervision and control of relationships with citizens, and higher efficiency in law enforcement through better access to information. Throughout the last decades, technology has been used to strengthen the role of state bureaucracies and the relationship between the civil service and the citizens. We have witnessed the transformative powers of ICTs in private-sector enterprises in well-structured technological landscapes, which has produced new ecosystems comprised of software developers, providers, and consumers who provide and consume new products and services in ecosystems that are based on clear technological standards and shared modular generic artefacts, which allow for distributed peer production. ICTs will shape cultural and civic discourse and create products, services and tools, relying on the open toolsets, technologies and exchange of knowledge between peers. This book will be of particular interest to government CIOs, IT/IS managers, researchers, students, and practitioners in technical sciences, public administration, business management, public policy and IS management.

The 12th Annual International Conference of Digital Government Research Jun 12, 2011-Jun 15, 2011 College Park, USA. You can view more information about this proceeding and all of ACM�s other published conference proceedings from the ACM Digital Library: http://www.acm.org/dl.

Chapters 6, 24, 26 and 36 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book updates scholarship related to media-state relations for the social media age. It presents a timely account of how states have engaged with the platforms that have spread around the world – and the challenges that this presents. Further, it is positioned at a novel intersection between the Communications and International Relations disciplines, so scholars and students of both fields will find value within it. In particular, the book explores the Four Theories of the Press's role as a seminal text within media-state relations scholarship. It reimagines the original models through a Neo-Gramscian lens. The four models contained within the book deepen the analytic power of the original and align these ideas with the complexity of social media. Importantly, this book presents original research findings on measuring and quantifying the social media-state relationship as theorised by establishing and validating the new Order Index. Scholars and students of the fields discussed within will find value in the theoretical models and the quantitative instrument developed to measure these models. Of note is that the book contains the basis for using the Order Index in future research and highlights a new research future within this space.

This volume presents the 17th International Conference on Information Technology—New Generations (ITNG), and chronicles an annual event on state of the art technologies for digital information and communications. The application of advanced information technology to such domains as astronomy, biology, education, geosciences, security, and healthcare are among the themes explored by the ITNG proceedings. Visionary ideas, theoretical and experimental results, as well as prototypes, designs, and tools that help information flow to end users are of special interest. Specific topics include Machine Learning, Robotics, High Performance Computing, and Innovative Methods of Computing. The conference features keynote speakers; a best student contribution award, poster award, and service award; a technical open panel, and workshops/exhibits from industry, government, and academia.

An examination of technology and politics in the evolution of the British "government machine." In The Government Machine, Jon Agar traces the mechanization of government work in the United Kingdom from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. He argues that this transformation has been tied to the rise of "expert movements," groups whose authority has rested on their expertise. The deployment of machines was an attempt to gain control over state action—a revolutionary move. Agar shows how mechanization followed the popular depiction of government as machine-like, with British civil servants cast as components of a general purpose "government machine"; indeed, he argues that today's general purpose computer is the apotheosis of the civil servant. Over the course of two centuries, government has become the major repository and user of information; the Civil Service itself can be seen as an information-processing entity. Agar argues that the changing capacities of government have depended on the implementation of new technologies, and that the adoption of new technologies has depended on a vision of government and a fundamental model of organization. Thus, to study the history of technology is to study the state, and vice versa.

In recent years, the Middle East's information and communications landscape has changed dramatically. Increasingly, states, businesses, and citizens are capitalizing on the opportunities offered by new information technologies, the fast pace of digitization, and enhanced connectivity. These changes are far from turning Middle Eastern nations into network societies, but their impact is significant. The growing adoption of a wide variety of information technologies and new media platforms in everyday life has given rise to complex dynamics that beg for a better understanding. Digital Middle East sheds a critical light on continuing changes that are closely intertwined with the adoption of information and communication technologies in the region. Drawing on case studies from throughout the Middle East, the contributors explore how these digital transformations are playing out in the social, cultural, political, and economic spheres, exposing the various disjunctions and discordances that have marked the advent of the digital Middle East.