Promoting public cooperation in government: key drivers, regulation, and barriers of the e-collaboration movement in Kazakhstan
| Author | Maxat Kassen |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020852317735595 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of
Promoting public
Administrative Sciences
2019, Vol. 85(4) 743–762
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cooperation in
The Author(s) 2018
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government: key drivers,
DOI: 10.1177/0020852317735595
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
regulation, and barriers
of the e-collaboration
movement in Kazakhstan
Maxat Kassen
Eurasian Humanities Institute, Kazakhstan
Abstract
The primary goal of the article is to understand the political and socio-economic
incentives for government agencies to adopt various collaborative strategies in
promoting current public sector reforms in Kazakhstan. In particular, paying special
attention to the recent diffusion of various official blog platforms, public discussion, and
civic tracking systems, it aims to identify typical drivers and barriers that policymakers
and other interested stakeholders face today in advancing technology-driven
government. The key findings of the research suggest that the development of official
e-collaborative platforms provides new promising opportunities to promote mutually
beneficial cooperation between government and citizens, and to boost public sector
innovations. However, the further sustainable development of the movement, not only
as a technological tool of public sector reforms, but also more as a new philosophy of
governance, would require the further harmonization of regulation policies at all insti-
tutional levels, the transformation of the traditional public mindset, and, most impor-
tantly, the promotion of more genuine grass-root trends in government. In this regard,
the results of the research could conceptually be used to test further the limits of the
modern theory of network governance in an unusual institutional context of digital
centralization.
Corresponding author:
Maxat Kassen, Eurasian Humanities Institute, 010000, Astana, Kazakhstan.
Email: maka.mca2@gmail.com
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 85(4)
Points for practitioners
The observation and analysis of practical aspects in the operation of various collabo-
rative projects, which is presented in this article in an explicitly illustrative manner,
could be interesting for e-government policymakers and practitioners, as well as for
all those who try to understand the phenomenon as an ongoing political and
socio-economic process.
Keywords
civic engagement, e-collaboration, government blogs, Kazakhstan, public dialogue,
public–private partnership, public sector innovations
Introduction to the concept
Also known as digital collaboration (Albert, 2009; Fichter, 2005; Kock, 2013;
Thatcher et al., 2012), the phenomenon of e-collaboration is defined in this
research as the involvement of members of civil society in decision-making
processes of an administrative and, most importantly, political character via
a combination of various digital networking tools, such as social media, peer-to-
peer, wiki-based, and public discussion platforms. Hypothetically, the main advan-
tage of e-collaboration as a socio-economic movement is its promise to advance
public–private partnerships in e-government since traditional mechanisms of
public reforms provide only top-down, one-way regulation and bureaucratic con-
trol in the sphere. The promise of cooperation with other members of civil society,
such as independent developers, technically savvy citizens, and e-government
entrepreneurs from business communities, opens new prospective ways to further
such reforms and boost innovations due to civic engagement and partnerships not
only in funding and supporting related digital platforms, but also in co-creating
new electronic services for both citizens and businesses (see Figure 1).
In this respect, the key purpose of the article is to understand the promise of the
e-collaboration movement to advance public–private partnerships and civic
engagement in a traditional society such as Kazakhstan that has recently adopted
a wide range of collaborative and participatory platforms in the sphere. The main
research question is to analyze the political and socio-economic incentives that lie
behind the mere desire of national authorities to improve public administration
through the adoption of various e-collaboration strategies, focusing, especially, on
studying the related activity of blog-platforms, public discussion, and civic-
tracking projects, locating the key drivers and barriers of the movement, and
elaborating further on promising aspects of using other innovations in the
sphere. The research could be especially interesting for scientists and practitioners
in analyzing the potential of e-collaboration to advance civic engagement and
public sector innovations in transitional societies.
Kassen
745
Figure 1. The promise of e-collaboration as a socio-economic phenomenon to boost public–
private partnerships and civic engagement.
Source: Own illustration.
Conceptual framework of the research
The conceptual framework of the research is shaped by the Theory of Network
Governance, which, in its modern sense (Torfing, 2005), postulates that informal
and autonomous interactions of government with other stakeholders from the
private and non-governmental sectors could provide a mutually beneficial platform
to promote new, more effective channels of communication, especially in a more
democratic and collaborative manner (Ansell and Gash, 2008; Bogason and
Musso, 2006; Sørensen, 2002). Such new aspects of cooperation as public–private
partnerships in building e-government systems (Bovaird, 2004), the public
outsourcing of digital services, the promotion of civic engagement in various
open data-driven projects, philanthropic cooperation with various non-profit
organizations and independent developers in launching collaborative projects for
citizens and businesses, and so on create a favorable democratic context to advance
the phenomenon of e-collaboration as part of a new philosophy for government
institutions that could thrive beyond the traditional scope of bureaucratic
decision-making in the sphere.
In this respect, it is necessary to note that the example of Kazakhstan, especially
in its political and administrative contexts, provides an atypical case for analysis.
First of all, it is a transitional post-totalitarian state that has recently adopted a
wide range of collaborative digital platforms in government, resorting to an
unusual institutional strategy of centralization in promoting related projects.
The phenomenon, which could tentatively be called digital centralism (Kassen,
2015), is defined as the promotion of a single e-government ecosystem on the
whole territory of the country. This approach can rarely be seen in the world
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 85(4)
today since the vast majority of related public programs are usually decentralized,
with the promotion of various autonomous digital ecosystems and the fragmented
realization of related e-government platforms, especially at different regional and
administrative levels. In this regard, it would be interesting to understand how the
phenomenon of e-collaboration is developing in an unusual institutional environ-
ment of digital centralization in this transitional society.
Furthermore, taking into account that e-collaboration politics is usually
researched in the context of the most developed economies and established democ-
racies, especially through the prism of network governance theory, which is often
referred to as a theory of democratic network governance (Sørensen and Torfing,
2007), any studies from developing and post-totalitarian economies could
potentially enrich the concept with new perspectives. In this regard, the case of
Kazakhstan provides unique political, socio-economic, and institutional contexts
to test its key postulates, especially as to how various stakeholders of the
movement are networking and cooperating with each other and, most importantly,
how such partnerships lead to the greater engagement of citizens through related
participatory and collaborative digital platforms. After all, e-collaboration as
a political phenomenon implies active partnerships between various, formerly
independent, yet socially bound up with each other, stakeholders, both public
and private, in achieving an ultimate goal: to build an effective mechanism of
dialogue between the government and citizens where the combination of the
political desire of the former to cooperate with all interested stakeholders and
the socio-economic readiness of the latter to participate in promoting various
networking solutions constitutes the core of the realization formulas in the sphere.
Methodology of the research
E-collaboration is an emerging phenomenon, and as a young concept, it is better to
analyze it in its real-life context (Yin, 2013), which would allow us to trace the
invisible mechanisms of its realization and understand the socio-economic con-
texts, causality, and path dependence of the current processes in the sphere
(Bennett and Elman, 2006). Moreover, little-known and complex phenomena
could demand the application of more flexible or scatter-gun methodological
approaches in investigation (Bennett, 2004), especially taking into account the
multidimensional and multifaceted nature of modern e-government platforms.
In this respect, the case-study research in this article relies on a combination of
three methods in investigating the e-collaboration movement, namely, context,
policy, and content analysis. It begins with context analysis as a method that
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