Name: Janna RoozekransStudent number: 337061Date: 15 September 2010University: Erasmus University RotterdamMaster: Master Public Administration: International Public Management and PolicyWord count: 25954 (excl. references and annexes)

E-governance and the efficiency of regional representations in Brussels

Supervisor Erasmus University Rotterdam: dr. F.K.M. van NispenAssociate Professor Public AdministrationBurg. Oudlaan 503062 PA RotterdamKamer: M 8-10Tel: 0031 (0)10 408 21 31 e-mail: vannispen@fsw.eur.nl

Supervisor Erasmus University Rotterdam: F. Hilterman MABurg. Oudlaan 503062 PA RotterdamKamer: M 8-38e-mail: fhilterman@fsw.eur.nl

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Preface

About one and a half year ago, I decided that I wanted to enroll in another master. This resulted with the start of an extra master in International Public Management and Policy at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam in September 2009. Now, over a year later, this master is almost finished and the last challenge lays before you: my thesis. It is a result of hard work and thorough research with bumps along the road. But in the end it’s finished.Since I couldn’t accomplish this result completely on my own I would like to thank a few people who helped me along the way. First of all, of course, my supervisors. Mr. Van Nispen and Mr. Hilterman. Without both of you would never have ended up in Brussels at the Randstad Region and this research wouldn’t been conducted. Next to that you both gave me tips to improve my thesis and supervised me the last months. A second thanks goes to my supervisor at the Randstad Region, Mr. Gido ten Dolle, to give me the opportunity to do an internship at the Randstad Region and to introduce me into the world of regional representation. I would also like to thank Joanne Swets for her advice, help and good company in my months at the Randstad Region. I would also like to thank all the people who returned my survey and were willing to let me interview them. A last and special thanks goes to my family. My parents who gave me the opportunity to follow another master and my boyfriend who had the patience to check my thesis time and time again. Thank you all for helping me to attain this result, I’ll promise it will be the last!

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Summary

Nowadays around 300 regional representational offices are present in Brussels. All these offices have more or less the same reasons for the establishment of their office in Brussels. The most important tasks of the regional representational offices in Brussels is to gather information interesting for the region, to influence policy-making, to get access to funds and to get noticed in the rest of Europe. The involvement of the regional representations, together with other sub-national governments resulted in the formulation of the theory or perspective of multi-level governance. Multi-level governance states that not only the national governments are involved in the policy-making process in Brussels but the sub-national governments and interest organizations as well. The regional representational offices can be seen as the representatives of the sub-national governments as well as interest representations.

To succeed in their tasks mentioned above and perform as a professional interest group the internal affairs need to be optimal. Van Schendelen has come up with four factors which are of importance to optimize internal affairs. Sufficient cohesion, useful knowledge, optimal use of resources and skills and a good image. These factors show overlap with the goals of e-governance to improve internal government organization, set up by UNESCO and therefore e-governance might be of use to achieve the factors of a professional interest organization. E-governance relates to the use of ICT tools in the interaction between government and citizens, government and business and within and between governments. UNESCO has set up five goals of e-governance of which three relate to the use of ICTs within and between governments and match the four factor of optimal internal affairs. The first relevant goal relates to the role of e-governance in the improvement of internal organization which links to the sufficient cohesion factor of Van Schendelen. The second goal is to improve service delivery which matches with the second and third factor of Van Schendelen, useful knowledge and optimal mix of resources and skills. The last goal of e-governance that can be linked to the internal affairs factors is the reinforcement of political credibility and accountability. This relates to the good image of the regional representation. The central question in this research is how e-governance can improve the efficiency of the regional representations looking at their internal affairs. In relation to the optimalization of internal affairs of regional representations e-governance tools can be of use.

The three regions central in this research, Randstad Region in the Netherlands, the Stockholm Region in Sweden and the West Midlands in the United Kingdom, were all tested on these four factors related to the goals of e-governance. The internal organization of these regional representations is difficult to improve through the use of e-governance tools since it is mainly dependent on the management of the tools and not on the working of the tools themselves. Relating to the use and sharing of knowledge e-governance tools can surely contribute to a better service delivery and

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knowledge sharing. The good image of regional representations and the reinforcement of political credibility and accountability may be improved through the use of e-governance tools, mainly in the form of website improvement. As conclusion this research claims that e-governance tools may surely contribute to the improvement of the efficiency of the regional representations but that other factors such as management and the motivation to share knowledge are just as important. Thereby external factors as politics are of high importance for the improvement of the efficiency of regional representations as well. However since the research is based on evidence from only three regions, generalization isn’t possible. The conclusions may apply to the other regions as well but without evidence from more regional representation, the usefulness of the results for other regions remains limited.

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Content

INTRODUCTION 7

1. RESEARCH GOAL AND RESEARCH QUESTION 9

1.1 Problem Analysis 9

1.2 Theoretical relevance 13

1.3 Social relevance 13

1.4 Research question 13

1.5 Sub questions 14

2. BACKGROUND INFORMATION 15

2.1 Regions 15

2.2 Interest Representation in the European Union 16

2.3 Regional interest representation in the European Union 162.3.1 The Committee of the Regions 172.3.2 The Council of Ministers 182.3.3 European Commission 182.3.4 European Parliament 192.3.5 Regional offices 192.3.6 Transnational associations or networks 20

2.4 Conclusion 20

3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 21

3.1 Research design 21

3.2 Case selection 21

3.3 Methodology 21

4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 24

4.1 Governance 24

4.2 Multi-level governance 25

4.3 E-governance and e-government 27

4.4 Tools of e-governance 304.4.1 Email 304.4.2 Internet 304.4.3 Websites 304.4.4 Intranet 31

4.5 Conclusion 31

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5. OPERALIZATION 32

5.1 Hypotheses 32

5.2 Variables and indicators 32

6. CASE STUDY 37

6.1 Randstad Region 376.1.1 Organizational structure Randstad Region 386.1.2 Case evidence Randstad Region 40

6.2 Stockholm Region 426.2.1 Organizational structure Stockholm Region 436.2.2 Case evidence of Stockholm Region 44

6.3 West Midlands 456.3.1 Organizational structure West Midlands 466.3.2 Case evidence of the West Midlands 48

6.4 Conclusion 49

7. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF THE CASE EVIDENCE 50

7.1 Comparison of the regions 507.1.1 Internal Organization 517.1.2 Knowledge sharing 527.1.3 Political credibility and accountability 53

7.2 Discussion of the case evidence 55

8. BEST PRACTICE 57

8.1 Internal Organization 57

8.2 Knowledge sharing 57

8.3 Political credibility and accountability 58

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 59_Toc272505877

EPILOGUE 63

REFERENCES 64

ANNEX I SURVEY REGIONAL REPRESENTATIONS 68

ANNEX II CYBERSPACE POLICY RESEARCH GROUP WEBSITE ATTRIBUTE EVALUATION SYSTEM (WAES) 70

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Introduction

The last 25 years the integration of Europe has been remarkably deepened. Started with the Single European Act in 1986, the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), Amsterdam (1997) and Nice (2001) deepened the cooperation between the member states time after time. Together with the enlargement with 10 new member states in 2004 and 2007 the territorial reach of the EU increased as well. The last step in deepening European integration has been the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon in December 2009. With the expansion of the EU and the intensified integration of the member states with each other through the different treaties, the relations within the Union changed as well. Until the beginning of the 80s national governments were the only actors in the EU decision making process. From halfway the 1980s sub-national governments found their way to Brussels as well as they saw the importance of European legislation grow. Sub-national governments relate to the governmental bodies below the national government representing a certain territorial area. Regions, municipalities, provinces, counties and the German ‘Länder’ are examples of sub-national governments. This research will focus on the first level of sub-national government represented by, amongst others, regions, provinces, counties and Länder. The first sub-national governments opening representation offices in Brussels were English local authorities and German Länder in 1984; they had no power yet and remained almost unnoticed in the first few years (Marks, Heasly and Mbaye, 2002, 1). Nevertheless a trend was set and sub-national governments would gain more power in the next decade. With the Treaty of Maastricht the Committee of the Regions was created to recognize the importance of the regional and local dimension. Maastricht also created the single market which also had a strong effect on the position of sub-national governments and introduced the principle of subsidairity (Huysseune, Jans, 2005, 86). Through the changes the Commission gained in power, giving it the possibility to set out its own policies. One of those policies related to the position of sub-national governments. The Commission wished to involve the sub-national governments in the decision-making process, since the implementation of most of the decisions taken on EU level takes place on sub-national level. National governments remained the most important players in the game but no longer had a monopoly in European politics. The Committee of the Regions was finally established in 1994. Having their own institution made the number of regions represented in Brussels rapidly increase with around 150 representations in 2000. The publication of the Commission’s White paper on European governance (European Commission, 2001) and the recent enlargement to the East of Europe in 2004 en 2007 expanded this number even further, resulting in a number of around 300 regions having a representation in Brussels today (HNP, 2009). All these regional representations try to influence policies, to get access to EU funds and want to make their region noticed in the rest of the EU. The regions try to reach these goals by pointing their attention at the different policy actors in the EU: The European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Council and the Committee of the Regions.

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This involvement of regions along sides the national levels in the EU policy making process makes scientists speak of a multi-level governance (Hooghe and Marks, 2001; Kohler-Koch and Eising, 2007). Multi-level governance relates to the situation in which not only the central governments are involved in the policy-making process but also the lower levels of government and in some cases also interest representations. The creation of the Committee of the Regions and the recognition of multi-level governance made scientists speak of ‘Europe of the Regions’, in which regions were the most powerful players and not member states. According to Hooghe and Marks the level of influence of the regions differs substantially between the different regions. Some regions have the possibility ,arranged by treaty, to influence the policy-making process directly through the Council of Ministers. Some regions have more influence and power in the Commission through position and size while other regions don’t have these opportunities. Thereby the regions are a sub-national level with of the member states, with little policy-making power making the term ‘Europe of the Regions’ questionable. But the creation of the term does underline the grown importance of regions in Brussels. To influence the policy making process in Brussels and to get access to funds all regions have a regional representation office in Brussels. The largest task of these offices, next to influencing policy making and access to funds, is to gather information of importance for the region. The European policy of regions is partly based in the home region and partly in Brussel, where the regional representations are only a part, although important, of the European strategy of regions. They are based in the heart of the European Union and strongly involved in the initiatives taken by their boards in Brussels . Therefore they are a crucial element of the European strategy of sub-national governments (Huysseume and Jans, 2005, 82). In this research I will scrutinize how the efficiency of regional representations in Brussels, looking at their internal affairs, can be improved on the basis of e-governance. E-governance often comes with the promise to improve public administration in terms of efficiency, one of the primary values of public administration (Wong and Welch, 2004, 275). In this way, with the use of e-governance, regional representations might improve their positions in the multi-level governance system of the EU.

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1. Research Goal and research question

In this first chapter the problem will be set out into detail and the structure of the research will be discussed.

1.1 Problem AnalysisLobbying or interest representation in the EU is an extensive process. Interest representatives try to influence the institutions in Brussels at the one hand and inform and consult the home office at the other. Off course, lobbyists in Brussels work with a mandate or yearly working program from their stakeholders to act on their behalf. Mainly because lobbying is often an adhoc-business, where quick decisions are needed and time to negotiate is limited. Though the mandate or working program of the lobbyists doesn’t always give them all the information or rights to act properly. Expert information on a certain topic often isn’t present in the Brussels office but in the home office in the member state. Besides that the stakeholders in the member states desire from the lobbyists to keep them informed about progress of their activities. This means that contact with the stakeholders or home office is a big part of the representatives working. This is no different for regional representations. Informing the home office is one of the priority functions of Brussels regional representation offices. Besides that regional representations get their expert information mainly from the home office. This wish and need for information results in widespread contacts between the regional representations and the home offices through telephone, email and personal contact by visiting the region. Unfortunately, regions cannot always react to questions from lobbyists straight away. Due to the high bureaucratization of most public institutions elaborate discussions with other levels of the organization or with experts are necessary to determine the region’s position. Besides that home offices often miss information about the situation to form a good opinion, since the lobbyists in Brussels have a hasty life and not always have the time to give all the information. The same happens the other way around, where representatives don’t have all the information to represent the region’s interests in the most optimal way. This subsequently can lead to missed opportunities for the lobbyists in Brussels (Van Schendelen, 2002, 196). This is a part of the ever returning problem of the distance between the daily work in the member-states it selves and the EU policy-making process in Brussels. For the people working at the public institutions in the member states, the policy-making process in Brussels is far away. They don’t feel a connection with the work of their colleagues in Brussels and don’t see it as a priority, since the influence of the work of the Brussels’ lobbyists on their day-to-day work appears to be very small. Through e-mail, meetings and newsletters the Brussels basis tries to inform its home office, but it remains difficult to get the region ‘back home’ involved. However there appears to be difference in this between the public and private sector. The abovementioned situation is mainly the problem of the public sector since new rules implemented in Brussels have little effect on their personal situation (Lee, 2002, 42). The private sector always has an incentive related to profit while this is not the case for the public sector. Therefore the private sector more easily adapted itself to the coordination problems aroused by EU policy

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than the public sector. Funds or policies from the EU can highly affect the day-to-day life of entrepreneurs and farmers, therefore their lobbyists and back-offices will have a bigger incentive to work as effective as possible. Hence this research will not look at the position of the private sector but only to the public sector. Within the public sector not all levels will be scrutinized. The national level will be surpassed because this level has, in almost every member state a separate department dealing with Brussels as well as sufficient resources to coordinate the EU level. Therefore this level also has an incentive to concentrate on Brussels. A last group to be surpassed in this research are the public organizations. They are well represented in Brussels, but don’t fit in the prospect of this research. Public organizations are focused at one area of the EU policy field and represent a selective branch making co-ordination easier. This research will focus on sub-national level of public interest representation by the way of the regional representations in Brussels. This group covers almost 300 representations representing public interest of their region. All needing information from their region for sufficient action and returning information from Brussels that is of interest for the working back home. Therefore Van Schendelen’s claim is not surprisingly: ‘Many a Public Affairs official has the experience that organizing public affairs at home takes at least 60% of his/her energy’ (Van Schendelen, 2002, 167). He therefore states that: ‘every lobbygroup with the ambition to create a desired outcome from EU decision-making should not be introvertively focused primarily on its own inner world. Otherwise it cannot go window-in and –out. It has to adapt its organization, strategies and agendas to EU constraints and possibilities. Without the required variability and flexibility in its internal affairs, it cannot act in a potentially effective and efficient way’ (Van Schendelen, 2002, 167-168)

To achieve the best results a predominately introvertively focused interest group needs to be prevented and good coordination of affairs is necessary, since good coordinated governments or companies are thought to be more efficient, more rational with resources and have less conflicting programmes (Kassim, Peters and Wright, 2000, 1). This is above all important for regional representation since they often have to deal with a scattered home office with underdeveloped EU departments. In the table below the proportions of the work of EU public affairs officials, according to Van Schendelen, are shown.

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Figure 1

This shows the unequal division between EU arena and home front. This research is focused on the coordination home front, covering the largest part of time in EU interest representation. The fact that this research is only focused on regional representations doesn’t mean that the research cannot be applied to other sorts of interest representation.

The sub-national levels, of which the regional representations are part, often don’t have an extensive EU-department in their home office in the member state, making co-ordination difficult. Although some bigger European regions do have a separate department for European affairs, mainly the regions with federal power like the German Länder. Overall only a couple of actors in the home offices of the sub-national levels are fulltime involved with Brussels. The rest of the actors see ‘Europe’ as a side issue, mainly due to reasons as lack of funds to support these departments or low importance. Relating to the statement of Van Schendelen, regions need to co-ordinate their internal organization in order to still get the most out of ‘Brussels’. ‘Without the required variability and flexibility in its internal affairs, it cannot act in a potentially effective and efficient way’ (Van Schendelen, 2002, 168). As said, public affairs official spent about 60% of their time on their internal affairs and the rest of the time is spent on EU arena and other stakeholders. To get the most out of the opportunities and constraints of the EU arena the public affairs officials need to spent as much time as possible in this field. In other words: the less time is spent on organizing the internal affairs the more time is left for playing the EU arena. To allow this to happen the internal affairs of an interest group need to be optimal. Van Schendelen distinguishes four indicators which characterize a professional interest groups: sufficient cohesion, useful knowledge, an optimal mix of resources and skills, and a good image (Van Schendelen, 2002, 168). All four indicators need to be realized for a good organization of internal affairs of interest groups. Sufficient cohesion relates to a sufficient end-situation of both a coherence of preferences and a coordination of actions (Van Schendelen, 2002, 168). In most organizations complete cohesion is absent. Within organizations different department have different opinions as well as the variety of employees all bringing their own views and preferences. This pluralism is good for the organization if it’s in balance. If the

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organization is too divided this can have a negative effect on the work of the public affairs official making it difficult to come to a common position. An organization that’s too cohesive can lose its self-critics resulting in a lack of renewing. Sufficient cohesion needed for the public affairs officials can be best realized by monitoring the relevant people inside the organization and keeping them up-to-date and committed with information (Van Schendelen, 2002, 171). Useful knowledge relates to the acquisition of knowledge useful for getting the desired EU outcomes. This is seen as essential in order to realize the EU targets of the interest group. Therefore an interest group needs to be knowledge conscious. It has to get hands on the knowledge needed to get the target but at the same time the interest group has to be conscious of the fact that it always works under limited knowledge. The knowledge obtained is never complete and the interest group is never certain of its level reliability. (Van Schendelen, 2002, 172-174). The third indicator is an optimal mix of resources and skills. Resources are no fixed assets in permanent possession but have to be acquired and adjusted constantly. The most frequently mentioned resources are expertise, networks, positions and financial means. These resources are not separate from each other but interchangeable. Expertise as a form of resources overlaps with the useful knowledge mentioned above, therefore being a part of this research. The last indicator is a good image. A good image is highly important for an interest organization (Van Schendelen, 2002, 177). It is of importance in two dimensions. First the general appeal. The interest group needs to have a level of importance and agreeableness. Importance to do business with or to be a good partner in a network. Agreeableness relates to the factors of being a pleasure to work with and to have a reputation of credibility, loyalty and predictability of its subsequent actions. The second dimension relates to the supply side of a good image. Interest groups have stakeholders which interest they represent. Professional interest organizations tries to meet the demands of the stakeholders and supply them with the things that make them happy. To achieve the goal of having an optimal arrangement of internal affairs these indicators need to be met. The use of electronic tools can help in order to meet these goals. This research will focus on ICT tools can help increase the efficiency of regional representations by improving the organizations of internal affairs. If ICTs are used in the internal government operation, it is often related to as E-governance. E-governance can be defined ‘as the application of electronic means in the interaction between:

1. Government and citizens, in both ways;2. Government or Businesses, in both ways and;3. Internal government operation’ (Prahbu, 2004, 1).

A fourth area of interaction that is not mentioned by Prahbu, but that needs to be added to complete the areas of interaction of e-governance, is the government-government interaction between different governmental institutions in a member state. The aim of e-governance is to make the governance process more easily (http://portal.unesco.org). Since regional representations are mainly focused on interaction with other public institutions in the member states as well as in Brussels instead of on the interaction with or citizens or businesses not all of the interaction areas of e-governance are of importance for this research. This research will only focus on the third form of interaction: internal government operation. To exercise e-

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governance ICTs are necessary. For instance, internet and e-mail are tools of e-governance, but these are only the basic tools (Prahbu, 2004, 1-2). A virtual workspace, intranet or extranet which makes it possible to work intensively together regardless of the geographical distance, are already more advanced tools. All these tools of e-governance create possibilities to meet the four indicators mentioned in the work of Van Schendelen. In this way e-governance could act as a way to come to an optimal organization of internal affairs which could help further integration of the regions in the European Union, also the ones with little funds, in its turm reinforcing multi-level governance. Besides that, e-governance could help the back-offices in the member states to get more involved in the policy-making process in Brussels, while the lobbyists in Brussels can be quicker informed. The author chose this angle of arrival for two reasons. First to demarcate the research, otherwise it would become too elaborate. Secondly because of the limited research done relating to e-governance and interest groups.

1.2 Theoretical relevanceThe theoretical relevance is present, since e-governance is a subject of the big governance family which lies at the heart of public administration research. The effect of e-governance on interest representation has hardly been scrutinized. This research can give new insights in the relationship between e-governance and interest representation. In this specific research these insights will relate to the influence of e-governance on the internal affairs of interest representations in Brussels. This research will not concentrate on the influence of e-governance on the work of lobbyists in the EU policy-making arena itself. This would be a subject of further scrutiny by other scholars.

1.3 Social relevanceTo research the possible effects of e-governance on the efficiency of EU regions in Brussels is of a high social relevance to both the lobbyists as the regions themselves. For the first it might give insights in the possibilities to use ICTs to improve the changes in the policy-making process since a good organization of internal affairs might lead to more usable knowledge, more time to influence the which can result in more positive policy outcomes for the regions as well as more funds. Social relevance is also ensured since the results of the research can help interest organizations to become more connected to their back-office and help them to improve their organizational structure.

1.4 Research question This research tries to find a causal relation between the working of e-governance and interest representation, in this study interest representation by regional representations. The research is not focused on the obvious area of scrutiny: the EU arena but on the home front. Therefore the central research question distillated out of the problem analysis is:

How can e-governance increase the efficiency of EU regional representations in Brussels looking at their internal affairs?

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To answer this research question a case study will be performed of three regions and their regional representations. The regions are the Randstad Region in the Netherlands, Stockholm Region in Sweden and the West Midlands in the United Kingdom. The reasons for choosing these regions will be explained in chapter 3.

1.5 Sub questionsTo answer the research question five sub questions are formulated, which need to be answered first in order to answer the central research question, being:

1. What are the functions of regional representational offices in Brussels? 2. What is e-governance and how can it improve the internal affairs of regional

representational offices?3. How are the different regions organized? 4. How do ICTs help in the internal affairs of regional representational offices? 5. What can regions learn from the research findings?

These sub questions will be answer in different chapters. The first sub question will be central in the second chapter of this research. In this chapter the different concepts important for this research will be explained as well as the working of regional representations in Brussels. This background information in necessary to understand the position of regional representations in Brussels. The third chapter will contain the research design and methodology of the research. In this chapter I will go further into the case selection of this research and the methods used to collect the evidence. In the fourth chapter the second chapter will be answered. This will be the theoretical framework of the research and focus on the two important theories in this research, multi-level governance and e-governance. The operalization of the research will be explained in the fifth chapter. Here the hypotheses will be set out and the variables will be drawn up. The sixth chapter will answer the third sub question and contains an explanation of the functioning of the three regions. In this chapter the case evidence of the different regions will be presented as well. In the seventh chapter the case evidence will be discussed and the regions will be compared. Here the fourth sub question will be answered and discussed. In the eighth and final chapter the best practices will be presented. What can the regions learn from this research? This will also answer the last sub question. The research will by ended by a conclusion.

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2. Background Information

In this second chapter several concepts important for this research will be explained. Besides that the first sub question will be answer on the basis of these concepts.

2.1 RegionsThe first concept to be explained more in depth is the concept of a ‘region’. To discuss the influence of phenomena on EU regional representations, it first needs to be clear what regions are. There are numerous ways to define a region (De Rooij, 2003, 24). A region can, for instance, be defined on ethnical, historical, cultural or economic grounds. This differs per country and in the EU per member state. In the Netherlands for instance the concept of regions based on the principles of ethnicity, history, culture or economy doesn’t exist formally and a real regional identity is maybe only present in the provinces Friesland and Limburg. The Netherlands is divided in provinces which do not have an own cultural autonomous position. In Spain and Italy on the other hand cultural autonomous regions are common and citizens in these countries feel a strong regional identity. In Spain this even leads to an own language, culture and a wish for independence in some regions like Galicia, Catalonia and Basque country. This creates a difference in the conception of regions. In the Netherlands and Sweden culture, ethnicity or history aren’t a political- administration factor of regionalism while in other member states it is (De Rooij, 2003, 24). This makes it difficult to come up with an unambiguous definition for a ‘region’ , which can be applied to all regions in the EU. De Rooij solves this problem by formulating the next definition of the concept of a political-administered region, being: ‘a territorial area, which in a relatively autonomous organizational structure administers the interests of its citizens within the boundary conditions of higher administrations’ (De Rooij, 2003, 25). This definition resembles the definition given by Eurostat: ‘a region is a trace of land with more or less definitely defined marked boundaries, which often serves as an administrative unit under the level of the nation state’ (Eurostat, 2009, 2). The European Commission, however, has another way of defining the concept of a region. They make use of the concept of NUTS-regions. These NUTS-regions are divided in five levels. The NUTS-level assigned to a territorial area differs per member state and is based on its political organization. In the Netherlands, for instance, the first level is given to parts of the country although this division is legally not known in the Netherlands. In Germany the first level is assigned to the Länder. Therefore next to the definition of De Rooij and Eurostat, regions can also be those areas assigned as regions by the European Commission. For this research it’s important to be aware of these differences in definition. The European Commission NUTS system will be followed in this research. In this way the non political-administered regions Randstad Region and Stockholm Region can be scrutinized as well next to the West Midlands, which has an political-administrative position.

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2.2 Interest Representation in the European UnionA second concept to be discussed in advance is the concept of interest representation. Interest Representation or lobbying is a very broad concept, relating to influencing of decision making processes in order to get policies changed, amended or adopted as well as getting funds or getting exposure for your cause. Koeppl defines it as ‘the attempted or successful influence of legislative-administrative decisions by public authorities through interest representatives. The influence is intended, implies the use of communication and is targeted on legislative and executive bodies‘(Koeppl, 2001, 71).The terms interest representation and lobbying are used interchangeable as will be in this research. Interest representation takes place on national level, sub-national level as well as European level. It also takes place in the public sector as well as in the private sector. Lobbying takes place within both sectors on all levels as well as crosswise between the levels and the sectors. In this research the focus will be on the public interest representation on European level. The impact of interest representation in the European Union increased rapidly from the end of the 1980s onwards (Mazey and Richardson, 1993, 3). The Single European Act (SEA) of 1986 meant a new step in the integration of the European Union (at that moment still European Community). The SEA expanded the power of the EU to policy areas that until that moment had been the responsibility of the member states. Next to the expansion in policy areas the SEA also weakened the influence of the member states’ national governments in the decision making process by the introduction of qualified majority voting in more policy areas and the co-decision procedure. These changes in the distribution of power have set off the rapid growth of the interest representation in Brussels. A research by the ECPR Standing Group on Interest Groups tried to measure the size of the EU Interest Group population based on data from the EU Commissions CONECCS data base, the European Parliament’s accreditation register and Landmarks’ European Public Affairs Directory from the period 2007-2008. (Wonka, Baumgartner, Mahoney and Berkhout, 2009). This resulted in a number of 3700 interest groups represented in the Brussels. The research does underline that the number of 3700 is certainly an underestimate of the actual population of interest groups. Nowadays over 15.000 lobbyists work in the city. Lobbyists have several different possibilities to influence the decision-making process and getting access to funds. In this research only the possibilities for regional interest representations will be discussed.

2.3 Regional interest representation in the European UnionAs said before, the deeper integration of the European Union has increased the importance of regions in the EU decision making process. Two factors lay on the basis of this growing involvement of regions in the EU arena (De Rooij, 2003, 24). The first factor relates to the regional policy of the European Union. Regional policy has always been a part of the general policy of the European Union, but after the signing of the SEA and the accession of Spain and Portugal the regional policy became increasingly important. Spain and Portugal enforced the group of member states with regions lacking behind

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the rest of the EU. Social and economic cohesion was important to this group, resulting in an enlargement and expansion of the funds for regional policy. The second factor that contributed to the increased importance of the regions is the establishment of the Committee of the Regions as official EU advisory institution. However the importance of the regions differs substantially between the different regions within the EU. In some member states, such as Germany and Spain, regional governments have substantial powers, which translate itself to well funded, organized and autonomous offices in Brussels (Hooghe and Marks, 1996, 74). While in other member states, like the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries these powers are less profound, resulting in less funds for offices in Brussels and high dependence on the member state. In 1988 the European Commission set up a Consultative Council of Regional and Local Authorities which had to be consulted on regional matters. In 1994 this Council was expanded and created into the Committee of the Regions. It has mostly a symbolic function, but has more consultative powers than the former Consultative Council (Hooghe and Marks, 1996, 75). The Committee of the Regions (CoR) has the same formal structure as the European Economic and Social Committee, resulting in 344 members. The background of these members is diverse. In some member states the national governments denominate the representatives, often a combination of local and regional representatives. While in the more federalized member states, such as Belgium and Germany, the national government has no influence at all and the seat in the Committee is taken by representatives of the regional government. This immediately results in differences within the Committee, having strong representatives from regional governments for some member states, while others have representatives represent a group of regional or local governments. According to Hooghe and Marks five principal channels can be distinguished, through which regional representation in the European Union takes place (Hooghe and Marks, 1996, 74). Being the Committee of the Regions, The Council of Ministers, the European Commission, the regional offices and transnational associations. Through these five channels regions are directly represented in the EU. Next to that, regions can try to influence the EU decision-making process through lobbying the European Parliament and European Commission.

2.3.1 The Committee of the RegionsThe representation of the regions in the Committee of the Regions has been partly explained above: the Committee of the Regions is a consultative body in which regional representatives have a seat. Each member state has representatives in the Committee according the line of size and population of the member state. These representatives need to have a political background from their member states and need to be elected for a position in their member state. The Committee of the Regions is consulted by the Commission and the Council on matters relating to regional policy. The power of the Committee of the Regions lies in the fact that the regional and local governments are the levels on which the regional policies are implemented. A negative advise of the Committee is therefore of importance for the success of the policy. These advices are drawn up in six different commissions, each dealing with a different subject, ranging from environment to economic affairs. In these commissions members of the

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Committee have a seat and formulate the position of the Committee. The role for the regional representational offices in the Committee is informing and preparing their regional representatives for the commission meetings or plenary sessions as well as attending at meetings of plenary session in their place if necessary.

2.3.2 The Council of MinistersThe representation of the regions through the Council of Ministers is only possible for several member states. In the Treaty of Maastricht an arrangement was made which gave member states the possibility to be represented by regional ministers with full negotiation powers in the Council of Ministers as well as in the Council working groups. In this way regional authorities can be at the center of European decision-making (Hooghe and Marks, 1996, 77; Moore, 2007, 526). However the regional ministers are not allowed to solely follow the line of their own region. They need to defend the position of the member state as a whole, making the power of this arrangement for the region questionable. The arrangement only applies to Belgium, Germany, Austria and Spain due to the federalist character of these member states and chances are little that this will be changed in the future. Administrative representations try to influence the Council of Ministers by cooperation with the Permanent Representations. This resulted for some regional representations in combined strategies on central and sub-national level (Huysseume and Jans, 2005, 95)

2.3.3 European CommissionThe European Commission is the most important institution to influence. The Commission sets the agenda and writes the proposals. The regional interest representation in the European Commission is twofold. On the one hand there is the direct regional representation as suggested by Hooghe and Marks and on the other hand the regional interest representation offices try to influence the work of the European Commission. First the direct regional representation will be discussed. When in 1988 the structural funds were reformed, the power of the regions increased. With this reform the Commission arranged that national, regional and local authorities as well as social actors should work together in close equal and ongoing partnership (Hooghe and Marks, 1996, 78). In practice this reform resulted in monitoring committees in which the regions are represented as well. However the regional representation in these committees is highly scattered. The cohesion policy was mainly set up for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland. These member states lacked behind in development to the other member states. Nowadays, with the enlargement, the policy is still focused on funding the poorer regions of the EU. Therefore these regions are stronger represented than more prosperous regions. Next to the uneven division along cohesion policy lines another question mark can be set on the direct influence of regions at the European Union. It still is not clear to what extent the monitoring committees actually make the regions more involved in the institutional process of the EU (Hooghe and Marks, 1996, 79). However the creation of the committees can be seen as one of the initiatives of the European Commission to get the regions more involved in the EU arena. Nowadays the European Commission generally expects regions to have a permanent basis in Brussels

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in order to keep in contact (Moore, 2007, 520). The European Commission depends on the expertise of the regions for the formulation of policies. Next to the direct formal involvement of regions in the European Commission, the informal way exists: lobbying. As said, the European Commission is where the agenda is set and the policies are formulated. Therefore they are under constant attention of lobbyists from business groups, environmental ones as well as regional interest representation. The regional representations try to influence the agenda of the Commission via bureaucrats working at the European Commission and by consultation procedures in which their opinion upon a subject is asked. Lobbying the European Commission is often seen as pressing against an open door since the European Commission has a strong need for the input of interest organizations (Moore, 2007, 527).

2.3.4 European ParliamentThe European Parliament is the third institution that is involved in the European decision-making process. It has a legislative function and has the task of looking at proposals of the Commission and amending according to their preferences. Next to that the European Parliament has to approve the budget, set up by the European Commission. A last function it holds is the control and supervision of the executive, in this case the Commission (Nugent, 2003, 197). The Members of Parliament (MEPs) are assigned in Brussels to work for the European preferences but in reality they often work along lines of national party preferences. Their staff consists of fellow countrymen and women and they have a close connection to the member state. Next to that they often have a close connection to the region they are originated from creating possibilities for sub-national lobbyists. Besides that the EPs are more politically engaged which creates possibilities for lobbyists who look for these windows of opportunity to get their preferences heard. Next to the political parties in the EP, there is another form of group formation, MEPs form intergroups on certain subjects that are important to their member state or region. For instance an intergroup on Seas & Maritime affairs is important for MEPs from those member states boarding the sea, but MEPs from Slovakia for instance wouldn’t be interested in this topic. In the intergroups MEPs with the same content-related interest group together to discuss these topics and to make reports on it. For the regional representations the EP is of lower importance than the European Commission since proposals formulated by the Commission usually hardly change by amendments of the EP. This does not mean that regional representatives do not try to influence the MEPs of their member states in order to get proposals amended. Next to that good contacts with the MEPs remains of importance due to their broad network and easier access to commissioners and other important institutions.

2.3.5 Regional officesThe regional representation offices are the center of this research. In the last two decades the number of regional offices rose from around 25 offices to over 300. The regional representation offices are characterized by their variety. Some regional representations have legislative powers while others don’t. Some of the offices only have a few members of staff while others, like Bavaria, have a staff of around 50. Also

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the budgets of the regional representations differs considerably (Huysseume and Jans, 2005, 88). Although the differences between the regional representations are big the functions of the offices are largely the same. Their tasks are to lobby directly at the above mentioned institutions to influence policy, to gather information for the home front, to network with other regional actors, to get access to funds and to form a direct liaison between the region and the EU (Marks, Heasly and Mbaye, 2002, 4-6). Most regional offices are not the central actors in the policy-making process. They try, next to the classical interest groups, to influence the policy-makers through lobby-strategies (Huysseume and Jans, 2005, 85). To succeed in these tasks many factors are of importance. Several of these factors relate to the internal affairs of the regional representations, like the support by the host office, and the coordination of policies with sub-national authorities of the home country (Huysseume and Jans, 2005, 97).

2.3.6 Transnational associations or networksNext to their individual work, regions are also involved in transnational associations. The reasons to create these networks is diverse. The establishment of some networks is driven by economic reasons, others by shared territorial features or policy problems and again others are deliberately created by the Commission. Regions all posses information about a range of topics. If they start cooperating on a certain matter, this means that their information and knowledge groups together and this makes it more interesting for the Commission to work with them and easier to track them down if a certain topic is on the Commission’s agenda. Examples of EU networks are Eurocities, a network of cities all over Europe with a population of over 250 000 inhabitants. They work together on themes to improve the quality of life of the people living in the cities. The Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) is another network. It exists since 1951 and is the European branch of the International Union of Local Authorities, and therefore it represents the local interests in the EU. Due to its long existence it has a close relationship with the Commission and participates in a variety of matters.

2.4 ConclusionTo sum up, regions have gained a particular role in the EU in the last couple of decades. Over 300 regions fight for attention and funds in the EU arena every day. One of the things that become clear is that the differences between the regions are considerably. Good information is evident to be of importance for the Commission or other institutions which becomes clear in the regional representations’ need for good support and coordination from the home country. But next to the information needed to influence the institutions, the moment of influencing is also very important. There is a strong correlation between the institution to influence and the moment of influencing. The earlier sub-national governments get involved in the process the bigger the chance of being heard.

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3. Research Design and Methodology

In this third chapter the design of the research and the methods chosen to exceed this research will be discussed.

3.1 Research designA good way to research how e-governance can facilitate the work of EU regional representations in Brussels is by using case studies. As Yin has said in his book ‘Case study Research: Design and Methods’ ‘a case study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident’ (Yin, 2003, 13). This is certainly the case relating to the concept of e-governance. The case study for this research will focus on the use of ICT tools in the relation and contact between the regional representations in Brussels and the back office in the member states.

3.2 Case selectionThree regions are chosen for this research. The three regions are the Randstad region in the Netherlands, the Stockholm Region in Sweden and the West Midlands in Great Britain. Al three regions have growing cities but also have the desire to preserve rural areas. Next to that the three regions are member of the several common networks. Such as the EU2020 Regions Network, a network of 15 ambitious European regions wishing to achieve the deliver the Lisbon Strategy at regional and local level (www.lisbonregionsnetwork.eu). For all three regions it will be scrutinized how e-governance can or already improve the efficiency of the regions. The choice of cases immediately envisages the pitfall of the external validity. It would be too much to generalize for all regions, based on the outcomes of the case studies. The author takes into account that governance structures within regions differ considerable and are historically grown. Therefore they cannot be copied one on one to another region. However the research can be a guideline to regions to adjust certain e-governance tools to their governance structure. Next to that the author recognizes the possibility to apply the outcome of this research on other sorts of interest representations in Brussels, since internal affairs management is a difficult subject for all sorts of interest representations. A last possibility to generalize the research more is related to the different levels. The research might also be applied within the public affairs sector in the different member states, since distances within some of the member states force the interest organizations to work with ICT tools as well.

3.3 MethodologyThe data collection for the research will exist out of extensive desk research. Academic literature concerning the topic of multi-level governance and e-governance as well as non-academic documentation explaining the state of art of the different regional representations in Brussels as well as in their member states. The non-academic

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documentation will mainly be extracted from the internet sites of the different regional representations and their regional bases in the member states, as well as information collected at the representational offices.

Next to the extensive desk research representatives of the three different regional representations will be interviewed with the use of a survey, as well as the several people working at the regions in the member states. The choice for the use of surveys is based on geographical considerations. The regions are based in different member states, which makes it impossible for the author to speak to all interviewees personally. The questions of the survey will be related to the hypotheses and theoretical approach. Next to that the survey will contain questions relating to function, usage of the system as well as personal opinions. The possibility of social desirable answers to the questions will be taken in account by the author.

A last form of data collection in this research will be the participant-observation. During the author’s internship at the Randstad Region, the author will serve as an active observer. The author will have full access to information related to the Randstad Region and in her role as intern will visit the representational offices in Brussels of Stockholm Region and West Midlands. The author is aware of the problems relating to participant-observation such as the danger of becoming a supporter of the Randstad Region instead of an observer. She will take these problems in consideration. In the end the data collected from the interviews and participant-observation will be compared to the information distillated from the literature in order to falsify or verify the hypotheses formulated in the beginning. This will occur in a case study analysis. Multiple strategies and techniques can be used for the analysis of case study evidence. In this research the author had to choose between two strategies, being the ‘relying on theoretical prepositions’ and the ‘thinking about rival explanations’ (Yin, 2003, 112-114). Although the use of the ‘relying on theoretical prepositions’ would certainly be sufficient for this research, the author has chosen to use the strategy ‘thinking about rival explanations’. This strategy can be related to the ‘relying on theoretical prepositions’-strategy but it also includes rival explanations. Since the author is aware of the possibility of other influences accounting for the results, but at the same time wants to analyze the effect of the theoretical preposition on the phenomenon (the efficiency of EU regional representations). Therefore with the analysis of the case study evidence the author will try to verify the central hypothesis however she’s aware of the possible real-life rival explanations that can come out of the evidence analysis. In this research several real-life rival explanations can be distinguished. First the direct rival, being the direct opposition of the central hypothesis. In this research the direct rival explanation would be that e-governance wouldn’t improve the efficiency of regional representations. Next to that commingled rival explanation might occur. This would result in a combined explanation of both the central phenomenon and other influences. A third rival explanation that might occur is the societal rival explanation. In this case the result (the improvement of efficiency of the EU regional representations) is not instigated by the phenomenon (e-governance) but by social trends. By the awareness of other influences and the analysis

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of those as well, the author will try to create more confidence in the findings. Next to the choice of strategy, the author also needs to choose a technique to execute this strategy. In his book Yin gives several possibilities to use (Yin, 2003, 116-137). For this research the technique of pattern matching logic would be the most appropriate. Pattern matching logic compares an empirically based pattern with a predicted one or with several alternative predictions. Since this research is of an exploratory nature the patterns will relate to the independent variables of the case study. Therefore other useful variables can develop during the data collection. Different forms of pattern matching can be distinguished (Yin, 2003, 116-120). For this research the rival explanations as patterns will be used. This form of pattern matching relates to matching patterns to rival explanations. If this is successfully done, this could result in the conclusion that that rival explanation was correct leading to the conclusion that others weren’t or at least not completely.

Another technique thought about by the author was the technique of logic models. The cause-effect-cause-effect pattern proposed by the logic model could well be the case in this research (Yin, 2003, 127). However it would also oblige the author to expand her research, making the dependent variable the independent one in a later state. Next to that the author should need to prove the causal relation this later stage which isn’t part of this investigation. However the effect of e-governance through the more effective cooperation between home offices and regional representations in Brussels on their in influence in the European policy-making process could be a subject for further research.

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4. Theoretical Framework

The fourth chapter contains the theoretical basis of this research, consisting of a gradual discussion of governance theories. Starting with the overarching governance theory to the more specific multi-level governance to e-governance what only touches a small section of the governance family and in the same time the complete family, since ICT is all around nowadays. In this way an answer will be given to the second sub question.

4.1 GovernanceIf you look the term ‘governance’ up in a random dictionary it’s mostly defined as the act of manner of governing. Unfortunately defining governance isn’t as simple as it looks in a dictionary. Multiple scientists have tried to come up with one comprehensive definition but up until now they haven’t succeeded yet. Multiple forms of governance can be distinguished (Van Kersbergen and Van Waarden, 2004, 144). Making a single definition impossible to give. In his article ‘Understanding Governance: Ten Years On’, Rhodes states that the definition of governance depends on the environment it refers to. So European Union governance is defined differently than governance in comparative politics and in the definition of good governance the term governance again has another meaning. He gives a short as well as an elaborate definition of governance. In the short definition governance refers to a new process of governing; or a changed condition of ordered rule; or the new method by which society is governed. In the elaborate definition Rhodes view on governance is: Governance wears public administration and public policy spectacles and can be defined as:

1. Interdependence between organizations. Governance is broader than government, covering non-state actors. Changing the boundaries of the state meant the boundaries between public, private and voluntary sectors became shifting and opaque.

2. Continuing interactions between network members, caused by the need to exchange resources and negotiate shared purposes.

3. Game-like interactions, rooted in trust and regulated by rules of the game negotiated and agreed by network participants.

4. A significant degree of autonomy from the state. Networks are not accountable to the state; they are self-organizing. Although the state does not occupy a privileged, sovereign position, it can indirectly and imperfectly steer networks (Rhodes, 2007, 1246).

He again shortened this definition by saying that governance refers to governing with and through networks. It has to be kept in mind that this is not the only meaning of the concept of governance, only the one most useful for this research. Since Rhodes sees governance as network governance. According to Van Kersbergen and Van Waarden there are three forms of networks in network governance. Networks of solely public organizations, network of solely private organizations and networks consisting of a mixture of public and private organizations. However as they refer to Rhodes all three forms share the characteristics mentioned above and are conceptualized as pluri-centric forms of governance in contrast to multi-centric and uni-centric or hierarchical forms

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(Van Kersbergen and Van Waarden, 2004, 148). In this research only the public organization networks are of importance. The three regions subject of this region share several networks. A sort of network governance is multi-level governance (Van Kersbergen and Van Waarden, 2004, 149).

4.2 Multi-level governanceThe working of the EU can be explained by a variety of theories.1 During the first five decades of European integration the European Union was explained by the state-centric approach. In the state-centrist approach the European Union can be seen as a set of institutions that facilitate the collective action of nation states (Marks, Nielsen, Ray and Salk, 1996, 41). In this approach the national governments are the most important political actors involved. More important the state-centric approach presumes that European integration does not challenge the autonomy of nation states and that the sovereignty of the nation states is even strengthened through EU membership (Hooghe and Marks, 2001, 1). The supranational institutions, such as the European Commission and the European Parliament only work in as agents of the states. In this perspective national governments decide what happens in the EU by bargaining among each other. If sub-national governments want to influence the EU decision-making process, they have to do this in the domestic arena instead of in the European one.

At the beginning of the 1990s Hooghe and Marks came with a new perspective on the working of the EU called multi-level governance. As the term already indicates multi-level governance relates to governance on multiple levels. This view was developed because of the inability of the state-centric approach to explain the presence of sub-national governments in the EU decision-making process. New regional policy created by the European Commission and the establishment of the Committee of the Regions, introduction of qualified majority voting and the co-decision procedure, approved by the nation states in the Treaty of Maastricht undermined the state-centric approach. Through these changes the supranational institutions gained more power on the cost of the nation states. It also resulted in a division of power within the nation state. The regional policy of the European Commission gave the sub-national governments a reason to act on European level. This all lies on the start of the multi-level governance approach, which departs from the assumption that there are overlapping competencies among multiple levels of governments and that there is interaction between the political actors across those levels (Marks, Nielsen, Ray and Salk, 1996, 41). This view does not reject the importance of the national governments and of the domestic arenas but it believes that there are more actors involved in the European arena and that the national governments have no longer the monopoly in that arena. Next to the presence of sub-national actors alongside to the national ones, private actors have become involved as well (Marks, Nielsen, Ray and Salk, 1996, 41). This links

1 In this research only the theory or perspective of multi-level governance is of importance and therefore only this approach will be explained into depth. A good overview of the other theories of European integration can be found in: Rosamond, B., Theories of European Integration, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2000.

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back to the network idea of Rhodes, since the different actors and levels result in the creating of policy networks organized across policy areas and government levels (Van Kersbergen and Van Waarden, 2004, 150). Kohler-Koch and Eising even prefer to speak of network governance instead of multi-level governance (Van Kersbergen and Van Waarden, 2004, 150). In the table below the relations between the different levels and actors is shown. There are lines between all the levels and all the actors. The whole system is a two-way street. Sub-national and national governments as well as the EU institutions use public and private actors for information. And the public and private actors from all levels try to influence policy-making on all levels

Figure 2: EU multi-level governance structure

This research is focused on the link between the public actors and the EU level. More specific the public actors on sub-national level, namely the regions and their interaction with the EU level. However as the table shows, multi-level governance is not just about vertical interaction, it’s also about horizontal interaction. Public actors form networks

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EU-Level

Public Actors Private Actors

National Level

Public Actors Private Actors

Sub-national Level

Public Actors Private Actors

together, between member states of the EU as well as within. For instance European regions, the public actors topic of this research, form network organization within as well as between member states. As can be read above most regions have opened an office in Brussels to get involved on the EU level. A research by Marks, Haesly and Mbaye showed that the most important reason for regions to open such an office in Brussels is to gather information and not influencing policies (2002, 4). At first sight this outcome contradicts the multi-level governance approach. However as said by Jeffery this is not the case. Information gathering and policy influencing are related actions. The reactive strategy of information gathering can also lead to proactive information feeding of relevant policy makers (Jeffery, 1996, 192). Nevertheless there are still large differences in intensity of the involvement of regions in the policy-making process of the EU, making scientist skeptic about the multi-level governance of the EU (Huysseume and Jans, 2005, 100). Constitutional regions are known to be stronger involved in the initiation and decision-making stage than administrative regions (Moore, 2008, 526-527). They have more financial means, are often better organized and have more political autonomy giving them more possibilities to influence policies (Hooghe and Marks, 1996, 73-74). Hooghe and Marks see this unequal participation of activities between different regions as a distinctive feature of multi-level governance (Hooghe and Marks, 1996, 73-74). As said above, information gathering is crucial for regions to influence policy. The fastest way to collect information is through ICT. The use of ICT in governance practices developed into a new member of the governance family: e-governance.

4.3 E-governance and e-governmentSince ICT tools became more commonly used the letter E has become synonymous with the word electronic and is placed in front of all sorts of words. E-commerce, e-business, e-government and e-governance are several examples of such new concepts. In this paragraph the focus will lay on the concepts of e-government and e-governance. Both having different meanings. According to UNESCO ‘e-governance is the public sector’s use of information and communication technologies with the aim of improving information and service delivery, encouraging citizen participation in the decision-making process and making government more accountable, transparent and effective’ (UNESCO, 2005). Dawes, a scientist at the Center for Technology in Government of the University of Albany gives a quite similar definition stating that e-governance refers to the use of informational and communication technologies to support public services, government administration, democratic processes and relationships among citizens, civil society, the private sector and the state (Dawes, 2008, 86).

E-government is the virtualization or digitalization of public policy outcomes and the delivery and management of publicly provided or publicly underwritten services (Budd and Harris, 2009, 4). Considerable confusion exists in the usages of these two concepts and they are by some authors used interchangeably (Marche and McNiven, 2003, 75). But there is more debate about the usage of both concepts. Some see e-government as a part of e-governance instead of as two separate concepts. For instance Dawes, who

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states that the definitions of e-government given by the OECD and the World Bank collectively became known as the concept of e-governance (Dawes, 2008, 87). Other authors such as Palvia and Sharma do not agree with this view and see the definition of the World Bank as only related to the concept of e-government (Dawes, 2008, 86-87; Palvia and Sharma, 2007, 1-2). Looking at the combination of the OECD and World Bank definitions at one side and the UNESCO at the other side, the similarities between the definitions are eminent, underlining the thesis that e-governance encompasses e-government.

However Palvia and Sharma are strongly convinced that the concepts are truly dissimilar. They are backed in this by Marche and McNiven, who state that ‘the concepts of government and governance relate to two different aspects’ (Marche and McNiven, 2003, 75). Governance, in their view, relates to the ways in which decisions are made, while government relates to the way in which decisions are carried out. Putting an ‘e’ in front of these concepts doesn’t affect this difference. Palvia and Sharma go even further in this and have come up with a way to clarify the difference between e-government and e-governance. In their view ‘e-government focuses on constituencies and stakeholders outside the organization, whether it is in the government or public sector at the city, county, state, national or international level. E-governance focuses on administration and management within an organization, whether it’s public or private, large or small’ (Palvia and Sharma, 2007, 3) .

FOCUS Outside Inside Type of Organization

Public Sector – Government Agency

e-Government (Extranet and Internet)

e-Governance (Intranet)

Private Sector – MNCs or SMEs

Inter-Organizational Systems – IOS like CRM systems (Extranet and Internet)

e-Governance (Intranet)

Table 1: Palvia and Sharma Framework for e-Government versus e-Governance

Palvia and Sharma have visualized their way of division in a table, as shown above. As to be seen in the table above, e-governance is mainly focused on internally utilization of ICTs to manage organization resources and administer policies and procedures, while e-government is focused at external utilization of ICTs. This external utilization can be focused on citizens, businesses or other governmental agencies. This view of the concepts of e-governance and e-government will be taken into account but already shows some flaws in its explanation. Governance comprises interaction within as well as outside the institution making a combination of e-government and e-governance necessary. Therefore in this research I will hold on to the earlier mentioned definition, making e-government a part of e-governance.

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This also agrees with the view of the author Backus who distinguishes three main target groups of e-governance: government, citizens and businesses/interest groups (Backus, 2001, 2). The definition given by Prahbu states the same, being: ‘e-governance is the application of electronic means in the interaction between:

1. Government and citizens, in both ways;2. Government or Businesses, in both ways and;3. Internal government operation’ (Prahbu, 2004, 1).

These definitions are contrary to the one given by Palvia and Sharma. The e-governance definition of Backus and Prahbu is the same as the e-government definition of Palvia and Sharma. It also relates closer to the goals of e-governance set out by UNESCO:

1. Improve the internal organizational processes of governments;2. Provide better information and service delivery;3. Increase government transparency in order to reduce corruption;4. Reinforce political credibility and accountability;5. Promote democratic practices through public participation and consultation.

As well as the fields of implementation set out by UNESCO:1. E-administration referring to improving government processes and the internal

working of the public sector with new ICT-executed information processes;2. E-services referring to improving delivery of public services to citizens;3. E-democracy referring to greater and more active citizen participation and

involvement enabled by ICTs in the decision-making process (UNESCO, 2005).

To decide which definition to use, the definition of the concept of governance can be of usage again. Where government mainly relates to the body and the execution of decisions, governance relates to the interaction between the different actors involved in the whole administration field. Looking at this definition, the division along the lines of Backus seems more appropriate than the one given by Palvia and Sharma. Therefore the definition of the concept formulated by Backus together with the goals set out by UNESCO will be the one used in this research. The goals of the UNESCO will be the guideline of this research. However for this research the third goal ‘Increase government transparency in order to reduce corruption’ and the last goal ‘to promote democratic practices through public participation and consultation’ are not of importance due to the relatively low levels of corruption in the member states of the three cases and the focus of the reserach on the improvement of internal affairs of regional representational offices in which the public isn’t involved. The three remaining goals relate to the first field of implementation of UNESCO: e-administration, which can be compared to the internal affairs of the regional representations. The goals of the UNESCO will be used to see if e-governance can make regional representations more effective in their home front management. The four indicators of optimal internal organization for interest organizations set up by Van Schendelen will be linked to the goals of UNESCO. The first indicator of Van Schendelen, sufficient cohesion, matches with the first goal of the UNESCO, improving internal organizational processes. Both situations can be created by the use of ICT-executed information processes. The second indicator, useful knowledge, matches the goal of providing better information and service delivery. The third

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indicator, optimal mix of resources and skills relates both to the first as the second goal, being a mix of improving internal organizational processes and providing better information and service delivery. The last indicator, a good image, relates to the three other indicators as well, since a good image needs the aspects of the three other indicators. Next to the link with the other indicators, the fourth goal of UNESCO is the most important goal: reinforcing political credibility and accountability.

4.4 Tools of e-governanceSince the concept of e-governance is clear now and the topics to scrutinize the three regions at are set out, the different manifestations of e-governance can be discussed. As the general definition underlines the way e-governance manifests itself is through ICT. Multiple ICTs developed through the years. Several of them have become so common that they are no longer recognized as ‘new’ tools, such as mobile telephones, Internet and e-mail. However their impact shouldn’t be forgotten. Next to these known tools other less used ICT-tool are developed, like intranet, extranet and virtual workspaces. Within large companies and government organizations these tools are already commonly used, but also for smaller organizations these tools can create new possibilities. In this research the tools, mentioned by Prabhu, email, internet, websites and Intranet development and usage will be discussed ( Prahbu, 2004, 2).

4.4.1 EmailEmail is the most commonly known and cheapest ICT tool used for business as well as pleasure. It is used in almost every company in urban areas and in most of them in regional ones. The benefits of email is that it breaks with the official hierarchy of communication. Where before the usage of email person-to-person communication was often preceded by making an appointment or dependent on somebody’s physical presence, email broke largely with this habit. Persons can sent an email to whoever they want regardless of the time, hierarchal position of the receiver or the location. In this way email can improve person-to-person communication leading to better knowledge sharing, exchange, coordination and feedback of information (Prahbu, 2004, 30). However the usage of email also has its limitations. Due to its popularity sending an email has become so easy that the importance of an email can be misinterpreted. Within governmental organizations as well as corporate organizations the daily email stream is considerably. Important information can easily get lost in the inbox of the receiver.

4.4.2 InternetA second ICT tool discussed here is the Internet. Just as email it’s used in both a private as business way. The Internet is filled with information and is a tool for everyone looking for information. It is a general tool not focused on a specific user. Government sectors are all present on the internet, sharing information for all people through their websites.

4.4.3 WebsitesWebsites are the third tool to be discussed. Websites are set up by all sorts of people, organizations and companies. There are one-way websites, with as its only purpose to

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share information. But a website can also be dynamic. In that case the user of the website not only receives information but can interact as well. This can be with sales websites or social networks.

4.4.4 IntranetThe intranet can be seen as the most prominent ICT tool for facilitating knowledge sharing (Hendriks, 1999, 91). Intranet gained recognition from the mid-1990s onwards and developed itself in the most developed and powerful tool for institution-wide communications, collaborative projects, and the establishment of a sense of community on a manageable scale (Scott, 1998, 3-4) . The system can be of great use to companies or organizations with a globally dispersed staff, such as MNC and NGOs and governmental organizations such as the navy and embassies (Murgolo, Pitt and Ewing, 2002, 115).

4.5 ConclusionIn this chapter the essence of e-governance has been explained as well as its position in the governance family. The special aspect of e-governance is that it is a governance theory on its own as well as a way to reinforce other governance trends. E-governance is targeted at government, citizens, businesses and interest groups and aims amongst others at improving internal organizational processes and better information and service delivery. By improving these aspects e-governance can indirectly reinforce multi-level governance or network governance since it aims at optimalizing the internal organization of governments which in turn has its effect on the working of governments and sub-national governments as well as interest groups.

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5. Operalization

In this chapter the theoretical concepts of the UNESCO distinguished in chapter 4 will be operalized.

5.1 Hypotheses The research question is focused on the positive effects of e-governance on regional representations. This presupposition is led by the part ‘increase the efficiency’. It presumes that the current situation can become better. This agrees with the problem analysis of chapter 1. But when can we speak of a situation with more efficiency related to the situation before? This needs to be measured by a comparison between the situation without e-governance tools and the situation with those tools. With other words: how efficient were regional representations before the introduction of the ICT tools and afterwards. However since e-governance tools have known a gradual introduction, it’s not possible to point a ‘before’ and ‘after’ situation. Therefore this research is of an exploratory nature instead of an explanatory nature. It will look at the possible effects of e-governance. This will be done on the basis of the three hypotheses formulated below at the hand of the problem analysis, the research question and the theoretic framework:

H1: ‘E-governance will increase the efficiency of the EU regional representations since ICT tools will improve the internal organization of the regional representations ’.

H2: ‘E-governance will increase the efficiency of the EU regional representations since ICT tools will improve the knowledge sharing between the different departments’.

H3: ‘E-governance will increase the efficiency of the EU regional representations since ICT tools will increase the political credibility and accountability of organizations’.

These three hypotheses focus on the positive effect of e-governance. However, it’s clear to the author that these hypotheses don’t rule out other possibilities to increase the efficiency of the EU regional representations. The aim of this research is to scrutinize the effect of e-governance on EU regional representations. Therefore the author decided not to formulate any alternative hypotheses, although this doesn’t imply that other phenomena could not also improve the internal organization of the EU regional representations. The author therefore doesn’t deny that there might be direct, commingled or societal rival explanations to the central hypotheses.

5.2 Variables and indicatorsThe dependent variable in all three hypotheses is ‘the efficiency the EU regional representations’. The independent variable in the three hypotheses is ‘e-governance’.

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This is the phenomenon that might influence the efficiency of the regions. It supposes causal relationship between the efficiency of the regional representations and e-governance by means of ICT tools.

However it’s not ‘e-governance’ itself that affects the dependent variable but something about it. This resulted in the formulation of three intervening variables to help to explain the phenomenon. The three intervening variables formulated in this research are formulated based on the four goals of the UNESCO and are ‘an improvement in the internal organization of regional representations’ (A), ‘an improvement in knowledge sharing between the different departments’ (B) and ‘increase in political credibility and accountability of organizations’ (C). All three variables are results of e-governance that might help improving ‘the efficiency of regional representations’. For the clarity of this research the author decided to split the three intervening variables into three different hypotheses. The relation between the independent, intervening and dependent variables is schematic represented in the arrow diagram below.

Figure 3: flow-chart hypotheses

To start this research the dependent and independent variables first need to be defined. For the dependent variable this means that the first thing to do is to define what the ‘efficiency of the EU regional representations’ is. This will be the same for all three hypotheses. Efficiency refers to the amount of output obtained from a given input (Davis and Pett, 2002, 87). Efficiency comes in multiple forms. Energy efficiency, economic efficiency and organizational efficiency are only a few of the forms of efficiency. In each form the concept has another meaning. Energy efficiency relates to the use of a minimum of energy sources for the highest outcome of it as well as the use of energy more thoughtful. Economic efficiency relates to the welfare notion of Pareto optimality in the economy which can be explained as an economic entity is economic efficient if its economic organization and processes selected are such that given its goals and knowledge there is no alternative organization which will yield it a higher pay off when all costs and outputs are taken into account (Sin, 1973, 1976; Shubik, 1978, 123). Organizational efficiency refers to the internal functioning of an organization (Davis and Pett, 2002, 88). Since this research is focused on the internal organization of regional representations organizational efficiency is the proper form of the concept to use.

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e-governance

A

The efficiency of regional representations

B

C

Organizational efficiency is defined as the capacity of an organization, institution, or business to produce desired results with a minimum expenditure of energy, time, money, personnel, materiel, etc. To measure this efficiency of regional representations the author will use surveys and interviews as well as participant observation during the period working at one of these regional representations to measure how the regional representations are organized momentarily.

In H1 it’s stated that e-governance will increase the efficiency of the EU regional representations because improve the internal organizational of the regional representations. The improvement of the internal organizational processes of the regional representation can lead to greater efficiency since it can be assumed that a better organized representation has more time to spend on the actual tasks of the regional representations as mentioned in chapter two. To measure this hypothesis the time spent before using the e-governance tools and afterwards would be the best option. However, as explained before, a lot of the ICT tools are already in use for two decades while most of the EU regional representations are of younger age. Therefore the measurement of this hypothesis will be based on literature relating to the effects of ICT tools in organizations as well as interviews and surveys with the three case study regions about their ideas and usage of newer ICT tools as intranet and virtual workspaces. The literature will be used to measure the time saving and organizational effects of ICT tools in organizations before and after the introduction of ICT tools, while the interviews will be used to link it to the situation in the regional representations subject of this research.

H2 states that e-governance will increase the efficiency of the EU regional representations because of better knowledge sharing. This will have a positive effect on the efficiency of EU regional representations since information means power and is one of the essential parts of an optimal internal organization as well as one of the most important elements in interest representation. To measure this hypothesis first the concept of knowledge sharing needs to be explained. Hendriks states that ‘knowledge sharing presumes a relation between at least two parties, one that possesses knowledge and one that acquires knowledge. The first party should communicate the knowledge consciously and willingly or not, in some for or other. The other party should be able to perceive these expressions of knowledge, and make sense of them’ (Hendriks, 1999, 92). Therefore knowledge sharing comprises both communication and information distribution. For the regional representations the parties are the Brussels office at the one hand and the stakeholders in the member states on the other. The role of knowledge owner or knowledge seeker can switch between the two parties. A good measure for improved knowledge sharing is to see how much information is shared before the use of ICT tools and afterwards. Just as with the first hypothesis the timing will be a problem here. Therefore this will be done based on research on the effects of ICTs on knowledge sharing and interviews and survey with the three case study regions in order to come to a sufficient answer.

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H3 relates to the function of e-governance to reinforce political credibility and accountability of organizations. In this case it will relate to the possible effects on the political credibility and accountability of regional representations. Before explaining the measurement and the method first the concepts of political credibility and accountability needs to be explained. The term political credibility already gives away its meaning; political credibility relates to the level of credibility of a politician. The higher its credibility the more positive for the politician himself as well as for the organization he works for. Accountability relates to ‘issues concerned with the external control exercised by the audit offices – financial accountability – together with others such as how voters can make elected representatives answer for their policies – political accountability’ ( Pina, Torres and Acerete, 2007, 583-584). Accountability has extended its meaning to embrace openness and transparency initiatives which aim at making both the control of government by the citizenry and public discussion between citizens and governments – accountability as dialogue- easier. The driving force behind all systems of accountability is the democratic imperative for government organizations to respond to demands from elected representatives and the wider public. Reinforcing the political credibility and accountability will have a positive effect on the image of the regional representations. Measurement of the reinforcement of political credibility and accountability of the regional representations through ICT tools will be based on the level of transparency of the regions representational websites. Transparency is seen as a reasonable measure for political credibility and accountability since public organizations remain accountable to the citizenry(Wong and Welch, 2004, 283). Although the lobbying of regional representations occurs mainly behind closed doors and at informal meetings which is not transparent at all, showing the results of the lobbying is of importance for the regional representations, since they remain public organizations dependent of the wishes of the electorate. The measurement of the transparency through ICT will be done on the basis of the Website Attribution Evaluation System (WAES) developed by the Cyperspace Policy Research Group (CyPRG, see Annex II). This system has five categories of measurement, being ownership, contact/reachability, organizational information, issue information and citizen consequences and responses. These five categories are subdivided into 23 criteria to measure. The system also has a possibility to test the interactivity of the websites, however for the measurement of political credibility and accountability of regional representations this is not of importance. Next to the WAES, literature as well as the interviews and surveys will be used for the measurement.

The independent variable in the three hypotheses is ‘e-governance’. It is a theory that’s a member of the governance family broadly explained in the previous chapter. Repeating the definition e-governance is ‘the public sector’s use of information and communication technologies with the aim of improving information and service delivery, encouraging citizen participation in the decision-making process and making government more accountable, transparent and effective’ (http://portal.unesco.org). As also been said before in the last chapter this research mainly focuses on the last part of the definition relating to making the government more effective. In short the

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independent variable e-governance relates to the use of ICT-tools. A good indicator for the independent variable e-governance in this case study would be the usage of ICT tools. To measure the usage of ICT tools by the different regional offices will by means of interviews with the employees of the different offices and by personal observation of the tools used.

For every measurement of the indicators the validity needs to be indicated. The validity refers to the degree of correspondence between the measure and the concept it is thought to measure (Buttolph Johnson and Reynolds, 2008, 97). Next to the validity of the measurements, the reliability of it needs to be determined as well. Reliability relates to the extent to which an experiment, test, or any measuring procedure yields the same results on repeated trails (Buttolph Johnson and Reynolds, 2008, 94). First the validity of the measurement of the efficiency of the regional representations will be determined. The concept of regional representations has been made clear in the second chapter and can be made valid on face value. The measurement is mainly based on judgment since efficiency is an subjective term. However since multiple sources are used to measure the efficiency of regional representation the validity is ensured. Reliability is more problematic since organizational changes are always possible and often depend on the changes on national level in the member states. This results in changes in the efficiency. The author is aware of this situation. Therefore the split-halves method is used to tackle this problem. This means that the measurement is done with two measures of the concept on the same time. This will be done on the basis of interviews and surveys on the one hand and participant observation on the other. These results will be compared to ensure the reliability.

The validity of the indicator of the independent variable ‘e-governance’ is very strong. It is generally recognized that ICT tools are the basis of e-governance. Therefore measuring the usage of ICT tools as an indicator for e-governance is valid. The reliability of the indicator is also present. ICT tools are tangible goods, measurable by counting them and their definition is generally accepted. Email will be concepted in the same way next year as it is today.

The construct validity of the indicators of the intervening variables in H1, H2 and H3 can be ensured by the usage of multiple sources of evidence. In this way the validity is ensured by providing multiple measures of the same phenomenon. For the three hypotheses this will be done on the basis of case data collection, interviews and surveys, and participant observations. The reliability of the measurement of the indicators of the three intervening variables is again ensured through the aforementioned split-halves method.

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6. Case StudyIn this chapter the third sub question will be answered. This relates to the organization of the three regions. First the Randstad Region will be discussed, followed by the Stockholm Region and the West Midlands. For all three regions the sub-national level and the organizational structure of the region will be explained. Thereby the case evidence will be presented for each region seperately.

6.1 Randstad RegionThe Randstad Region is situated in the Netherlands. The Randstad Region covers an area of 8.309 km², this is about a quarter of the surface of the Netherlands. The region inhabits around 7.6 million people. This is about 46% of the Dutch population. The Netherlands is administratively divided into 12 parts, called provinces. These provinces comprise the first sub-national governmental level in the Netherlands. The provinces are since 2003 governed by the ‘Gedeputeerde Staten’ (GS), the provincial government and a provincial parliament called the ‘Provinciale Staten’(PS). Before this date the PS were the executives of the province and not the GS. The members of the PS are elected by the citizens of the province every four years. The PS than chooses the GS. The candidates for the PS elections are all members of the same parties as the parties taking part in country-wide elections.

The Randstad Region is a network organization that represents the interests of four of those provinces in the Netherlands. These provinces are Flevoland, Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland and Utrecht (www.regio-randstad.nl). As can be seen on the figure below the four provinces cover the most urbanized part of the Netherlands. This urbanized region is called Randstad, therefore the cooperation structure between the four provinces

carries this name. The four provinces work together on the field of European policy since 1993 and are commonly represented in Brussels since that year. Since 2000 the Randstad Region shares its housing with the representations of the other Dutch provinces and the ‘Inter Provinciaal Overleg’ (IPO -the institution for inter-provincial consultation). The housing is known as the House of Dutch Provinces. This step is of influence on the organizational structure of the Randstad Region.

Source: Randstad Region

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6.1.1 Organizational structure Randstad Region The Randstad Region has a difficult organizational structure since it’s not an independent organization or an actual region. It is a network organization between four different provinces which leads to four responsibilities and preferences and low accountability. Next to that the Randstad Region also has a responsibility within the house of Dutch provinces. First this structure will be discussed, to later focus on the internal organization of the Randstad Region.

The twelve provinces represented in the House of Dutch Provinces (in short HDP) have three different mandates of how they are representing. 35% of their time the representatives of the provinces represent the preferences of their own province, having a mandate of their own province. In this function the representatives of the

twelve provinces, try to influence the policy making, network and try to get publicity on behalf of their own province. Another 35% is spent on the interests of the twelve provinces all together. This 35% is spent on themes formulated by the 12 provinces together (HDP) and are of influence to all twelve provinces.

Figure 4: Distribution of activities in House of Dutch Provinces

Because of this the representative of one of the provinces work on one of the themes together with a representative of another province. For the 35% of the HDP the provinces need to represent their common opinion and not the opinion of the province itself. However in the negotiations which themes to lobby and which positions to take the representatives do take the position of their own province in order to get the best for their own province. The last 35% is spent at the interests of the regional cooperation (see figure 4). It is clear that this sums up to a total of 105% but the percentages of work fluctuate between the three areas.

The Netherlands is divided in four regional network cooperations as seen in the organizational diagram below (figure 5). The 35% spent the regional network

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cooperation relate to cooperation on subject specifically important for the region. For this part of the work, the same rule applies as with the work spent on the HDP as a whole: in the end the representative represents its province and will act along the line of the preferences of the province. The 70% spent on common subject leads to a lot of discussion and consultation to satisfy all the provinces involved. As shown in the diagram (figure 5), Randstad Region is one of the network cooperations, and as said before one of the focuses of this research. This means that this research will not go into the 70% spent on the own province or the HDP as a whole but only looks at the co-ordination of the 35% spent on the Randstad Region. However, since overlap between the different mandates of the representatives at the Randstad Region is inevitable, the co-ordination of the working of the Randstad Region can also be of interest to the working of the provinces themselves or the HDP.

Figure 5: Organization Chart House of Dutch Provinces (*SNN= Samenwerkingsverband Noord-Nederland)

As said above the work for the Randstad Region as a whole is divided between the representatives working in Brussels. At the moment of writing five representatives are working at the office in Brussels to represent the interest of the four provinces. Noord-Holland is the only province with two representatives, the other three have only one representative. Next to the representatives a Randstad coordinator and a policy officer work for the Randstad Region in Brussels. They are not working for one of the provinces in particular but spent all their time at the representation of the Randstad interests as a whole. Next to that the Randstad Coordinator has the role to co-ordinate the work done together by the four provinces. Since the Randstad Region is a network cooperation of four provinces it has to account to the boards of all four provinces. Since the work of the Randstad Region is focused on the EU, it has to account to the vice governors of the four provinces, responsible for EU policy. Momentarily the vice governor of Zuid-Holland is the chairman of the Randstad Region but the representatives all have to account to the vice governor of their own province. Four times a year the vice governors of the four provinces meet each other to set out the lines for the next period and to evaluate the past one. In the end this meeting is the decision-making body of the Randstad Region.

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The representatives work on European themes in Brussels. In the provinces Europe is covered by the EU-coordinator and his team. The size and organization of those teams differs per province. In Zuid-Holland and Noord-Holland a group of 5 to 10 people form the EU department, while in Utrecht the department only exists of 4 people. In Flevoland an actual EU-department doesn’t exist and the employees dealing with European topics are divided between different departments. However the people dealing with EU topics in the EU team often lack specific information related to topics dealt with in the Committee of the Regions or the European Commission. Environment, cohesion funds and climate are all of importance for the provinces but demand expert knowledge. This knowledge is present in the different provinces but is scattered over the different departments in the province. They deal with EU topics as a side issue next their work on national level. It’s for the EU team in the province to contact these people and pass their information on to the representative in Brussels. This is a time consuming task and often leads to incomplete information. To keep updated about the wishes and work of the provinces the representatives of the Randstad Region go back to their province in the Netherlands every Monday. This whole day is spent on informing the EU-team and vice governor as well as getting information back for the work to be done in Brussels. The Randstad Coordinator, fulltime in charge of the work of the Randstad Region, visits the provinces about two or three times a week, travelling back and forth between Brussels and the Randstad.

6.1.2 Case evidence Randstad RegionThe case evidence for the Randstad Region exists of participant observation, survey responses and academic literature. From the participant observation it becomes clear that the representatives of the Randstad Region spend around 60% of their time on the communication with the home front (see table 3, chapter 7).

Most of this communication occurs through e-mail and telephone together with face to face contact one day a week. Thereby they recently implemented a virtual workspace to improve communication between regional representational office and the home front. Momentarily the time benefits of the virtual workspace aren’t visible yet. At this moment, monitoring and using the system still takes more time than sending an email. Nevertheless the system is still in its infancy. This implementation shows the belief of the Randstad Region in the use of ICTs for the improvement of the communication with the home front. The results of the surveys underlines this. Although the Randstad Region believes that the use of ICTs can improve their communication with the home front, they don’t believe that it will change their internal organization in a positive way. The survey results of the Randstad Region show a skeptic approach towards the powers of ICTs for the organizational change. Therefore the amount of time spent on European topics for the employers in the home region is too little. Most of the employers in the provincial departments have the European topics as a side-issue and don’t feel the need for change. Thereby they believe that change cannot be established through tools but has to be initiated by the motivation of the people working in the organization. This

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corresponds with the literature on the influence of ICTs on internal organization. Boonstra states that ICTs themselves doesn’t determine the success of it but the way it is managed (Boonstra, 2002, 7). If ICTs are managed properly this has positive effects for the organization. Effects such as more innovative and efficient processes, openness and less hierarchy are mentioned as positive effects of ICTs in organizations (Boonstra, 2002, 33-39). However it also has negative effects such as the over-communicating pitfall of e-mail where the ease of communicating can result in unwanted message-streams which leads to productivity loss, irritation and interruptions of activities. Another negative effect of ICTs is the dependence on the systems and the additional problems when they are malfunctioning.

Looking at knowledge sharing in the Randstad Region, the figures from the surveys show predominately positive results. All the respondents have a satisfaction rate of above average with 8% of the total amount of respondents in the highest category. The respondents also do believe that the use of ICTs may have a positive effect on the knowledge sharing. This is also underlined by the introduction of the new virtual workspace. Participation observation shows that the most important reason to start a virtual workspace is that it would facilitate the knowledge sharing between the provinces and the Brussels office. This can also be concluded from the meeting notes in which the introduction of a virtual workspace was accepted (BO P4 EU, 2 July 2009). Research on the influence of ICTs on knowledge sharing shows that ICTs are surely helpful for the improvement of knowledge sharing but that the motivation of workers is of a greater importance. In a research preformed by Hendriks in 1999 on the relation between ICTs and knowledge sharing, it is stated that ICT can make a difference for knowledge sharing in four ways (Hendriks, 1999, 100). First, ICTs can overcome constraints by removing barriers. These barriers can be temporal distance, physical distance or social distance. Secondly ICTs can increase the range and speed of information access. This can be done in the form of electronic document management systems. A third way in which ICT can facilitate knowledge sharing is by improving the processes involved in knowledge sharing. This can be done by supporting knowledge sharing processes or by taking over certain processes. A last facilitating function of ICTs for knowledge sharing is that ICTs might help to locate the various elements relevant to the process of knowledge sharing. Nevertheless Hendriks states that all four possibilities are dependent of the motivation of people to share the knowledge (Hendriks, 1999, 99). Hendriks made a model in which he distinguishes different motivators for people to share knowledge. His final conclusion is that the influence of ICTs on knowledge sharing in the four aforementioned ways can be accomplished by the introduction of ICTs alone but that it’s highly related to the motivation of people to share knowledge as well as personal preferences and knowledge culture. this motivation can be improved by good management but is partly also dependent on the personal ideas about ICTs of the workers themselves.

Related to the function of ICTs for the political credibility and accountability of the Randstad Region they are very clear. The political credibility and accountability can be

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measured through the transparency of the website. Looking at the table (table 8, chapter 7) with the WAES scores shows that the Randstad Region website scores high on the Ownership of the website with 3 out of 3, but low on contacts and reachability with only 2 out of 6. The high scores on Ownership make it more likely that the Randstad Region has an active organizational involvement in the construction and content of the website. The low scores on contacts and reachability show a lack in transparency in this field. The Randstad Region worked with an outdated website for the last two years, a heritage of the old Randstad Region, established within the Netherlands. The Randstad Region already underlined the importance of a good website for their political credibility and accountability, to show the politicians and stakeholders in the member state their accomplishments and to defend their existence. At the time of this research the Randstad Region was working on a new website to ensure its future and to give insight in their pursuits and results. With provincial elections in the spring of 2011 it is important to have a good image. Since the provincial executives are the Randstad Region’s stakeholders and decide on the work of the Randstad Region. A transparent and updated website is the easiest way to broadcast the vision and results of the Randstad Region and to contribute to a good image. Next to the results from the WAES and the participant observation two researches about the positive effect of e-governance tools on the accountability of governments both had positive results claiming that websites can show the public, responsible for the re-election of politicians, the importance and results of the work of regional representations (Pina, Torres and Acerete, 2007; Wong and Welch, 2004).

6.2 Stockholm RegionSweden as a whole is divided into 21 counties. These counties are the first level of political and administrative subdivision in the country. Each county is led by the County Administrative Board and the County council. The County Administrative Board is appointed by the central government and led by a governor, all appointed for a period of six years. The main task of the County Administrative Board is to coordinate the development of the county along the lines of the goals set up at national level. The County Council is elected by the citizens of the county and has a policy-making task mainly in the field of health policy. Due to the highly centralized character of the Swedish state the Source: www.stockholmregion.org

power of the County Council is limited. Due to their limited power to act on EU level on their own, therefore some of the counties group together to act on the EU level. Stockholm Region is one of those ‘voluntary’ organized network regions, consisting of

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four of these administrative counties: Stockholm County, Uppsala County, Sörmland County and Västmanland County. Since recently the island of Gotland, situated south-east of Sörmland County has become a part of the Stockholm Region as well. Together these counties cover an area of 2843 km², 5,7% of the Swedish areal and inhabit 2,7 million people, almost one third of the Swedish population. Stockholm Region is just as the Randstad Region not an actual recognized region within the country.

6.2.1 Organizational structure Stockholm RegionThe organizational structure of the Stockholm Region is quite unusual (see figure 5). The stakeholders of the Stockholm Region are the City of Stockholm, the Stockholm County Council and the Association of Local Authorities in Stockholm County. Looking at the map above the stakeholders are all situated in the County of Stockholm. The other four counties are part of the Stockholm Region as well but only through service agreements. These service agreements are set up for a period of one or two years and arrange that the Stockholm Region will inform these counties and represent certain interests of the counties in exchange for a certain amount of money. The service agreements can be annulled at any given moment. This is different for the Stockholm County. A political board is responsible for the accountability of the Stockholm Region. The chairman of this board is the mayor of Stockholm. Next to him the county governor of Stockholm is member of the board, as well as the director of the Association of Local Authorities in Stockholm County and several mayors of cities in the Stockholm county. The board decides on practical issues as budget and accommodation. Next to the political board a political committee exists as well. The committee consists of the members of the political board plus majors and county governors from the other four counties, but the gravity point of the committee lays with the Stockholm Region as well. The committee consists of about 25 people. The political committee has to decides whether or not the Region will come up with a position paper on a certain topic as well as adopting the paper when it’s finished. These papers are almost always about topics concerning the Stockholm county and city. The Stockholm Region has, unlike the Randstad Region, no separate representative for each county. The Brussels office is staffed with 5 people. They have divided the work by topic. Therefore there are less conflicting interests within the office. Next to an office in Brussels, the Stockholm Region also has a office in Stockholm. This office is staffed with only one person and is mainly focused on the relation between the Stockholm Region office in Brussels and the stakeholders in the Stockholm County.

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Figure 6: Organizational Chart Stockholm Region

The work in the member states relating to European issues is not done by special EU departments. The city of Stockholm and the county council of Stockholm do have an international department who deals with the daily work of the EU issues. the other counties as well as the Association of Localities of Stockholm Region don’t have a separate EU or international department and have appointed one or two people to deal with EU or international issues next to their normal work. This lack of staff is mainly due to a lack in interest in EU matters. Some of the 52 municipalities in the Stockholm Region do have EU-coordinators, but they are mainly focused on certain topics and have other work as well.

6.2.2 Case evidence of Stockholm RegionThe case evidence of the Stockholm Region exists of an interview conducted with Gustaf Lundgren, representative of the Stockholm Region in Brussels, survey results and email contact with the office in Stockholm. In the interview with Gustaf Lundgren, he explains that he spends around 50% of his time on communication with the home front (see table 3, chapter 7) . Most of this contact is through e-mail and telephone. Face to face contact is more rare. Three or four times a year the representatives go back to Sweden for a couple of days to meet with the stakeholders. Lundgren does believe that ICT help the Stockholm Region with their communication and that new forms of ICT might help them improving the communication. What sort of ICT remains unclear and confidential. Relating to the improvement of the internal organization in general the Stockholm Region remains vague. The organizational structure of the Stockholm Region makes changes difficult but Lundgren suggests that the Stockholm Region is looking at ways to improve the organization. But as literature already shows: the Swedish regional representations are of an informal nature and have mainly the function of informing the home region rather than influencing policies (Huysseume and Jans, 2005, 96).

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The knowledge sharing of the Stockholm Region is mainly performed through email and the survey shows that the satisfaction with the knowledge sharing is below average. Contact with the office in Stockholm also shows that they often miss information and don’t know what is happening in Brussels. Lundgren on the other hand states that the Brussels office often doesn’t know what’s happening in Sweden and how to connect the Brussels issues to the Swedish ones. They are both not satisfied with the current situation. However, both the office in Stockholm as Lundgren truly believe that further use of ICTs may help the region in its knowledge sharing. Mainly to save time, since a lot of time is lost due to waiting on e-mail responses and phone calls. A shared database between the Swedish offices and the Brussels office might be a solution here. But this still in the exploratory phase.

Relating to the political credibility and accountability the Stockholm Region remains vague. Also because of the informal setting of the office. Due to the differences in accountability between the stakeholders and the areas with service agreements the Stockholm Region is most eager to please the stakeholders. In this case the City of Stockholm, the County Council of Stockholm and the Association of local authorities in Stockholm County. The website is mainly focused on these stakeholders. Looking at the website on the basis of the WAES (see table 8, chapter 7) the Stockholm Region scores medium. With 12 out of 20 a percentage of 60% is measured. The lack of transparency in the website of the Stockholm Region is shared by the contacts and reachability and the Issue information. In both areas the Stockholm region may improve.

6.3 West MidlandsEngland is divided into nine administrative regions, also called Government Office Regions (GOR) ( www.statistics.gov.uk). These administrative entities were established in 1994 (at that time there were ten regions, in 1998 Merseyside was abolished as a separate region and added to the North East region). Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales were not subdivided into regions. The regions were until recently led by the Regional Assemblies. These bodies consisted for the biggest part of representatives of local authorities in the region. Next to them the assemblies has members from a diverse group of interests, from voluntary and community interest to parish councils and business interests. The Regional Assemblies are for their bigger part indirectly elected through the local elections in the regions. The local authorities on their turn delegated one of their councilors to the Regional Assembly. Only the region of Greater London had direct Regional Assembly elections. The elections of the local authorities and the region in Greater London mutually diverse but are all based on the UK’s multi-party system with a lead for the Conservative Party and Labour Party as the two biggest UK parties. Since 31 March 2010 the Regional Assemblies have been abolished and their function has been taken over by the Local Authorities Leader’s Board. The West Midlands region

is one of the nine official regions and is located in the central west of England. The name West Midlands can lead

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to some confusion since it’s also the name of the much smaller county West Midlands, which together with the five other counties Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire form the West Milands region.

Source: www.picturesofengland.comThe most important city in the region is the big industrial city Birmingham as well as the smaller Wolverhampton.

6.3.1 Organizational structure West MidlandsThe West Midlands office in Brussels has just as the Stockholm Region different sorts of stakeholders. The four most important stakeholders are the Regional Assembly of the West Midlands, the Regional Development Agency, the West Midlands universities and the Chamber of Commerce of the West Midlands. Next to these four partners the West Midlands have over 85 other partners and extensive contracts (www.westmidlandsin europe.eu). Since these four partners are the most important ones for the Brussels office, they will be briefly explained. The Regional Assembly is an indirectly elected body with the task of developing and coordinating a strategic vision for improving the quality of life in the region (www.wmra.gov.uk). For over a decade it has been one of the most important partners of the West Midlands, however in 2007, when Gordon Brown became the new Prime Minister of the UK, one of his first decisions was to abolish the regional assemblies by 2010, since their function and value was highly criticized by the public (www.regionalassemblies.co.uk). The assemblies were officially abolished March 31st of this year therefore they are no longer a partner of the West Midlands. The Regional Assembly is replaced by the Leaders Board of the West Midlands. However with the new Cameron government, elected May 6th, the future of this body is discussed as well. The second partner of the West Midlands in Brussels is the Regional Development Agency called Advantage West Midlands. Their goal is the transform the region through sustainable economic growth. The future of Advantage West Midlands recently became unsure as well, as the Cameron government decided to abolish the Regional Development Agencies in 2012. A third big partner of the West Midlands are the universities, represented through the West Midlands Higher Education Association. This association represents the 13 universities and higher education institutes present in the West Midlands. Their interest in Europe mainly relates to educational matters. The last big partner is the Confederation of West Midlands Chambers of Commerce, joining the 7 regional Chambers of Commerce. Their focus mainly lies with economical topics. As can be read above the political changes of the last six months makes it difficult to show the current organizational structure of the West Midlands. As for this year the financial burden of the West Midlands office in Brussels is still carried by the abovementioned partners. However with the abolishment of the Regional Assemblies in England and the future abolishment of the Regional Development Agencies the future of the West Midlands is quite unsure. Therefore for this research the organizational structure as it was by the start of this research, April 1st 2010, will be used. This will not discard the fact that the situation remains uncertain.

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The West Midlands office in Brussels consists of four policy officers, a West Midlands centre manager and a business development manager. The office focuses on four major themes. Research and Development, Single Market, Environment and Climate and the Social Dimension. Each of the four policy officers cover one of these themes. The office is topic-driven and not territorial-driven as the Randstad Region. The topics prioritized within these themes are set up in the strategy by the European Strategy Board. This body has about three or four meetings a year and decides over the main topics from the CAP, EU2020 and the EU budget that are of importance to the West Midlands. The European Strategy Board consists of senior representatives of the different partners of the West Midlands, mainly of the four biggest partners. In the diagram below the process is displayed (see figure 6). The European Strategy Board looks at the CAP, EU 2020 and EU Budget and selects these elements important to the West Midlands related to the four areas of interest set up before.

Figure 7: Organizational Chart West Midlands

Next to the European Strategy Board the West Midlands also established a management committee involved with the practical matters concerning the operation of a regional representational office in Brussels. They look after the budget, facilitations etc. The members of the Management Committee are senior representatives of the four most important partners of the West Midlands. In the West Midlands itself the regional representation works with specific key contacts instead of with a huge amount of diverse contacts.

6.3.2 Case evidence of the West MidlandsThe case study evidence of the West Midlands exists of interview information and literature. The West Midlands office believes to spent over 50% of their time on communication with the home region (see table 3, chapter 7). Richard Tuffs, representative of the West Midlands indicates that most of this contact goes through e-mail and telephone. His visits to the home region depend on the meetings present. Differing from once a month to once every two à three months. The West Midlands are

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very clear about the possibilities to improve the internal organization through ICTs. They don’t believe that improvement is possible because of the fragmented nature of the cooperation within the region. To organize over ninety partners with different backgrounds and interests is impossible in the opinion of Tuffs. Therefore he doesn’t believe in an added value of ICTs. His biggest concern relating to the internal organization is the political situation in the UK. The new Conservative government is looking at possibilities to cut back on the regional offices in Brussels and to abolish the regions in England as an administrative entity.

Therefore the view of the West Midlands relating to the possible function of ICTs for the improvement of knowledge sharing are negative as well. The interest of the partners within the West Midlands are so diverse that knowledge sharing will be very difficult. Until recently the West Midlands had a communication officer in the home region, who distributed the information from the Brussels office to the relevant partners and collected information from the different partners for the use in the Brussels office. However, due to cutbacks by the central government, the position of communication officer was abolished. Nevertheless the Tuffs indicates that he is average satisfied with the situation. A explanation of this satisfaction lays mainly in the fact that changes are impossible in his view and that this is the best way to work, given the situation.

The West Midlands are clear about the political credibility and the accountability. The region believes that a good website is the best way to show your activities and to show people the added value of a Brussels office. Politics have the power in terms of the future of the regional offices in Brussels, so a good image and credibility is important for this. The WAES shows an average score for the West Midlands with opportunities for improvement mainly in the field of contact and reachability. The West Midlands are very willing to change their website and are looking for possibilities for some time now, but lack of funds keep them from action.

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6.4 ConclusionIn sum, the three regions all have a different organizational structure. The Randstad is the most formal region, with four equal stakeholders, while the stakeholders of the Stockholm Region differ in power, with the City and Council of Stockholm as the most powerful ones. Next to that they work with service agreements with the four other counties. In the West Midlands, the only politically recognized region, the situation is even more scattered with stakeholders from different disciplines of society and over 90 partners. Clearly the similarities at first sight aren’t followed by similarities in organization. The regions also have different opinions about the function of ICTs for the efficiency in their organization. A comparison between the three regions will be made in the next chapter, together with a discussion of the case evidence relating to the falsification or confirmation of the hypotheses.

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7. Analysis and discussion of the case evidence

The analysis of the case study evidence will be conducted on the basis of the three hypotheses. However there are some comments to be made on the forehand. The variation in internal structures of the different regions has had its effects on the availability of the case evidence. By far the most evidence was available of the Randstad Region. This region has the most formal structure with four clear stakeholders, while Stockholm Region and the West Midlands work with diverse partners and stakeholders as well as with service agreements. This makes it more difficult to get access to them. The case evidence exists of a five different sources. First of all literature relating to the influence of ICTs on internal organization. Secondly the information gathered from the two one-hour interviews with two senior policy officers of the Stockholm Region office and the West Midlands office in Brussels. Thirdly information from the surveys sent to the home offices in the Netherlands, England and Sweden (see annex I). Most of the surveys returned came from the Randstad Region. The reason for this is that the author was able to have direct contact with the home offices of the Randstad Region, while contact with the offices in the Stockholm Region and the West Midlands were conducted through their regional offices in Brussels. This made the author depended of the willingness of the Brussels offices to forward the survey to the offices in these member states. This resulted in a reply of two surveys from the Stockholm Region and only one from the West Midlands. From the twenty surveys set out in the Randstad Region, nine returned. This is a percentage of 45%. The survey isn’t set out to a bigger group of respondents since the number of people working on EU topics is relatively small. The fourth source of information is information of the participated observation by the author during her stay in Brussels. Most of this information will relate to the Randstad Region but some information will also relate to the regional representations in general. Lastly the WAES will be used to test the third hypothesis (see annex II). The triangulation of the evidence is ensured through the use of these different sources of evidence to answer the same research questions. This also tackles the problem of socially desirable answers in the interviews. First the case evidence of the three regions will be presented in separate paragraphs. Next the three regions will be compared and the chapter will be concluded with a discussion of the case evidence related to the three hypotheses.

7.1 Comparison of the regionsBefore discussing the case evidence relating to the confirmation or falsification of the hypotheses, the three regions will be compared. In the table below the differences and similarities between the regions are shown divided by indicator. However it has to be noted that the results of the comparison between the three regions cannot lead to any conclusions because of the differences in case evidence available for the three regions. The table below is based on the case evidence available for the different regions.

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Level of improvement through ICTsRegion/indicator Internal

organizationKnowledge sharing

Political credibility and accountability

RR +/- +/- +SR - +/- +WM - - +

+ = will improve -=will not improve +/- = might improveTable 2: Comparison of level of improvement through ICTs

The table demonstrates differences in expectations and experiences with the use of ICTs to improve the efficiency of the regional representations between the regions. In the next three paragraphs the regions will be compared per hypotheses.

7.1.1 Internal Organization The first hypothesis relates to the first goal of UNESCO being the improvement of internal organizational processes as well as to the first and third indicator of Van Schendelen: sufficient cohesion and an optimal mix of resources and skills. The interviews with representatives of the Stockholm and West Midlands offices as well as the fieldwork at the Randstad Region show similar results for the three regions relating to time spent on communication with the home front at the moment.

Region % spent in home front communicationRR* 60%SR** 50%WM***

>50%

*Randstad Region; **Stockholm Region; ***West MidlandsTable 3: Home front communication

All three percentages indicate that the regions spent half or more than half of their time on communicating with the home front. However, all three regions do also believe that ICT tools will surely contribute and have contributed to an improvement of the communication with the home front. The work of regional representations in Brussels isn’t possible without email and telephone. Since all three representations were established in the 1990s, when email and telephone were already used commonly, a situation without the two media remains unknown. Participant observation at the Randstad Region shows that next to the use of e-mail and telephone they recently started with the use of a more advanced ICT, a virtual workspace, to communicate more easily between the Brussels office and the home offices in the Netherlands and between the home offices relating to European topics. Thereby is the Randstad Region the only region of the three of which the representative travel to the home region on a regular basis. This is mainly caused by the close location of the Netherlands and the Randstad Region to Brussels. The other regions visit the home region less often due to distance contrains. None of the regions believes that ICTs will improve their internal organization. In the interviews with the Stockholm Region and the West Midlands, they underline their

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public nature and dependence on their public stakeholders in the member states. Thereby public organizations are known for their high levels of red tape making organizational changes almost impossible. Tuffs also states that with 4 different stakeholders and over 90 partners the region is too fragmented to improve the internal organization. Research agrees with the lack of believe in organizational change through ICTs as is shown in the article of Boonstra stating that the influence of ICTs on internal organization note that the use of ICTs themselves doesn’t determine the success of it but the way it is managed (Boonstra, 2002, 7). He sees positive and negative effects of ICTs in organizations but his main statement remains that ICTs cannot change organizations themselves.

7.1.2 Knowledge sharingThe second hypothesis relates to the positive effect of ICTs on knowledge sharing. Taken the survey answers from the three regions together, it makes clear that most of the respondents are more than averagely satisfied with the way of knowledge sharing. In the table below the percentage of the respondents choosing the box. In total 83% of the respondents is medium or more than medium satisfied.

0% 17% 33% 42% 8%Not satisfied SatisfiedTable 4: Satisfaction with communication

The results per region, as discussed in the latter paragraphs, show positive figures for the Randstad Region and quite negative ones for the Stockholm Region. RR 0% 0% 25% 42% 8%SR 0% 17% 0% 0% 0%WM 0% 0% 8% 0% 0%Table 5: Satisfaction per region

But if we look at the believe in improvement the Stockholm Region is less negative or even quite positive, having a strong believe in the possibilities to improve the communication and knowledge sharing. The West Midlands on the other hand are very negative about the opportunities for change. The Randstad Region resides in the middle. Some of the respondents believe that change is absolutely possible while others believe that there is to much red tape to change a public organization.

Possibility to improve communication and knowledge sharing in %Yes 58,3%No 33,3%Don’t know 8,3%Table 6: Believe in improvement of communication and knowledge sharing

Over half the respondents believe that improvement is possible. Looking at the ways how they believe this improvement needs to be done only two of the total number of

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respondents believe that ICTs could be a solution. However on the question whether the respondents believe that a virtual workspace may improve the work of regional representational offices the following answers came out:

Improvement of work regional representations by virtual workspace in %Yes 66,6%Probably/To some extent 16,6%No 16,6%

Table 7: Expected improvement by virtual workspace

The biggest part of the respondents believes that the use of virtual workspaces or intranet would have a positive effect on the work of the regional representations. However next to the surveys there is also evidence from the interviews and participant observation. The three regions are divided in their opinion about the working of ICTs to improve knowledge sharing. Randstad Region and Stockholm Region believe in the positive effect of ICTs on knowledge sharing and the benefits it brings but they also believe that it is not an elixir. People need to be motivated to use the tools in order to get results. The West Midlands doesn’t see the benefits of ICTs for the improvement of knowledge sharing for the West Midlands.

7.1.3 Political credibility and accountabilityThe third hypothesis relates to the positive effects of ICTs on the political credibility and accountability. The analysis of the websites of the three regions according to the WAES (see Annex II) resulted in the following table below (see table 8).2 The results show a differentiated outcome. The Randstad Region scores 13 points out of 20, which can be seen as a score of 65%.

Ownership Contacts/Reachability Org. Info. Issue Information CC/R T1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2

c2d 2

e2f 3a 3b 3

c4a 4b 4c 4

d4e 4f 4g 5a 5

b5c

RR 1 1 1 - 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 - - 13SR 1 1 1 - 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 - - 12WM

- - - - 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 - - 9

% 100 100 100 - 100 33 0 0 0 67 100 100 0 100 100 33 33 67 100 0 100 - -Table 8: WAES outcomes

The Stockholm Region scores 12 out of 20, a score of 60%. It scores better than the Randstad Region on contacts and reachability with 50% but lower on Issue Information with only 43%. For the West Midlands not all information is available, therefore the region cannot be compared to the other two regions in all areas. Taken the 16 criteria the West Midlands could be analyzed on, it reaches a score of 56%. It is clear that the West Midlands has the lowest score in the area of contact and reachability, with a score of 1 out of 6. On the contrary the West Midlands score good points in the area of Issue

2 Websites: www.regio-randstad.nl; www.stockholmregion.org; www.westmidlandsineurope.eu.

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Information. In the area of Organizational Information all three regions lack a flow-chart with the organizational structure. In total the three regions together score an average of around 60% taking all the criteria together. In the interviews with two of the three regions and the fieldwork at the last region it became clear that the regions see their website as a way to show their activities to their stakeholders as well as to the public and other regions in Brussels. However the levels of these website strongly differ. The Randstad Region worked for the last two years with an outdated website, a heritage of the former Randstad Region Cooperation in the Netherlands. However the absence of a good website is acknowledged by the Randstad Region and a new website will be ready by the end of summer 2010. The reasons for a new website given by the Randstad Region are mainly based on political credibility and accountability. With provincial elections in the beginning of March 2011 a good image is of major importance. A website is the easiest way to help to broadcast a good image. The West Midlands also acknowledge the weakness of their website in order to reinforce their political credibility and accountability. Nevertheless the West Midlands has no financial means at the moment to change this in the foreseeable future. The Stockholm Region has a reasonable clear website but indicated that there might be some change in the future, leaving in the middle what kind of changes. All three see a good website as a way forward, informing the public but also to convince the stakeholders of the importance of a regional representation in Brussels. In this way e-governance tools give the regional representations certainty by making becoming more transparent and open en showing the results booked in Brussels. In this way in it increases the political credibility and accountability. This is underlined by the literature. Two researches about the positive effect of e-governance tools on the accountability of governments both had positive results claiming that websites can show the public, responsible for the re-election of politicians, the importance and results of the work of regional representations (Pina, Torres and Acerete, 2007; Wong and Welch, 2004).

In general, the West Midlands is the most pessimistic of the three regions. The region doesn’t believe that the use of ICTs will lead to further improvements in its internal organization. The fragmentation caused by the diversity in partners and stakeholders makes changes as good as impossible. The same can be said for an improvement in knowledge sharing. the fragmentation of the stakeholders makes the use of ICTs essential at one hand, given the use of email and internet. But a more developed use of ICTs will be too costly and too big a challenge to manage. The only way in which ICTs could have a positive effect on the efficiency of the West Midlands would be by the improvement of the political credibility and accountability of the regional office in the region back home through a further development of the website.

The Randstad Region is on the other end of the line, being positive about the role of ICTs for their organization. Both in internal organization as in knowledge sharing the Randstad Region sees a role for ICTs, underlined by the introduction of their new virtual workspace. Next to that the Randstad Region is already working on a new website with

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the goal to improve the visibility of the Randstad Region which improves the political credibility and accountability.

The Stockholm Region is positioned in the middle between the Randstad Region and the West Midlands. They surely believe in the positive effects of ICTs but haven’t brought this into practice. For their internal organization, they do not see any added value since they have to many partners and stakeholders and miss a strict organization but for the knowledge sharing they do see possibilities. Just as the other two regions the Stockholm Region uses its website to improve political credibility and accountability. Comparing the evidence of the case studies shows that the existing organizational structure highly influences the possibilities for ICTs in the regions. The more partners and stakeholders the more difficult to change the internal organization or to share knowledge. Since organization of the website isn’t influenced by the number of partners and stakeholders of the region, they profit of the benefits of ICTs to reinforce the political credibility and accountability. The Randstad Region comes forward as the region with the highest potential for improvement through ICTs. The region has a formalized organization with only four stakeholders which makes decision making easier and clear and changes easier to conduct.

7.2 Discussion of the case evidenceThe outcome of the analysis of the first hypothesis can’t completely confirm the hypothesis that e-governance tools will improve the internal organization of regional representations. Using tools as e-mail and internet for management purposes may save time because of the physical distance between the Brussels office and the home office. Thereby is it of huge importance for the communication between the Brussels office and the home front, nevertheless face-to-face contact remains necessary to prevent miscommunication. The literature study shows two-sided effects of ICT on internal organization as well. If managed in the right way it might lead to more efficiency, openness and change but if managed wrongly it might lead to over-communication and inefficiency. Therefore although ICT-tools surely will help regional representations by managing the home front and in this way help to contribute to the sufficient cohesion of the organization, management remains crucial. ICTs or e-governance tools should only be seen as a help tool to improve internal organization not as a solution.

The second hypothesis relates to the use of ICT tools to improve the knowledge sharing within the regional representations and between the different departments in the home front and the regional representations. The results are divided. At the one site literature, the survey and the interviews underline the hypothesis in their believe and conclusion that ICTs do facilitate knowledge sharing but the literature as well as the interviews do also state that ICTs are only tools. Without the motivation to use them they are useless. All regions do already use the basic tools like e-mail and internet but do believe that a deepening of the use of ICTs will be useful for the regional representation in order to get a quick access to information and knowledge to serve the goal of getting the desired

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outcomes in the EU arena. Again ICTs are seen as a tool to get more knowledge sharing but not as a solution.

The third hypothesis relates to the function of e-governance tools to improve political credibility and accountability. The WAES test shows that the current websites lack a high level of transparency which contributes to the political credibility and accountability of the regional representations in certain areas. But the system was set up to measure transparency, a measure of political credibility and accountability and therefore underlines to relation between ICTs and political credibility and accountability. The low scores of the regions on certain topics leave room for further improvement of the transparency of the websites and an improvement in political credibility and accountability. Next to the WAES research as well as the interviews underline the hypothesis that e-governance tools improve the political credibility and accountability of regional representations. Therefore this hypothesis may be seen as confirmed.

In general, the results from the interviews with the Stockholm Region and the West Midlands as well as the fieldwork at the Randstad Region all make one aspect of regional representations very clear. Regional representations in non-federal member states are highly dependent on the preferences of the national level. In other words, the external surrounding of national politics is of high importance to the regional representations. In the West Midlands this became most clear by the abolishment of the regional assemblies by the Brown government last March 2010 and the announced abolishment of the RDA’s by the Cameron government recent June 2010. Through these decisions on national level two of the most important partners of the West Midlands will disappear, leaving the regional representational office in Brussels behind in uncertainty about its future. In Sweden major cut-backs have resulted in less money for the regional representation making their future uncertain as well. And in the Netherlands elections in June 2010 have changed the national political arena. At the moment of writing a new government hasn’t been formed, making it impossible to predict its implications for Dutch representational offices in Brussels. What the situation of the three regional representations does show is that in the member states the importance of Brussels is still not clear. For the sake of the existence of regional representations political credibility and accountability is of high importance. E-governance tools can be of usage here. The results from the WAES show that in the field of contacts and reachability the transparency of the regional website to improve the political credibility and accountability can be improved by reaching the criteria which in its turn will lead again to a better image. Next to that the other two hypotheses show that good management is one of the most important aspects to improve internal affairs. First of all to implement ICTs in such a way that they lead to organizational improvements which can be useful to obtain sufficient cohesion and an optimal mix of resources and skills and second of all to motivate workers to share knowledge which contribute to a right use of knowledge and again an optimal mix of resources and skills.

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8. Best Practice

The last sub question to be answered is what can be learned from the results from this research? In this chapter the answer to that question will be given. The best practices will relate to in what way ICTs best help the regional representations in improving their internal organization, their knowledge sharing and their political credibility and accountability.

8.1 Internal OrganizationRelated to the improvement of the internal organization of the regional representational offices none of the regions have positive experiences with the use of ICTs in the improvement of it. They are all skeptic on the benefits of ICTs for the internal organization and underline that face to face contact remains of high importance or that their organizations are too fragmented or obstructed by high levels of red tape. Literature is twofold on the positive aspect of ICTs as well believing that solution in improving internal organizations doesn’t lay with ICTs themselves but with the way they are managed. The management of ICTs relates to the way they are introduced with the personnel and the incentives for the personnel to use them. Good management of ICTs can lead to improved internal organization. In relation to the improvement of internal organization regions can learn that with the implementation of ICTs alone changes will not occur. To improve internal organizations successfully by the use of ICTs good management is essential but of course other factors, not part of this research are of influence as well.

8.2 Knowledge sharingImproving knowledge sharing is mainly based on the motivation of the workers to exchange the knowledge. However ICTs can be a tool to help the knowledge to be shared more easily. For instance by using a virtual workspace, intranet or extranet. An example of the use of ICTs in order to improve knowledge sharing can be found by the Randstad Region.

Example: Last April 2010 the Randstad Region introduced a virtual workspace, called Projectplace. This system is generally used in project management but the Randstad Region has adjusted it to make it useful for interest representation and communication between the home front and the member state. This system can be reached through the internet and is accessible from every location with internet in the world. It contains a shared disk or data warehouse, a function to send texts for reviews and an meeting agenda. The usage of the system has to prove itself in the next year but the results of the shared disk already seems to be fruitful as it makes it possible to get to information and knowledge at any given time and any given location.

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Workers still need to be motivated to use the systems but a good system with easily accessible information lowers the threshold to make use of the systems.

8.3 Political credibility and accountabilityThe political credibility and accountability can be improved by improving the websites of the regions, as has been shown by research about political credibility and accountability. Giving more information about issues and contacts and reachability will improve the transparency and in that way the image of the region, which can also lead to better funding from the member state.

A last aspect that becomes clear, looking at this research, is the disparity in regional representations. Although the three regions discussed were selected on their similarities, multiple differences can still be found. Therefore the most important aspect to be learned is that ICT solutions in internal affairs cannot be applied to the three regions in the same manner, they need to be customized to the regions possibilities and needs.

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Conclusion and recommendations

The central question of this research is:

How can e-governance improve the efficiency of EU regional representations looking at the internal affairs?

To answer this question five sub questions were formulated, being:

1. What are the functions of regional representational offices in Brussels? 2. What is e-governance and how can it improve the internal affairs of regional

representational offices?3. How are the different regions organized? 4. How do ICTs help in the internal affairs of regional representational offices? 5. What can regions learn from the research findings?

These sub questions were answered in the different chapters of this research. In this chapter the answers to the sub questions will be brought together in order to answer the central research question.

The functions of the regional representations was the central question in the second chapter. Answering the question the regional representational offices have a whole range of tasks being lobbying directly at the aforementioned institutions to influence policy, to gather information for the home front, to network with other regional actors, to get access to funds and to form a direct liaison between the region and the EU. The most important conclusions for this research are the tasks of the regional representational offices in their communication with the home front.

The second sub question related to the concept of e-governance and how it can improve the internal affairs of regional representational offices. The concept of e-governance is defined as the use of ICT tools in the interaction between government and citizens, government and businesses and internally within the government. This last section of e-governance was of importance in this research, using the goals of UNESCO as a guidance connected to the indicators of Van Schendelen of a professional interest organization it could improve the internal affairs of regional representations in three ways. One by improving the internal processes of the organization, which is related to the sufficient cohesion of Van Schendelen. Secondly by improving the delivery of services and information, which aligns with the useful knowledge and optimal mix of resources and skills indicators. The third goal of e-governance is by reinforcing the political credibility and accountability of the regional representation which matches with the necessary good image of the interest organization.

In the sixth chapter the third sub-question was answer relating the organization of the three selected regional representations. All three regions are organized differently with

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large differences between the internal organization of the regional representation, the structure of the communication with home front, the numbers of partners and the levels of red tape. These differences are all of influence to the possibilities for the use of e-governance to improve the efficiency of the internal affairs of the regional representations as can be seen in the presentation of the case evidence.

The most important sub question of this research was at the heart of chapter seven. In this chapter the answer was given how ICTs help the internal affairs of regional representational offices. First the regions were compared, followed by a discussion of the case evidence. The three hypotheses measured in this chapter gave the following results. Relating to the first hypothesis the case evidence showed little direct effect of ICTs on the improvement of internal organizational processes. Skepticism on the use of ICTs to improve the internal organization was high and challenges numerous. The existing organizational structure of two of the three regions made improvement in the internal organization impossible in their opinion. One region saw possibilities but underlined that ICTs alone couldn’t do the trick, good management is necessary as well. The results show that ICTs may be used as a tool but improvements only occur if other factors, like proper management, are met as well. The existing organization and structure of the region were of influence as well. Therefore the first hypothesis could not be confirmed. The second hypothesis dealing with the influence of ICTs on the knowledge sharing of the regional representations showed a similar result. ICTs do not have a direct effect on the improvement of knowledge sharing but are an important and almost indispensable tool to improve knowledge sharing and again the existing organizational structure is of influence on the opportunities for improvement. However the most important aspect of improving knowledge sharing is the motivation of workers to share knowledge. The third hypothesis of this research related to the influence of ICTs on the political credibility and accountability of the regional representations. Research shows that ICTs can be of great use in improving the political credibility and accountability. The interviews show the same results. The results of the WAES show that the regional representational websites still lack a high level of transparency but with small changes this might be improved, to contribute to the political credibility and accountability. Therefore it can be said that the third hypothesis is met and the positive effects of ICTs on political credibility and accountability are confirmed.

The last research question relates to the best practice of the research. Several things can be learned from the research. The first lesson to be learned is that ICTs alone cannot improve the internal organization of regional representation neither can it improve the knowledge sharing. Good management is essential as well as motivated workers. However ICTs can be an auxiliary to achieve improvements in internal organization and knowledge sharing for instance in the form of a virtual workspace as used by the Randstad Region. A second practice to be learned is that a website meeting the WAES criteria reinforces the political credibility and accountability of the regional representation also contributing to the good image of the regional representation.

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Taken altogether the results from the sub questions make it possible to answer the central research question how e-governance may improve the efficiency of regional representations looking at the internal affairs. However since the evidence is only based on the scrutiny of three of the 300 regional representations it can only be seen as a possibility. As said before the research is of an exploratory nature and not an explanatory one. Therefore the results may only give an indication of the working of e-governance for regional representations. Directly, e-governance may improve the efficiency of regional representations by improving the political credibility and accountability of the regional representations through their websites. Indirectly, e-governance may improve the efficiency of regional representations by serving as a tool to improve internal organization and knowledge sharing. This all may lead to sufficient cohesion, useful knowledge, an optimal mix of resources and skills and a good image.

This leads to the recommendations of the research. The first recommendation to the regional representations is that regions should take the importance of good management relating to the use of ICTs into account in order to improve their internal organization and knowledge sharing. ICTs don’t make the changes their selves. A second recommendation is to meet the criteria of the WAES. In this way the political credibility and accountability will improve, which can result in better understanding in the home country.

In sum, e-governance tools may surely contribute to an increase in efficiency of regional representations in Brussels. It might have an effect on the time needed to manage the home front. However the time to manage the home front depends on many other factors so it is that this is impossible to measure and can only remain an assumption. The unusual structure of the three regions highly influences the possibilities to use ICT tools to meet the e-governance goals and the indicators for the internal affairs of a professional interest group. The West Midlands has over 90 partners. To connect all these partners in an ICT system to improve knowledge sharing and save time would in theory be a good solution. In practice however it would be a very costly undertaking besides the technical difficulties. Next to that the diversity of the partners creates a large diversity of interests. The same can be said for the Stockholm Region, which also works a few big stakeholders and a whole range of smaller partners to service arrangements. All these stakeholders have different interest and have different levels of financial commitment with the Brussels office. The office where e-governance has the most potential to optimize the internal organization is in the Randstad Region. This region has four stakeholders that are of the same background and are equally represented in the board through an executive of the province. The organizational structures of the home front organizations are each relatively similar and cooperation is to a high level institutionalized.

However in all three regions one common influence on the working of the regional representational offices became clear: politics. Since the regions have public bodies with an electorate among their stakeholders, political influences are considerable. In England

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the regional assemblies were abolished in March 2010. While in Sweden internal politics between the City of Stockholm and the County of Stockholm influences the position of the Brussels office. In the Netherlands provincial elections will take place next spring, creating a whole new board for the Randstad Region in Brussels. The situations in the three regions can’t be seen as a general situation for all regions. Between the over 300 regional and local representations in Brussels, differences are enormous. Therefore generalization remains tricky. Although the literature scrutinized in this research relates to the use of e-governance tools in all sort of public organizations

In the end, the most important result of this research is that e-governance tools or ICTs can’t solely change the working of regional representations. Change through technical mechanisms remains difficult. ICT tools can be seen as an auxiliary to reach the goals of an optimal organization of internal affairs as well as the goals of e-governance. However it needs to be combined with good management and motivation. In its turn the improvements created through e-governance by the use of ICTs can help to improve the position of regions as sub-national governments in the multi-level governance of the EU since a improved internal organization can lead to more efficient performance in the EU arena.

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Epilogue

In the last weeks of this research it became clear that the British government will stop the funding of all English regional representations in Brussels. As a result, the regional representation of the West Midlands in Brussels will cease to exist from the 1st of September 2010. Information gathered in this research relates to the situation before the changes occurred in the last 6 months and therefore remains relevant to this research and even might encourage regional representations to improve their internal organization in order to reinforce the political credibility and accountability of the regional representation. In this way it can contribute the good image of the region representational office and the region itself, making the governments in the member state less eager to abolish them or cut their funds.

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Websites (on 13 September 2010)

www.cyprg.arizona.edu/waes

www.regionalassemblies.co.uk

www.regio-randstad.nl

www.statistics.gov.uk

www.stockholmregion.org

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www.westmidlandsineurope.eu

www.wmra.gov.uk

Annex I Survey Regional Representations

Personal

1. For which organization do you work?

2. What is your function in this organization?

3. How long do you work for this organization?

European Representation

1. What kind of activities does your regional representation office in Brussels do for your organization?

2. What work do you do for the regional representation in Brussels?

3. Do you feel a connection to the work of the representational office in Brussels?

Not connected Very connected

Information Gathering

1. How is the communication between the regional representation in Brussels and the organization in your member state organized?

2. How many per cent of your working time do you spent on communicating with the organization in the member state/Brussels office?

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3a.Are you satisfied with the way of communicating and knowledge sharing in your organization?

Not satisfied Very satisfied

3b. What do you think is good/not good about the communication and information gathering?

4.Do you miss information from the organization in the member state/ Brussels office?

5a. Do you believe that the working method between the regional representation and the organization in the member state can be improved?

5b. If yes, why and how?

6. What ICT tools (email/website/internet/intranet/extranet etc.) does your organization use?

6b. How do you use these tools?

7a. Does your organization use a virtual workspace or intranet?

7b. Why yes/not?

8a. Do you believe that a virtual working space or intranet could improve the work of the regional representation in Brussels?

8b. How and Why?

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Annex II Cyberspace Policy Research Group Website Attribute Evaluation System (WAES)

Coding Criteria:  Transparency

   

Ownership  Explanation  Scoring

T1a: agency involvement with site Tests if agency helped in making of website and how different it is from websites of other agencies in same government. 

Marked by 0 or 1.

T1b: webmaster appears to be different from the one running the main government page, if one exists

Tests if agency, or sub-agency, has some measure of control or direct contact in regard to their website. 

Marked by 0 or 1.

T1c: provides obvious tailoring indicating agency itself has ownership of site content

Tests how much agency is involved with content of its website.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T1d: provides published date (e.g. "2/15/01" or "February 15, 2001") on main page or, if none, a key subordinate page, within the last year, or 0 if no date listed on any of these pages

Tests the extent to which website is actively attended to by organization staff. Does not include regular updates to top officialís speeches as press releases.   Was "Freshness" indicator prior to 2001.

Marked by giving date in format "2001FEB15" as text, not number

Contacts/Reachability    T2a: provides central agency non-email addresses

Tests if agency can be contacted by regular, non-electronic mail.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T2b: provides phone numbers or postal addresses for employees within agency beyond most senior officials

Tests if agency provides phone numbers and/or addresses for employees within agency, excluding their managers or any other top level officials.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T2c: provides e-mail address to person responsible for both content of the site and technical support for the site

Test if one person performs both editorial/content and technical functions.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T2d: provides e-mail address to someone solely responsible for technical support for the site

Tests if web operation functions are differentiated among several people, testing here for technical support.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T2e: provides e-mail address to someone solely responsible for content of the site

Tests if web operation functions are differentiated among several people, testing here for editorial or content support.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T2f: person responsible for technical support for the site appears NOT to be a commercial firm

Tests if agency has out-sourced technical support for website.

Marked by 0 or 1.

Organizational Information    T3a: provides details on senior official's experiences or vision of future for organization

Tests if agency provides any information about/by/for head official of agency.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T3b: provides mission statement and various activities of agency

Tests if agency provides any data as to what function it serves, what it's goals and values are, and how it accomplishes these goals. 

Marked by 0 or 1.

T3c: provides organizational structure in graphic form (give "1" for having org chart, add "0.1" for every level)

Tests if agency provides an organizational graphic (such as a flow chart).

Marked by 1 for having an organization chart, and adding 0.1 for each level shown in graphic.

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Issue Information    T4a: provides issue-related addresses for ohter government agencies

Tests if agency provides addresses (URL or regular mail) of other government agencies (or within agency itself) whose function is related to this agency. 

Marked by 0 or 1.

T4b: provides non-issue-related addresses for other government agencies

Tests if agency provides addresses (URL or regular mail addresses) of any other government agencies (or within agency itself) that are not related to agency at all.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T4c: provides issue-related addresses for other NON-governmental information sources

Tests for same as T4b, but address must be for a non-government source.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T4d: provides reports, research, laws, and regulations in easily readable format on screen

Tests if agency has taken time to provides an easily readable, organized, format for reports, research, laws and regulations. 

Marked by 0 or 1.

T4e: provides a searchable index for archived newsletters, laws, regulations, and requirements

Tests if agency allows user to search to site for old newsletter, laws, regulations, or anything relating to content agency provides online.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T4f: provides all downloaded or printed publications for free

Tests if agency makes all information freely available.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T4g: provides link to or text of public information law or regulation

Test sif agency provides the rules under which citizens are entitled to public information.

Marked by 0 or 1.

Citizen Consequences/Responses    

T5a: provides in depth explanations of requirements imposed on citizens resulting from agency activities

Tests if agency provides any data on regulations, laws, or research which agency carries out or is related to agency. 

Marked by 0 or 1.

T5b: provides instructions on how to complete these actions

An extension of previous attribute, tests if agency provides citizens with instructions, help, tips on how meet requirements, regulations or laws imposed by agency such as providing instructions on how to file a tax form.

Marked by 0 or 1.

T5c: provides instructions for appeal process for decisions or address of an ombudsman inside agency

Tests if agency provides -- online -- instructions and/or a way for citizens to appeal agency decisions. 

Marked by 0 or 1.

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