Territorial patterns of open e-government: The road to digital democracy in Chilean municipalities

In recent weeks, our Training Data Lab research team had the privilege of presenting two papers at international conferences. Our researchers, Bastián González-Bustamante and Diego Aguilar, showed their research on territorial patterns of open e-government in Chilean municipalities, highlighting the importance of digital democracy in modern government.

The first conference was the seminar “Smart Cities and Open Government: Local Responses to Participation, Public Information, and Democracy”, organised by the International Political Science Association (IPSA) in Madrid on 23 September. In this framework, our researchers presented their work entitled “Territorial Patterns of Open E-Government: Evidence from Chilean Municipalities” (watch the video), which explores the development of open e-government between 2019 and 2021 in the 345 Chilean municipalities.

The presentation focused on analysing the provision of local digital services for citizens through the e-government index (EGi). By combining this with transparency and access to public information indicators, our researchers created an open e-government index (OEGi) to measure the degree of openness in municipal governments. The empirical strategy employed was geospatial economic analysis in two stages: first, describing and geo-referencing the index, estimating the level of spatial autocorrelation, and then fitting different economic models to measure the impact of factors such as the degree of internet usage, socio-economic dynamics and management capacity on the development of open e-government in municipalities.

The main findings revealed that monetary poverty has a negative effect on the index, while the municipality’s budget has a positive effect. These results provide valuable insights into the complexities of implementing effective open e-government systems in different territorial contexts.

Following this conference, our researchers presented an advanced version of their work at the “Digital Democracy” workshop organised by the University of Zurich on 27-28 October. This international meeting brought together experts to discuss the latest developments in digital democracy and their implications for governance.

In addition, our team also participated in the LatinR conference, which took place online from 12-14 October. In this framework, they presented a related paper entitled “Integrated repository of local government indicators in Chile” (watch the video), which explores the development of an integrated repository of indicators for local governments in Chile.

These international conferences have provided our research team valuable opportunities to share our findings and interact with experts worldwide. As we continue to explore the complexities of open e-government and digital democracy, we are eager to see how our work can contribute to the dialogue on effective governance practices that prioritise transparency, participation and public information.

* AI-generated text
Read more about how we generate our content