H11 - Structure, Scope, and Performance of GovernmentReturn

E-government is currently a term that has been resonating in the public space for several years, which is why a lot of attention is being paid to it. Some states of the European Union are doing better, and some are worse in this area. Given this trend, all states must increase their efforts towards more effective e-government. The article aims to create clusters of European Union states in 2020 and 2022 according to their level of e-government. The sample consists of 27 states of the European Union, and the indicators used include the E-Government Development Index, E-participation index, Online service index, Telecommunication Infrastructure Index, and Human capital index. In addition, the objective of the article is achieved through correlation and cluster analysis. The countries of the European Union were divided into six clusters in 2020 and 2022. The best cluster in both years includes Finland, Estonia, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, while the worst countries include, for example, Bulgaria and Romania. In general, the countries that were the best/worst in 2020 are also the best/worst in 2022.

The culture sector is from the European or national perspective often designated as a dynamic segment of the economy, which is also characterized by high rates of GDP growth. This fact reinforces the importance of the sector within the European Union, as GDP growth belongs among the primary goals of the Community, in accordance with European legislation and key EU documents. However, from the socio-economic perspective the benefits of culture sector are economically difficult to quantify. The paper is focused on the problems the culture sector assessment from the point of view of socio-economic importance in the international context of the European Union. The research is based on the usage of MCDM methods (TOPSIS and WSA). The results are focused on the comparison of the socio-economic importance of the culture sector in EU member countries. For the assessment are chosen 7 socio-economic culture indicators describing the importance of culture sector in the country. The results of two selected MCDM methods are verified on the basis of correlation analysis.

The article deals with corruption and its possible impact on the economic performance of sub-national units. This topic has been missing regional dimension until now. In spite of the fact that many exact procedures which try to quantify the corruption rate in a country already exist, they all focus without exception on corruption rate at the level of countries. The newly proposed Regional index of corruption for quantification regional corruption rate will be introduced. It will be possible to mutually compare the individual regions from final values, to specify more or less affected regions, eventually to quantify deviations of individual regions from surface rate of corruption by using mathematical and statistic methods. Using the calculations of the corruption rate there was analyzed the possible impact of corruption on economic performance of NUTS II regions of the Czech Republic.

The paper is focused on the evaluation of the level of governance from the perspective of Good Governance concept in the European Union countries. Research of the state of governance in the EU countries is based on the evaluation of Good Governance indicators defined by the World Bank. These are the aggregate indicators characterizing the quality of democracy, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, quality of legal system and corruption, which in whole describe the state of Good Governance. On their basis, there is calculated the composite index of Good Governance. The composite index of Good Governance is observed in the period from 1996 to 2013 for the selected groups of the European Union countries. In the empirical part of the paper, there is evaluated the actual state of Good Governance in the EU countries in 2013 and compared the state and progression of Good Governance in the European Union countries in the years 1996 and 2013. The research is based on soft data, since most of the data for the evaluation of Good Governance have qualitative nature. The research results especially indicate the excellent state of governance in the Nordic countries and also acknowledge the convergence of the level of governance in the EU countries.

Fighting corruption is very challenging and difficult. Due to the fact that bribery and other forms of corruption are illegal practices in most countries, the actors of corruption are trying to hide their behavior and revelation of corruption is almost impossible. The most discussed is corruption in the public sector, because the consequences of such abuse of public power hit the broad mass of taxpayers and the state in general. For this reason efforts to reduce corruption are focused mainly on public administration. For reducing the interaction between officials and the public could be use e-government methods as a possible way to reduce corruption. The literature focused on e-government methods in relation to corruption suggests that electronic service delivery can reduce corruption by minimizing the interactions with officials, accelerating decisions and reducing human errors. This paper is focused on the potential role of e-government in reducing the level of corruption in the country. Specifically, this paper examines the impact of the use of e-government methods on the level of corruption in 117 countries all over the world.

The article covers the compilation of a strategic map of four municipalities in a montane and submontane area in the region of The Novohradske Mountains in South Bohemia. The map was compiled on the basis of the Balanced scorecard (BSC) method. It is a tool by which the fulfilment of a municipality strategy can be monitored and it is used for an effective management of strategies. In other words it means a method of balanced indicators or balanced prosperity. Goals and benchmarks of BSC come from vision and strategy of these municipalities and they monitor their performance from four perspectives: customer, financial, internal processes, learning and growth. These four perspectives are clearly depicted in the strategic map and each one has more detailed definitions of benchmarks of their fulfilment.