The proper management of e-government by present-day facilities is a complicated task, which can be addressed through the analysis of initiatives with the help of the Layne and Lee Model. For the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, growth can also be defined by the four stages presented by the scholars (Layne & Lee, 2001). First, the cataloging of this organization is one of the aspects initially addressed by the entity, as can be seen from its online presence and availability of essential information (“Department of health and mental hygiene,” n.d.). The provision of digital content related to its divisions, directions of work, and conditions for partnership as per this stage correspond to the need to inform potential stakeholders, which allows avoiding their disappointment (Layne & Lee, 2001). However, there are specific limitations in this regard, as concrete measures for promoting the health of New Yorkers are not specified in detail.
Second, at the stage of the transaction, the organization under consideration expands on the data in accordance with the needs of individual clients. As follows from the website, they are primarily interested in receiving birth and death certificates, health insurance, vaccines, and documents establishing the quality of food realized by various restaurants (“Department of health and mental hygiene,” n.d.). The provision of these data on the website correlates with the intention of customers to avoid visiting the facilities for paperwork and improves the efficiency of operations by ensuring the opportunity for electronic transactions (Layne & Lee, 2001). Meanwhile, the efforts of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to ensure the availability of advanced procedures were complicated by the quality of the used online systems. They decided to use the official website of New York City for this purpose, but searching for information on this platform is a challenging process. This fact is explained by the variety of data from different companies gathered in one place, which seems confusing for users.
Third, the transformation of government services as per the stage of vertical integration implied more risks than cataloging and transaction. They were conditional on the fragmented information presented by the website, which made the search for necessary data applicable to the needs of business owners or individual customers more difficult (“Department of health and mental hygiene,” n.d.). This outcome can be explained by the increase in customers’ expectations and the natural progression from simple to complex patterns of relationships between the organization and third parties (Layne & Lee, 2001). As a result, people’s discontent in terms of their inability to find the forms or conditions for the partnership they needed led to the attempts to reconsider the mechanism of delivering these documents.
The fourth and final stage, horizontal integration, allowed the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to arrange the documents in such a way that clients did not need much time to find them. This decision was made in compliance with government assistance principles, which should be rendered in full scope and in a timely manner (Layne & Lee, 2001). In other words, public administrators focused on the needs of customers to receive access to several services at once and solve a variety of problems while using the same online platform. They were addressed by including the most popular services and useful information on the main page (“Department of health and mental hygiene,” n.d.). Thus, adopting the practices corresponding to the theoretical model led to the elimination of risks regarding the inefficiency of the e-government system.
References
Department of health and mental hygiene. (n.d.). New York City. Web.
Layne, K., & Lee, J. (2001). Developing fully functional E-government: A four stage model.Government Information Quarterly, 18(2), 122-136. Web.