Open government data use: The Brazilian states and federal district cases.

PURPOSE: This paper presents the results of an online survey and subsequent interviews investigating whether, how, and why public administrations of Brazilian states and the federal district (Federation Units) use open government data. According to the literature reviewed, the questions were categorized into four big groups: benefits, barriers, enablers, and drivers. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The Survey method, based on a questionnaire followed by interviews, was used to collect and analyze data from the open data officers of 26 Brazilian Federation Units. FINDINGS: The use of open government data is controversial as responses from the questionnaires and interviews do not match and raise questions about how well-represented each Federation Unit was. Evidence of open government data use was found. Among others, findings showed that political leadership committed to using open data facilitates and motivates public agents to use these data. Additionally, interviews indicated that the lack of human resources with the knowledge, skills, and capabilities to use open data is a relevant barrier to data use. Findings also revealed that open government data mainly support policy and decision-making processes. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: This research contributed to the open data and public administration fields. It portrays diverse realities of open government data use and institutionalization in Brazilian state and district public administrations. In addition, it provides lists of open government data use benefits, barriers, drivers, and enablers from the perspective of these administrations so that they can benchmark against each other and improve their OGD use. ORIGINALITY AND RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS: For academia, this research provides empirical evidence of the factors influencing public administrations' use of open government data at the subnational level in Brazil. Even though Brazil ranks high on OGD global assessments, few studies on its use and reuse in the public sector were identified. This is one of the first academic studies focusing on open government data use in the country. It also contributes by offering to the academic community two instruments, a questionnaire and an interview protocol, which can be applied to other public settings to expand this study's results or open new research paths by applying them to other contexts.

Assessment of hospitals' websites in Portugal.

Technological advances have highly facilitated the accession of health-related information. As the public search on hospital websites for information and services is increasing, hospitals need to upgrade their websites to meet the high standards and demands of health-care consumers. Today, many hospital websites use a patient-centric approach to promote engagement and encourage interaction for better health-related decision making. However, little is known about the current state of hospital websites in Portugal. This study aims to assess hospital websites in Portugal and offer improvement insights. In this paper, the websites of 132 selected hospitals were thoroughly examined and assessed according to a predefined list of indicators and sub indicators, based on four criteria: technology, content, services and community interaction, defined in the Health Sector Website Assessment Index (HSWAI) instrument. Most of the websites scored satisfactorily in the technology criterion, performed fairly well in providing fundamental content, but showed shortcomings in quality metrics data and online patient services, and most of them fell short in community interaction elements. Overall, the results show that each hospital website must be improved in specific features in order to become effective and efficient. Several of the identified assessment elements (indicators/sub indicators) fall under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3, United Nations health-focused goal, and could be used by governments to assess their progress toward achieving that specific goal. Therefore, this study not only provides a comprehensive and systematic approach that quantitatively measures hospital websites' overall performance, but also contributes to practical applications in terms of worthwhile recommendations for a website that meets patient's demands and hospital's operational needs.

Developing health sector websites assessment instrument: Challenges and pitfalls.

Electronic health services have been received with a tremendous interest world over. Patients consider hospital websites as highly important sources for health information and services. As a number of health institutes are carrying out projects to improve their websites, the need to design proper assessment means to measure whether they have achieved or are going to achieve their targets arises. Proper assessment of these websites gives us crucial information on the kind of changes needed to make them successful. To satisfy this need, an instrument called Health Sector Website Assessment Index (HSWAI) was developed, integrating the assessment of content, services, community interaction and technology features criteria, under a multi-indicator approach. Many of the considered indicators could be used to monitor progress towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3, which is the United Nations health-focused goal. The purpose of this study is to highlight the challenges of developing and applying the assessment instrument for health institute websites. The paper covers key issues and challenges in conceiving, designing, developing, refining and validating HSWAI, and finally in applying it to a set of Portuguese health institutes. The results of this study could provide several insights and recommendations to e-Government assessment researchers and practitioners at the national and agency levels on the development of relative e-Government assessment tools. Studies such as the current one, apart from presenting applied solutions and relative lessons learned, are valuable to the conceptualization and application of present and future e-Government assessment initiatives, regardless of the sector where the effort occurs.

Sensitivity and specificity of the autism diagnostic inventory-telephone screening in Spanish.

We report on the development in Argentina of a screening questionnaire for autism administered over the telephone. The Autism Diagnostic Inventory-Telephone Screening in Spanish (ADI-TSS) is based on the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R), keeping its structure but including fewer questions, which were rephrased to assess them over the telephone. The ADI-TSS went through different versions, with each modification gaining in reliability. The final version of the ADI-TSS could be assessed in 20 to 40 minutes and demonstrated a high validity (using the ADI-R as the diagnostic gold-standard), high intrarater and interrater reliability (as measured with intraclass correlations), and high internal consistency (as measured with Cronbach's alpha). The validity of the ADI-TSS remained high when used by a health-related professional without formal training in the assessment of autistic patients. We believe the ADI-TSS is useful in field research studies as a screening instrument for patients with a potential diagnosis of autism, although future validation studies should include larger samples.