E-Government and its Potential to Facilitate Citizen Participation in State Budget Deliberations

Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Klase ◽  
Michael John Dougherty

State legislative websites have potential both to inform the citizenry and increase their participation in the governing process. This is particularly the case with respect to budget deliberations, which traditionally have been shrouded in mystery. Previous studies as well as a direct review of websites over the last few years have shown an increasing amount of data available. It ranges from basic information such as member lists and calendars to full documentation of events via transcripts and archived audio or video. A survey of state fiscal officials confirmed the utility of these websites for providing information. Thus, the websites have reached half their potential. However, the web sites do not appear to have enhanced citizen participation in the process. Opportunities for feedback and interaction are minimal at best. The implementation of such tools would enable the websites to reach their full e-government potential.

Author(s):  
Jennifer Evans-Cowley ◽  
Maria Manta Conroy

Municipalities often struggle to provide citizen participation opportunities that are informative and engaging. E-government tools hold the potential to enhance traditional forms of citizen participation. This chapter examines the use of information and communication technology tools to promote citizen participation. The analysis includes an examination of planning department Web sites over a five-year period (2003-2007) for a sample of U.S. cities with year 2000 populations of 50,000 people or more. This is supplemented with a survey of planning department heads regarding plans for implementation of e-government technology to increase citizen interaction opportunities. The principal findings, while most of the reviewed Web sites provide basic information, an increasing number of cities are adding features to allow for true interaction rather than just information sharing. In fact, some cities are intentionally launching interactive campaigns. The chapter concludes by offering insights into challenges local governments face in implementing e-government technology for citizen interaction.


2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-86
Author(s):  
Christine Rzepka

One of the top reasons given for use of the internet is the ability to search for health information. However, much of the planning for web-based health information often fails to consider accessibility issues. If health care organizations and community agencies’ web sites have the latest, most wellresearched information on the health topics of the day, it is useless to those who cannot access it because of invisible technological barriers. Many flashy, high-tech sites were designed only to appeal to the needs of the mainstream population, with no consideration given to how people with disabilities must adapt their use of the web in order to access information. This article addresses issues of access specific to web site development, and will explore barriers to accessibility frequently experienced by web users with disabilities, requirements for ADA compliance, and how people with disabilities use the web. Web site accessibility guidelines, as well as simple evaluation tools, will be discussed. A thorough review of the article will enable even the least tech-savvy of health educators to enhance their skills in planning and evaluating web sites to promote access for people with disabilities.


Water Policy ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-212
Author(s):  
J. Lisa Jorgensona

This paper discusses a series of discusses how web sites now report international water project information, and maps the combined donor investment in more than 6000 water projects, active since 1995. The maps show donor investment:  • has addressed water scarcity,  • has improved access to improvised water resources,  • correlates with growth in GDP,  • appears to show a correlation with growth in net private capital flow,  • does NOT appear to correlate with growth in GNI. Evaluation indicates problems in the combined water project portfolios for major donor organizations: •difficulties in grouping projects over differing Sector classifications, food security, or agriculture/irrigation is the most difficult.  • inability to map donor projects at the country or river basin level because 60% of the donor projects include no location data (town, province, watershed) in the title or abstracts available on the web sites.  • no means to identify donor projects with utilization of water resources from training or technical assistance.  • no information of the source of water (river, aquifer, rainwater catchment).  • an identifiable quantity of water (withdrawal amounts, or increased water efficiency) is not provided.  • differentiation between large scale verses small scale projects. Recommendation: Major donors need to look at how the web harvests and combines their information, and look at ways to agree on a standard template for project titles to include more essential information. The Japanese (JICA) and the Asian Development Bank provide good models.


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Q. Yang

Purpose – This study aims to ascertain the trends and changes of how academic libraries market and deliver information literacy (IL) on the web. Design/methodology/approach – The author compares the findings from two separate studies that scanned the Web sites for IL-related activities in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Findings – Academic libraries intensified their efforts to promote and deliver IL on the web between 2009 and 2012. There was a significant increase in IL-related activities on the web in the three-year period. Practical implications – The findings describe the status quo and changes in IL-related activities on the libraries’ Web sites. This information may help librarians to know what they have been doing and if there is space for improvement. Originality/value – This is the only study that spans three years in measuring the progress librarians made in marketing and delivering IL on the Web.


2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 2156759X0901300
Author(s):  
Sheri Bauman ◽  
Tanisha Tatum

Traffic on Web sites for young children (ages 3-12) has increased exponentially in recent years. Advocates proclaim that they are safe introductions to the Internet and online social networking and teach essential 21st-century skills. Critics note developmental concerns. In this article, we provide basic information about Web sites for young children, discuss developmental issues, and make recommendations for school counselors to be proactive and aware of the advantages and dangers inherent in these sites.


2012 ◽  
Vol 50 (No. 6) ◽  
pp. 243-248
Author(s):  
Z. Havlíček

Web technology is a major element of the Internet. The various and inexpensive possibilities to use this technology allow for the minimisation of differences between rural and urban areas. This article focuses on the use of www technology for creating web sites. It outlines theoretical starting points for planning web sites, as well as practical methods, which are utilised for setting up the web presentation of a farm.


2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Thelwall

The Web has recently been used as a corpus for linguistic investigations, often with the help of a commercial search engine. We discuss some potential problems with collecting data from commercial search engine and with using the Web as a corpus. We outline an alternative strategy for data collection, using a personal Web crawler. As a case study, the university Web sites of three nations (Australia, New Zealand and the UK) were crawled. The most frequent words were broadly consistent with non-Web written English, but with some academic-related words amongst the top 50 most frequent. It was also evident that the university Web sites contained a significant amount of non-English text, and academic Web English seems to be more future-oriented than British National Corpus written English.


2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (05) ◽  
pp. 538-544
Author(s):  
DANIELA SOFRONOVA ◽  
RADOSTINA A. ANGELOVA

Despite the large application of the machine embroidery in textile and apparel design and high-tech clothing items, there is а lack of systematic arrangement of the digital stitch lines, used by embroidery machines and embroidery designers. Since 2010 information on embroidery stitch lines could be mostly found in the web sites of the embroidery machine manufacturers and software product manuals. However, in the instruction manuals the instruments for creating various embroidery objects are simply described without providing systematic information on the types of the stitch lines. Even more, different names of the stitch lines and different ways to achieve the same design are observed. Single authors offer their own classifications based entirely and logically on the stitches of the hand embroidery. Another group of authors relied on already developed techniques and strategies for digitizing stitches in various software products or took into account the final appearance of the stitch lines or their application. Our study aimed to develop a detailed and systematic classification of the digital stitch lines in the machine embroidery, which has not been presented in the literature.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document