Digital Government and Citizen Participation in the United States

This chapter addresses the topic of citizen participation via digital government in several sections: first, we discuss the relationship between digital government and citizen participation from the academic literature. Second, we introduce some best practices of citizen participations through digital government in the United States; third, we offer some principles and implications from these best practices; and fourth, we discuss several potential problems of digitized citizen participation in terms of further research. The best practices described in this chapter include Minnesota’s Department Results and Online Citizen Participation Opportunities, Santa Monica’s Budget Suggestions, California’s California Scorecard, Virginia Beach’s EMS Customer Satisfaction Survey and others. We extract some common features from these best practices, such as citizen as customer, recognizing a citizen’s capacity, and direct participation. Further, we recommend principles for designing digitized citizen participation: operationalize direct policy involvement, enable the citizen to influence policy priorities, enhance government accountability, encourage participatory deliberation and shape digital citizenship.

Digital Government and Individual Privacy

The growth of the Internet and digital government has dramatically increased the Federal government’s ability to collect, analyze, and disclose personal information about many private aspects of citizens’ lives. Personal information once available only on paper to a limited number of people is now instantly retrievable anywhere in the world by anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Over time, there has also been a declining level of trust by Americans in government, and currently, many perceive the government as a potential threat to their privacy. Given these forces at work in our society, one should not be surprised to read the results of surveys that show privacy as a top concern of citizens in the 21st century. If citizens do not believe that the government is adequately protecting the privacy of their individual information, they may be less willing to provide this information. Such reluctance could compromise the ability of government to collect important information necessary to develop, administer and evaluate the impact of various policies and programs. Privacy issues discussed in this chapter include challenges regarding (1) protecting personal privacy; (2) ensuring confidentiality of data collected; and (3) implementing appropriate security controls. Perspectives on privacy and stewardship responsibilities of agencies are also discussed.

Ethics and Digital Government

After considering the high costs to digital government of inadequate ethical choices, the role of ethics in government generally is reviewed. While codes of ethics may not go far toward resolving ethical challenges, they provide bases for ethical discourses and embody key ethical principles. Selected principles from the Code of Ethics of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) are applied to contemporary ethical issues in the context of digital government. In the rapidly evolving environments of digital technology, it is impossible to anticipate the leading-edge ethical issues. However, there are solid ethical or moral imperatives to use these principles for resolution of the issues.

E-Procurement

This essay is a careful examination of the effect of leveraging and integrating the power of the Internet as a tool in the total procurement process and its relationship to the supply and demand for goods and services. This work will be of interest to both informed and uninformed readers who wish to broaden their understanding and the effect of e-Procurement within the process of government purchasing. The chapter begins with a discussion of legacy systems and past practice purchasing methods. This is followed by sections on public sector versus private sector business practices, business models for e-Procurement, culture changes, legislative changes allowing for adoption of e-Procurement and advisory committees. There are also sections addressing the benefits of e-Procurement versus paper-based procurement, vendor retention and training. A case study of eMaryland Marketplace, the State of Maryland’s e-Procurement Portal, is discussed with particular attention given to theoretical use versus “real life” experience associated with implementing an e-Procurement system. Statistics are cited comparing savings achieved in user efficiency and direct cost between e-Procurement versus “paper” purchasing methods. A discussion is presented outlining added modules to the initial eMaryland Marketplace program. This discussion will include the future implementation of regular and reverse-auctions conducted online through the eMaryland Marketplace portal. In addition, a discussion ensues on how the capital project solicitations were brought onto eMaryland Marketplace. These include all construction, architectural, and engineering contracts let through the eMaryland Marketplace. Finally, recommendations are made for other state or local jurisdictions that are considering implementation of e-Procurement.

Training for Digital Government

The era of digital government is upon us. Are government officials and employees prepared for this paradigm shift? The use of digital government applications has increased exponentially in the past decade but the training that should accompany it has not. This article seeks to offer insight into the current need for and state of training for digital government, as well as to highlight key models at each level of government. Additionally, it attempts to outline a training methodology for Federal, state and local employees and officials in order to reduce the information asymmetry that occurs within the context of digital government.

Digital Government and Geographic Information Systems

The focus of this chapter is to examine how government agencies are deploying geographic information systems (GIS) to enhance the delivery of digital government. We will explain how critical technological advances are enabling government agencies to use GIS in web-based applications In addition, we will illustrate the approaches that state and local governments in the United States are taking to deploy GIS for e-government applications using examples from Indianapolis, Indiana, Tucson, Arizona, Washington D.C. and the State of Oregon’s Department of Environmental Protection. While these examples greatly improve service delivery performance and enhance public decision-making, we raise the issue that e-government GIS applications may be more broadly deployed in organizations that are better adept at dealing with the managerial and technical issues related to using GIS.

Political Implications of Digital (e-) Government

Citizen participation-driven e-government is, in theory, a desirable objective of government. However, it is complex along a variety of dimensions: from a design standpoint, considering the implementation aspects of access, and awareness; from a baseline assessment of what has been implemented to date empirically; and in terms of a meaningful design of responsive policy. Much of the observed variations in e-government applications is still descriptive in nature and given the rapidly emerging technological and political ramifications, is expected. Following an overview of several examples of different types of participation-related e-government applications, we present preliminary results of an examination of the relationship between state e-government initiatives and underlying demographic, cultural or economic variables. While the population of a state appears to be related to the presence of e-government applications, beyond this, curiously, few of the expected relationships appear, or appear to operate in conflicting manners depending on the dataset used. As such, additional research drawing on larger dataset and more robust instrumentation is needed.

The Promise of Digital Government

E-government promises to mark a new era of greater convenience in citizen access to governmental forms, data, and information. Its advocates promise that not only will e-government bring the convenience of online transactions, but it will also reverse citizens’ disaffection from government, create dramatic savings, and reinforce rather than erode traditional American freedoms and liberties. E-government, however, is better thought of not as a revolution, but as an attempt to bring the e-business model into the public sector. A component-by-component examination of the e-business model shows that it is fraught with problems, challenges, and limitations as well as opportunities. The promise of digital government will be fulfilled only by a new generation of public managers who are generalists, not technocrats, capable of integrating the disparate fields of consideration, which are necessary aspects of the vision of e-government as a whole.

The Organizatonal Culture of Digital Government

This chapter examines the characteristics of government organizations that influence their capacity to employ information technology (IT) in a strategic manner such that it assists them in their quest to meet governance challenges. We explore the organizational factors, architectural and cultural, that impede large government departments from moving beyond the adoption of IT as a mere instrument that assists the execution of routine tasks in the traditional way and move into new forms of governance that alter the relationships between individuals and units within the organization and between the organization and its external environment. Our objective is to provide a useful framework for the analysis of the barriers to, and potential catalysts of, an IT mediated transformation of the governance of large government departments. Our insights are based on explorations of the issues surrounding the development of new governance models for data and informatics management within Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the federal department with a leading role in a wide range of activities relating to Canada’s marine environment. As one of the world’s leading marine science institutions, this case underscores the fact that technical competence alone is insufficient to facilitate a shift towards digital government. Using IT strategically is a governance challenge that is contingent upon organizational structure and culture. Science and engineering produce ‘know-how’; but ‘know-how’ is nothing by itself; it is a means without an end, a mere potentiality, an unfinished sentence. ‘Know-how’ is no more a culture than a piano is music. E.F. Schumacher

The Emergence of Digital Government

This chapter gives an overview of the extent to which e-government has been adopted internationally by reviewing major comparative studies and case studies by international organizations. The characteristics of the five stages of e-government — emerging, enhanced, interactive, transactional, and seamless are outlined and international examples of the innovative practices and potential obstacles faced. Of particular interest are studies on countries that have implemented transactional e-government strategies with service-delivery to citizens as the main priority. Currently adoption of e-government strategies worldwide is varied; however, many countries are making rapid progress in implementing their strategies.