World Wide Web Site Design and Use in U S Local Government Public Management

The World Wide Web has been widely adopted by local governments as a way to interact with local residents. The promise and reality of Web applications are explored in this chapter. Four types of Web utilizations are analyzed: bulletin board applications, promotion applications, service delivery applications, and citizen input applications. A survey of 145 municipal and county government Web sites originally conducted in 1998 was replicated in 2002, and then again in 2006. These data are used to examine how local governments are actually using the Web and to examine the evolution of Web usage over the 8-year span between the first and third survey. The chapter concludes that local governments have made progress in incorporating many of the features of the Web but that they have a long way to go in realizing its full promise.

Computers and Social Survey Research for Public Administration

The integration of social survey methods into public-administration research and practice is the focus of this chapter. Coverage applies to other social science disciplines as well. This chapter reviews the use of computers in computer-assisted survey research (CASR), computer-assisted interviewing, computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI), computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), and survey research methods. The chapter takes the perspective of total survey error.

Computer Tools for Public-Sector Management

Almost any public-sector task employing a computer can be accomplished more efficiently with a variety of tools rather than any single one. Basic tools include word processing, spreadsheet, statistics, and database-management programs. Beyond these, Web authoring software, presentation software, graphics, project-planning and -management software, decision analysis, and geographic information systems can be helpful depending upon the job at hand.

Privacy-Sensitive Tracking of Behavior with Public Information Systems

This chapter explores the roles of names and name equivalents in social tracking and control, reviews the amount of privacy-sensitive databases accumulating today in U.S. legacy federal systems, and proposes an alternative that reduces the likelihood of new security policies violating privacy. We focus on the continuing public-authority reliance on unique identifiers, for example, names or national identity numbers, for services and security instead of dissecting a better indicator of security threats found in behavior data. We conclude with a proposed conceptual change to focusing the social-order mission on the behavior of individuals rather than their identities (behavior-identity knowledge model, BIK). It is particularly urgent to consider a different path now as increased interest in biometrics offers an insidious expansion of unique identifiers of highly personal data. E-government can be wonderful for central government’s effectiveness and efficiency in delivering services while also being a disaster for both privacy and security if not regulated legally, institutionally, and technically (with validation and appeal processes) from the outset.

An Information Technology Research Agenda for Public Administration

Research questions are outlined, forming the dimensions of a research agenda for the study of information technology in public administration. The dimensions selected as being the most theoretically important include the issues of the impact of information technology on governmental accountability, the impact of information technology on the distribution of power, the global governance of information technology, the issue of information resource equity and the “digital divide,” the implications of privatization as an IT business model, the issue of the impact of IT on organizational culture, the issue of the impact of IT on discretion, the issue of centralization and decentralization, the issue of restructuring the role of remote work, the issue of implementation success factors, the issue of the regulation of social vices mediated by IT and other regulatory issues.

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government

This chapter examines the relationship between e-government and the creation of a more citizen-centric government. This study provides a conceptual framework showing a possible relationship among management, resources, security, and privacy issues that would lead to creating a more citizen-centric government with e-government. It explores the opinions of chief information officers (CIOs) on e-government issues and effectiveness. A survey was administered to federal government CIOs in June and July 2005. The survey results revealed that CIOs who have higher management capacity and project-management skills were associated more with creating a more citizen-centric federal government. The contribution of this study to the literature on e-government is that it identifies two key attributes that CIOs can attain in order to reach higher stages of e-government advancement for their department or agency.

Geographic Information System Applications in the Public Sector

Geographic information systems emerged in the 1970s and have become a significant decision-making tool as their capabilities have been enhanced. This chapter discusses various GIS applications and highlights issues that public managers should consider when evaluating implementation of a geographic information system. GIS applications provide benefits at the planning level by producing maps efficiently, and at the management decision-making level through an ability to geographically display important information for policy-level decisions. While GIS analysis can be a powerful tool, there are a number of issues that pubic managers should consider in order to achieve effective implementation and use of geographic information systems.

IT Innovation in Local Government

We examine the adoption of information technology within local governments in the United States. The social and technical factors that impact the process of technological innovation are discussed in reference to the adoption of advanced electronic government (e-government) technologies in local government. In particular, we discuss how the adoption of IT, and e-government, is influenced by the local government’s motivations to innovate, technology characteristics, available resources, and stakeholder support. We then discuss several strategies that may address these factors. We argue that local governments should seek to formally assess the need to adopt e-government technologies, develop new funding strategies, and develop a mix of in-house and contracted IT services. While local governments have aggregately adopted advanced transaction-based forms of e-government at a lower rate than state and federal governments, it is our contention that local governments are merely reacting to innovation factors within their social and technical environments.

The Federal Docket Management System and the Prospect for Digital Democracy in U S Rulemaking

A large interagency group led by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked diligently to set up a centralized docket system for all U.S. federal rulemaking agencies. The result, the Federal Docket Management System (FDMS), is still a work in progress, reflecting technical, administrative, financial, and political challenges. A close examination of the effort to design, fund, and shape the architecture of the FDMS suggests many important lessons for practitioners and scholars alike. While both the new technology and the 60-year-old administrative process of rulemaking offer tantalizing glimpses of innovation, increased efficiency, and remarkable democratic potential, the actual progress to date is mixed. Neither the information system nor its users have turned the FDMS into a techno-fix for all or even much of what ails the sprawling U.S. regulatory rulemaking system. In the great American tradition of incrementalism, the FDMS represents a small step toward a number of worthy but perennially elusive goals now routinely linked to the prospect for digital democracy.

The Evolution of Federal Information Technology Management Literature

Federal agencies rely extensively on information technology to perform basic missions. Arguably, public administration should be driving the theory, policy, and practice for managing these increasingly important resources. While there has been some maturation in the literature for managing IT in federal agencies in the last several years, academics from the field of information systems and practitioners have contributed more recently to the theory and practice of IT management at the federal level than public administration. This chapter analyzes federal IT-management literature over time and compares federal IT-management literature to a normative model of management maturity focusing on the strategic objectives for IT and related management approaches. Public administration’s minimal contribution to federal IT-management literature raises profound questions about whether federal agencies are performing commensurate with public expectations as the theory and practice of IT management may be moving into a new, post-information-age era.