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9 October 2007

Darrell West on : "Global Perspectives on E-Government"

Below is a posting by Darrell West based on his chapter in Goveranance and Information Technology: From Electronic Government to Information Government, "Global Perspectives on E-Government":

Electronic government offers the promise of moving beyond the use of technology to improve public sector performance to thinking about how to employ new advances for information government and democracy itself. In this latter perspective, the technocratic vision of e-government is supplanted by a viewpoint that envisions technology empowering ordinary citizens and using digital means to bring citizens closer to leaders. In its boldest formulation, technology is seen as becoming a tool for long-term system transformation and democratization.

Not all technological innovation, though, leads to large-scale transformation. There are a number of reasons why political change tends to be small-scale and gradual. Government actions are mediated by a range of factors: institutional arrangements, budget scarcity, group conflict, cultural norms, and prevailing patterns of social and political behavior, each of which restricts the ability of technology to transform society and politics. The fact that governments are divided into competing agencies and jurisdictions limits the ability of policymakers to get bureaucrats to work together promoting technological innovation. Budget considerations prevent government offices from placing services online and using technology for democratic outreach. Cultural norms and patterns of individual behavior affect the manner in which technology is used by citizens and policymakers. In addition, the political process is characterized by intense group conflict over resources. With systems that are open and permeable, groups organize easily and make demands on the political system.

In my research, I look at the speed of global e-government change as a way to investigate whether digital technology is producing system-wide transformation. Thinking globally about technology is useful because it broadens the scope to nations that have very different political, organizational, and financial dynamics. One of the limits of relying on any single country is the difficulty of generalizing beyond that area. An international approach gives researchers a chance to see how political and institutional context affects the ability of governments to innovate in the technology area. Using a detailed content analysis of government websites in 198 different nations in 2001, 2002, and 2003, I measure the information and services that are online and discuss how e-government has changed overtime.

In general, I found that global e-government is not producing a major transformation of the public sector. While some countries have embraced digital government broadly defined, a number of other countries have not placed much information or services online, and are not taking advantage of the interactive features of the Internet. This limits the transformational potential of the Internet and weakens the ability of technology to empower citizens and businesses. Few nations view the Internet as a way to empower ordinary citizens and produce fundamental change in their political systems. This limits the transformational potential of digital government.

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As noted earlier, I have negotiated with MIT a 20% discount for readers of this blog.

Posted by David Lazer at October 9, 2007 12:23 PM

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