Chapter 8 Outline

Chapter 8 – Executives and Bureaucracies (E-government)

· The Origins of E-government

o Concept of Internet connectivity in public administration policy can be used to “improve efficiency, cut costs, and change the way governments have traditionally interacted with citizens

o Developed initially by US and UK and later on by EU

o Defining E-Governmant:

§ “the use of Internet technology and protocols to transform agency effectiveness, efficiency, and service quality” (Mark Forman, OMB)

§ “E-government, if implemented properly, can improve current government services, increase accountability, result in more accurate and efficient delivery of services, reduce administrative costs and time spent on repetitive tasks for government employees, facilitate greater transparency in the administration of government, and allow greater access to services due to the around the clock availability of the Internet.” (Chadwick)

§ Government-to-Government functionality

· Facilitate better coordination between government institutions

§ Government-to-Business functionality

· Increase awareness of and facilitate purchase of services between the public sector and private business.

§ Government-to-Citizen functionality

· Allow access to government information, government services, and channels of participation.

o The United States

§ National Performance Review (1993) initiated e-gov projects

§ Firstgov – gov portal – launched in 2000

§ E-government agenda developed heavily by executive branch

§ Clinton administration believed the Internet could transform citizen-government relations

§ Future speculation that customers would not need to have knowledge of the structure of government but would instead be able to transact on the basis of a number of clearly identifiable service themes

§ Adherence to ‘public management’ approach to e-government. Customer-driven model (not citizen/government/producer driven)

o The United Kingdom

§ Basic aims of e-gov project: to provide better and more efficient services to business and to citizens; improve the efficiency and openness of government administration, and secure substantial cost savings for the taxpayer.

§ Little consideration for how the Net might provide for greater citizen influence on policy making

§ Aim of government was to emulate private sector practices which involve innovative use of technologies in ‘knowledge management’

· The Promises and Paradoxes of E-government

o Popular systems in the 1970s included: databases, fiscal management systems, fiscal budgeting systems, and inventories of government property.

o E-government has roots outside of the scholarly domain, in institutional gray papers endorsing public management strategies

o Cost Reduction

§ Most savings supposedly arise from switches from paper-based to web-based systems

§ Some industrializing countries are embracing e-government in order to reduce corruption

§ Other countries such as China are seizing upon e-government’s ability to cut bureaucratic costs

§ Savings from reduction of staff levels

§ In reality costs have risen or stayed the same due to difficulties in implementing new technologies

§ Private sector experiences have not proved analogous to e-government

§ Public sector cannot justify job losses as easily

§ In developing countries, workers are cheaper than technology

o Coordination

§ E-government provides a means of integrating diverse components of the state bureaucracy through networked teamwork while simultaneously empowering workers by enhancing their ability to make decisions

§ Examples include http://www.business.gov, http://www.seniors.gov, and http://www.consumer.gov

§ Set-backs emerge due to departmental resistance and initial costs.

§ Also there are constitutional concerns when joining up separate parts of government.

o Effectiveness

§ Internet and E-government may result in a flattening of hierarchic power-structures and a more flexible and dynamic decision-making framework

§ Concerns for privacy and other civil rights when beefing up the government’s effectiveness

§ Networks within pre-existing institutional structures appear harder to integrate than between independent organizations

· E-government as Democratization

o Government Websites: Interactivity and Opportunities for Deliberation

§ Across all policy sectors, early studies found the scores for interaction and potential for deliberation to be low

o Outward facing networks

§ Systems should be outward facing networks in which the boundaries between an organization’s internal information processing and its external users effectively melt away.

o The blurring of Executive and Legislative functions

§ E-government raises issues of accountability along with the idea that elected representatives may become disintermediated.

§ Bureaucracies increasingly use administrative technologies to police themselves, decreasing the need for external accountability checks

o Democratization of Design

§ Possibility to allow citizens to design some of the e-government’s outward facing or non-sensitive utilities.

Chapter 2 – Internet Politics

• The Political Nature of Technologies
  • Technological Determinism
    • Certain technologies “embody specific norms”
    • The idea that technological forms have their own inherent properties and that these are beyond the scope of human intervention.
    • Some Marxist aspects – “the material basis of society is the primary motor of social, economic, and ultimately political change”
  • Social Determinism
    • Technologically is initially politically neutral.  Technology is shaped by social and political processes.
    • Only necessary to examine the power struggles and the influential groups, classes, individuals, and institutions which initiated and subsequently shaped technological change.
  • Having it Both Ways
    • Exemplified by philosophy of Langdon Winner:
      • “The issues that divide or unite people in society are settled not only in the institutions and practices of politics proper, but also, and less obviously so, in tangible arrangements of steel and concrete, wires and semiconductors, nuts and bolts.”
  • Code as Law
    • Lessig, Shapiro, and Reidenberg are scholars who have studied how the Internet’s architecture regulates Internet activity.
    • “In cyberspace we must understand how code regulates-how software and the hardware that make cyberspace what it is regulate cyberspace as it is.” (Lessig 1999)
    • Implies technology is powerful but not uncontrollable by human design.  Code can be created and modified by humans, but once created, re-exerts influence over human behavior.
    • Term: means of architectural production
• Eight Key Themes
  • Decentralization
    • Emphasizes the Internet’s ability to remove traditional middle-men from social, political, and economic activity.
    • New middle-men, or gatekeepers, have also emerged to service new demands.
    • Fewer elite gatekeepers because of the Internet’s “low barriers of entry”
  • Participation
    • Internet is seen, according to writers such as Barber (Strong Democracy), Habermas, and Dahl, to have the potential to increase citizen engagement in democracy, mobilizing a highly inclusive form of deliberative democracy, as opposed to representative democracy.
    • Nevertheless, the high rate of participation on the Internet has been thought to contribute to produce deeply segmented political associations, “echo chamber” forums, and an overload of information.
    • Blogs particularly appear to have increased participation and lowered apathy.
  • Community
    • Following the premise “political apathy is a result of the withering away of community,” some believe the Internet can “reinvent community in cyberspace and greater levels of political participation will follow”
    • Internet also as the uncanny ability to create anonymity and detachment – a feature some users enjoy.
    • Faces the problem, “what is a desirable basis for community?”
      • Assumption 1: a healthy public sphere is a universal one in which opinions clash and conventional wisdom is challenged. (Sunstein)
      • Assumption 2: identity is the source of cohesion in any community and characterized by identity construction rituals, rule writing, and enforcement
    • Sustein, a critic, believes the fragmentation of the public sphere, due to narrowcasting, will erode the quality of the debate.
  • Globalization
    • While cyberspace is a space where boundaries and topography exist, they are much weaker constraints on behavior than those in the physical world.  This opens up new possibilities for forms of political action that subvert attempts by the powerful to control the spaces in which politics is conducted as well as refoncifugre the “geography of access”
  • Postindustrialization
  • Rationalization
  • Governance
  • Libertarianism

Chapter 1 Outline

Chapter 1 – Introduction

• Why Internet Politics?
  • Because “the Internet is now more heavily politicized than at any time in its short history, and this trend is only likely to intensify.”
  • Wide range of actors – political actors, states, economic actors, and internet-based subcultures
  • Importance of political issues involving the Internet itself
    • Regulation of the Internet and Intellectual Property
    • Digital Divide
    • Online terrorist networks
  • The internet modifies existing institutions
  • The internet creates new institutions and is an institution
• What is the Internet? Two Preliminary Answers
  • Technical Answer
    • “Network of networks” linked together and communicating using standards and protocols.
  • Comparative Answer
    • “Many-to-many” and “many-to-one” form of communication
  • Possible platform for “convergence” where all previous forms of media are combined
  • Empowers the marginalized
  • Notoriously difficult medium to regulate (China as an exception)
• The Size and Scope of the Internet
  • Difficult to gather reliable, standardized data.
  • Nevertheless, there is an undeniable and explosive trend in the growth of internet users and hosts
  • China not as “world wide web” but as “China wide web” – see Economist article