Wednesday, November 14, 2007
BBC NEWS | Special Reports | 2003 | The iGeneration
BBC NEWS | Special Reports | 2003 | The iGeneration: "Digital snapshots Global picture of the net's spread and gaps"
Pew Internet: Riding the Waves of "Web 2.0"
Pew Internet: Riding the Waves of "Web 2.0": "“Web 2.0” has become a catch-all buzzword that people use to describe a wide range of online activities and applications, some of which the Pew Internet & American Life Project has been tracking for years. As researchers, we instinctively reach for our spreadsheets to see if there is evidence to inform the hype about any online trend. This article provides a short history of the phrase, along with new traffic data from Hitwise to help frame the discussion."
America: The Growing Digital Divide
America: The Growing Digital Divide: "A new study (pdf) published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that there is a growing digital divide across America. John B. Horrigan’s analysis of America’s use of Web 2.0 and information and communications technology in the broader sense shows that whilst a reasonable number of Americans are embracing new technology and Web 2.0, a disturbing number are either not getting the message, or are choosing not to participate."
Digital Divide.org
Digital Divide.org: "'Digital Divide' refers to the gap between those who benefit from digital technology and those who do not. (See www.itu.int/ITU-D/digitaldivide) It took digital-divide researchers a whole decade to figure out that the real issue is not so much about access to digital technology but about the benefits derived from it. Examining the situation more closely, it turns out that upper-to-middle classes have high-quality access to digital technology because the profit motive pushes technologists to work hard at creating 'solutions' designed specifically for them. In this equation, however, the poor are ignored because the assumption is that designing solutions for them will not be profitable.[1] The result is that even where the poor are provided access to digital technology, it is low-quality. Furthermore, the digital technology they do have access to is often of a design that ends up being harmful rather than beneficial. This, in turn, widens the digital divide."
The Digital Divide Network
The Digital Divide Network:
"The Digital Divide Network is the Internet's largest community for educators, activists, policy makers and concerned citizens working to bridge the digital divide. At DDN, you can build your own online community, publish a blog, share documents and discussions with colleagues, and post news, events and articles. You can also find the archived discussion lists of the DIGITAL DIVIDE listserv. Membership is free and open to all, so join today!"
"The Digital Divide Network is the Internet's largest community for educators, activists, policy makers and concerned citizens working to bridge the digital divide. At DDN, you can build your own online community, publish a blog, share documents and discussions with colleagues, and post news, events and articles. You can also find the archived discussion lists of the DIGITAL DIVIDE listserv. Membership is free and open to all, so join today!"
Saturday, October 27, 2007
SAGUARO SEMINAR - Civic Engagement in America
Some excellent resources from the SAGUARO SEMINAR - Civic Engagement in America: "Technology " section. http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/saguaro/interestingarticles.htm retrieved Oct. 27, 2007 by JMS
On Harvard's Complexity Blog, Ben Waber describes research in a German bank using the Sociometric Badge; the badge developed by the MIT Media Lab, is worn for extended periods of time and measures in real time the proxmity of badge wearers to other badge wearers. When coupled with e-mail logs, the data gathered showed that proximity and e-mail use were strongly negative related. Other findings included the fact that the volume of communication was negative related to its perceived quality. Waber's paper is being presented at the 2007 NetSci conference.Weinberg, Bruce & Williams, Christine (2006).
The 2004 US Presidential campaign: Impact of hybrid off-line and on-line 'meetup' communities.Journal of direct, data and digital marketing practice. 8 (1), 46-57. They looked at 820 people who attended meetups for presidential candidates between January 22 and March 10, 2004, they found that meetup attendance was positively related to various imeasures of campaign effectiveness, such as donations, volunteering and candidate support and advocacy (encouraging others to learn about, work for or vote for the candidate). They concluded that "Meetup may be a useful vehicle for acquiring ‘attractive’ customers" and newcomers to campaigns. They classify Meetup as an e2f (electronic-to-face) community that couples the strengths of technology (stronger search, easier to readh strangers, etc.) wtih the strength of face-to-face ties in building trust.
Glenn Sparks and Hannah Kirk (Purdue) conducted experiments (12/06) to see TV's effect on social interaction. Participants were asked to bring a friend to the sessions, and randomized which pairs were exposed to TV during their 10 minutes in the waiting room. Questionnaires of the participants revealed that people made twice the amount of eye contact with the TV off and their enjoyment of the time with their friend rose about 40% when the TV was off (from 67% to 94%). They have not yet explored how the content of the TV programs affects social interaction.
Thomas Sander, “E-Associations? Using Technology to Connect Citizens: the Case of Meetup.com” Paper for American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Conference in Washington, DC, September 2005. Another version of this paper available as a Taubman Center Working Paper.
Vincent Price, Citizens Deliberating Online: Theory and Some Evidence (2006) from Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice. Todd Davies and Beth Simone Noveck (eds.). Price has conducted two online experiments in discussion and deliberation: one in discussing politics during the 2000 campaign (in Liberal groups, Conservative groups and mixed groups) and one recently on healthcare policy (with segmented or mixed groups of experts, the Attentive Public, and random Americans). All conversations were text-only discussions with minimally intrusive moderators, but Price found that participation in such groups led to modest increases in social trust, civic engagement, political participation, and political efficacy. The discussions were frank but civil, and participants most valued hearing others' perspectives. There was little evidence of serious polarization from these groups and "speaking" in the groups was relatively equitably distributed. And the people who were less politically knowledgeable and less technologically savvy liked participation the most.
Shanyan Zhao, Do Internet Users Have More Social Ties? A Call For Differentiated Analyses of Internet Use (Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(3), article 8) . [But article in our estimation makes the mistake of assuming that all friendships are equal, and that a friend made and sustained on-line in a chat room affords the same social capital benefits that one would get from a friendship sustained in the real, non-virtual world. Our strong hypothesis is that the real-world friend one would be much more likely to trust, would be much more likely to visit you if you were in the hospital, etc.] The Strength of Internet Ties (Jeff Boase, Barry Wellman, 2006). The report shows how Americans use e-mail to supplement ties to others by phone or in-person rather than using the Internet to replace their other forms of social connection.
Keith Hampton, e-Neighbors: Neighborhoods in the Network Society. 2006. [Paper is under review, but an abstract can be found here.] A 'flash' presentation of Keith's findings is available here.
Nancy Baym, Yan Bing Zhang, Mei-Chen Lin, Social Interactions Across Media. 2004. (New Media and Society, 6(3):299-318.
William Davies has an interesting booklet written in the U.K. about how technology can be used to enhance communication.Yochai Benkler, "Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm."112 Yale Law Journal 3 (December 2002) on how and why people collaborate on e-based projects without the hope of financial reward, like Wikipedia (an online encyclopedia), Slashdot, Linux, etc. A few parts are rather technical and quantitative, but the article is quite interesting.
Paul Resnick has an interesting paper 'Impersonal Sociotechnical Capital, ICTs, and Collective Action Among Strangers' (2004). Some of the research on t-government (transformational government) has started to focus on the issue of co-production, like this article by Stephen King, Citizen Relationship Management: The Rocky Road from Transactions to Empowerment. Co-production, in which the citizens help craft governmental service or are co-producers in the results (like clients taking partial responsibility for improving their health) dates back to this 1980 article: Gordon Whitiker, Coproduction: Citizen Participation in Service Delivery (Public Administration Review).
Benjamin A. Olken's NBER paper Do Television and Radio Destroy Social Capital? Evidence from Indonesian Villages uses quasi-experimental evidence (which Indonesian villages are blocked by mountains from receiving transmissions) to show that villages with greater TV access and watching are associated with lower levels of social capital. (2006) Duncan Watts and colleagues have an experiment called the Small World experiment to try to replicate Stanley Millgram's lost letter experiment that produced the '6 degrees of separation' conclusion. In the experiment, volunteers try to find out in how few links through friends they can find others who are very distant worldwide (geographically and socially).Networks, Netwars, and the Fight For The Future (First Monday, by David Ronfeldt and John Arequilla)
On Harvard's Complexity Blog, Ben Waber describes research in a German bank using the Sociometric Badge; the badge developed by the MIT Media Lab, is worn for extended periods of time and measures in real time the proxmity of badge wearers to other badge wearers. When coupled with e-mail logs, the data gathered showed that proximity and e-mail use were strongly negative related. Other findings included the fact that the volume of communication was negative related to its perceived quality. Waber's paper is being presented at the 2007 NetSci conference.Weinberg, Bruce & Williams, Christine (2006).
The 2004 US Presidential campaign: Impact of hybrid off-line and on-line 'meetup' communities.Journal of direct, data and digital marketing practice. 8 (1), 46-57. They looked at 820 people who attended meetups for presidential candidates between January 22 and March 10, 2004, they found that meetup attendance was positively related to various imeasures of campaign effectiveness, such as donations, volunteering and candidate support and advocacy (encouraging others to learn about, work for or vote for the candidate). They concluded that "Meetup may be a useful vehicle for acquiring ‘attractive’ customers" and newcomers to campaigns. They classify Meetup as an e2f (electronic-to-face) community that couples the strengths of technology (stronger search, easier to readh strangers, etc.) wtih the strength of face-to-face ties in building trust.
Glenn Sparks and Hannah Kirk (Purdue) conducted experiments (12/06) to see TV's effect on social interaction. Participants were asked to bring a friend to the sessions, and randomized which pairs were exposed to TV during their 10 minutes in the waiting room. Questionnaires of the participants revealed that people made twice the amount of eye contact with the TV off and their enjoyment of the time with their friend rose about 40% when the TV was off (from 67% to 94%). They have not yet explored how the content of the TV programs affects social interaction.
Thomas Sander, “E-Associations? Using Technology to Connect Citizens: the Case of Meetup.com” Paper for American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Conference in Washington, DC, September 2005. Another version of this paper available as a Taubman Center Working Paper.
Vincent Price, Citizens Deliberating Online: Theory and Some Evidence (2006) from Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice. Todd Davies and Beth Simone Noveck (eds.). Price has conducted two online experiments in discussion and deliberation: one in discussing politics during the 2000 campaign (in Liberal groups, Conservative groups and mixed groups) and one recently on healthcare policy (with segmented or mixed groups of experts, the Attentive Public, and random Americans). All conversations were text-only discussions with minimally intrusive moderators, but Price found that participation in such groups led to modest increases in social trust, civic engagement, political participation, and political efficacy. The discussions were frank but civil, and participants most valued hearing others' perspectives. There was little evidence of serious polarization from these groups and "speaking" in the groups was relatively equitably distributed. And the people who were less politically knowledgeable and less technologically savvy liked participation the most.
Shanyan Zhao, Do Internet Users Have More Social Ties? A Call For Differentiated Analyses of Internet Use (Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(3), article 8) . [But article in our estimation makes the mistake of assuming that all friendships are equal, and that a friend made and sustained on-line in a chat room affords the same social capital benefits that one would get from a friendship sustained in the real, non-virtual world. Our strong hypothesis is that the real-world friend one would be much more likely to trust, would be much more likely to visit you if you were in the hospital, etc.] The Strength of Internet Ties (Jeff Boase, Barry Wellman, 2006). The report shows how Americans use e-mail to supplement ties to others by phone or in-person rather than using the Internet to replace their other forms of social connection.
Keith Hampton, e-Neighbors: Neighborhoods in the Network Society. 2006. [Paper is under review, but an abstract can be found here.] A 'flash' presentation of Keith's findings is available here.
Nancy Baym, Yan Bing Zhang, Mei-Chen Lin, Social Interactions Across Media. 2004. (New Media and Society, 6(3):299-318.
William Davies has an interesting booklet written in the U.K. about how technology can be used to enhance communication.Yochai Benkler, "Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm."112 Yale Law Journal 3 (December 2002) on how and why people collaborate on e-based projects without the hope of financial reward, like Wikipedia (an online encyclopedia), Slashdot, Linux, etc. A few parts are rather technical and quantitative, but the article is quite interesting.
Paul Resnick has an interesting paper 'Impersonal Sociotechnical Capital, ICTs, and Collective Action Among Strangers' (2004). Some of the research on t-government (transformational government) has started to focus on the issue of co-production, like this article by Stephen King, Citizen Relationship Management: The Rocky Road from Transactions to Empowerment. Co-production, in which the citizens help craft governmental service or are co-producers in the results (like clients taking partial responsibility for improving their health) dates back to this 1980 article: Gordon Whitiker, Coproduction: Citizen Participation in Service Delivery (Public Administration Review).
Benjamin A. Olken's NBER paper Do Television and Radio Destroy Social Capital? Evidence from Indonesian Villages uses quasi-experimental evidence (which Indonesian villages are blocked by mountains from receiving transmissions) to show that villages with greater TV access and watching are associated with lower levels of social capital. (2006) Duncan Watts and colleagues have an experiment called the Small World experiment to try to replicate Stanley Millgram's lost letter experiment that produced the '6 degrees of separation' conclusion. In the experiment, volunteers try to find out in how few links through friends they can find others who are very distant worldwide (geographically and socially).Networks, Netwars, and the Fight For The Future (First Monday, by David Ronfeldt and John Arequilla)
CGS - DIGITAL Democracy
CGS - DIGITAL Democracy: "Welcome to Digital Democracy, a project of the Center for Governmental Studies. This is a mock-up of the functionality of Digital Democracy -- a new, web-based system to encourage communication between citizens and their elected officials. Digital Democracy consists of two parts: a front-end system available to the public through their officials' websites, and a back-end system than enables elected officials to manage the communications. The front end-system, or citizen-interface, is typically housed on an elected official's site. In fact, it looks like the official's site, even though it is housed on the Digital Democracy Servers. On these pages, citizens are encouraged to share their views with candidates, and register for the issues they care about most so that elected officials can keep them informed. The back-end system, or elected official-interface, is housed on the Digital Democracy servers and allows elected officials to log-in securely to manage their constituent communications."
Center for Governmental Studies / Publications
Center for Governmental Studies / Publications: "Media & Civic Participation projects are designed to increase civic participation through innovative use of the Internet, cable television, satellite networks, digital video systems and other new media. Efforts include media reform, website and media development and publication in the areas of e-democracy, e-government and voter information.Media & Civic Participation projects are designed to increase civic participation through innovative use of the Internet, cable television, satellite networks, digital video systems and other new media. Efforts include media reform, website and media development and publication in the areas of e-democracy, e-government and voter information."
Political news - E-Democracy.Org
Political news - E-Democracy.Org: "Political news from major media sources (US)"
President 2008 - E-Democracy.Org
President 2008 - E-Democracy.Org
Welcome to the new wiki site for the U.S. Presidential election in 2008. Early in the election process, E-Democracy.Org compiles a set of recommended links with an emphasis on non-partisan and non-profit resources along with candidate and major media links.
Welcome to the new wiki site for the U.S. Presidential election in 2008. Early in the election process, E-Democracy.Org compiles a set of recommended links with an emphasis on non-partisan and non-profit resources along with candidate and major media links.
E-Democracy.Org
E-Democracy.Org - Discussion Forums with Political, Elections, News, and Government Links - Since 1994: "E-Democracy.Org is a non-profit, non-partisan, volunteer-based project whose mission is to expand participation and build stronger democracies and communities through the power of information and communication technologies and strategies"
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Trust Issues - Local Government
Michelle Gamble-Risley - December 2002
Center for Digital Government
Excerpt from Interview : Todd SanderChief Information Officer, City of Tucson Arizona
CDG: What are some sleeper issues in your city?
Sander: I think one of the things we're going to have to deal with is the notion of trust between government and its constituents. If we're willing to engage people in these community conversations whether they're local, state or federal, there has to be some understanding of what that means. There has to be a belief that these [engagements] are legitimate; people will be heard; their information or opinions will be dealt with judiciously. In some respects, people just don't tend to trust government -- and the more sophisticated we get with our tools and our processes, the more difficult it will be for people to trust unless we're more thoughtful about the kinds of protections we put in place. It's about personal information, and appropriate dissemination and access to public records, which has certainly become more of an issue since September 11. There was a big rush to just make government completely visible. Everything we had we were looking at trying to figure out how to put the information out on the Internet -- in retrospect that probably doesn't make that make sense. People do need to have some information about government to understand why decision are made and hold government officials accountable; but they don't necessarily need unfettered access to plans for city halls, legislative offices, sewer systems, telecommunications, etc. So, I think maybe the issue that we in government need to think about is what the appropriate relationship is between available information and what should only be available under special circumstances.
Center for Digital Government
Excerpt from Interview : Todd SanderChief Information Officer, City of Tucson Arizona
CDG: What are some sleeper issues in your city?
Sander: I think one of the things we're going to have to deal with is the notion of trust between government and its constituents. If we're willing to engage people in these community conversations whether they're local, state or federal, there has to be some understanding of what that means. There has to be a belief that these [engagements] are legitimate; people will be heard; their information or opinions will be dealt with judiciously. In some respects, people just don't tend to trust government -- and the more sophisticated we get with our tools and our processes, the more difficult it will be for people to trust unless we're more thoughtful about the kinds of protections we put in place. It's about personal information, and appropriate dissemination and access to public records, which has certainly become more of an issue since September 11. There was a big rush to just make government completely visible. Everything we had we were looking at trying to figure out how to put the information out on the Internet -- in retrospect that probably doesn't make that make sense. People do need to have some information about government to understand why decision are made and hold government officials accountable; but they don't necessarily need unfettered access to plans for city halls, legislative offices, sewer systems, telecommunications, etc. So, I think maybe the issue that we in government need to think about is what the appropriate relationship is between available information and what should only be available under special circumstances.
Excerpts from Essay on Trust in Digital Government
Trust in digital government:
"Trust in digital government"
Neil C. Rowe
Cebrowski Institute
U.S. Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, CA 93943 USA
(This is a chapter in the Encyclopedia of Digital Government, ed. A.-V. Anttiroiko & M. Malkia, Hershey, PA, USA: The Idea Group, 2006.)
Introduction: The concept of trust in organizations has been an important area of recent research in sociology and management science (Sztompka, 1999). Trust is positive expectations of positive actions by others, and is important to well-functioning organizations of all sorts. Trust facilitates the effectiveness of government. A focus on trust leads to a more humanistic view of individuals within organizations than that of the traditional managerial psychology of humans solely as input-output devices whose performance must be monitored and measured. New technology changes the form of government operations. So it is natural to ask how trust is affected by the advent of the technologies and practices of digital government, as it is affected by online security practices (Friedman, Kahn, & Howe, 2000). On the one hand, digital government should be more efficient government, and people trust more in well-run, efficient processes. On the other hand, digital government could enable governments to evade responsibility for their actions by imposing new barriers to citizens, restricting access to information more, falsifying information more easily, and providing a new set of excuses for inefficiency. Some extremists (Postman, 1993) claim that most technology cannot be trusted, but few people agree. So the issue needs to be examined at length."
"Trust in digital government"
Neil C. Rowe
Cebrowski Institute
U.S. Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, CA 93943 USA
(This is a chapter in the Encyclopedia of Digital Government, ed. A.-V. Anttiroiko & M. Malkia, Hershey, PA, USA: The Idea Group, 2006.)
Introduction: The concept of trust in organizations has been an important area of recent research in sociology and management science (Sztompka, 1999). Trust is positive expectations of positive actions by others, and is important to well-functioning organizations of all sorts. Trust facilitates the effectiveness of government. A focus on trust leads to a more humanistic view of individuals within organizations than that of the traditional managerial psychology of humans solely as input-output devices whose performance must be monitored and measured. New technology changes the form of government operations. So it is natural to ask how trust is affected by the advent of the technologies and practices of digital government, as it is affected by online security practices (Friedman, Kahn, & Howe, 2000). On the one hand, digital government should be more efficient government, and people trust more in well-run, efficient processes. On the other hand, digital government could enable governments to evade responsibility for their actions by imposing new barriers to citizens, restricting access to information more, falsifying information more easily, and providing a new set of excuses for inefficiency. Some extremists (Postman, 1993) claim that most technology cannot be trusted, but few people agree. So the issue needs to be examined at length."
Gallup: Low Trust in Federal Government Rivals Watergate Era Levels
Annual Gallup Survey Results - Trust in Government
Low Trust in Federal Government Rivals Watergate Era Levels:
"September 26, 2007 Low Trust in Federal Government Rivals Watergate Era Levels Trust in state, local governments holding steady by Jeffrey M. Jones GALLUP NEWS SERVICE PRINCETON, NJ -- A high degree of public trust in elected leaders is one of the basic underpinnings of representative government. Gallup's annual Governance survey shows that trust in the federal government has continued to decrease this year after showing noticeable signs of decline the past two years. Now, Americans generally express less trust in the federal government than at any point in the past decade, and trust in many federal government institutions is now lower than it was during the Watergate era, generally recognized as the low point in American history for trust in government."...
http://www.galluppoll.com/content/default.aspx?ci=28795 retrieved Oct. 12, 2007 by JMS
Low Trust in Federal Government Rivals Watergate Era Levels:
"September 26, 2007 Low Trust in Federal Government Rivals Watergate Era Levels Trust in state, local governments holding steady by Jeffrey M. Jones GALLUP NEWS SERVICE PRINCETON, NJ -- A high degree of public trust in elected leaders is one of the basic underpinnings of representative government. Gallup's annual Governance survey shows that trust in the federal government has continued to decrease this year after showing noticeable signs of decline the past two years. Now, Americans generally express less trust in the federal government than at any point in the past decade, and trust in many federal government institutions is now lower than it was during the Watergate era, generally recognized as the low point in American history for trust in government."...
http://www.galluppoll.com/content/default.aspx?ci=28795 retrieved Oct. 12, 2007 by JMS
GALLUP: Trust in Federal Government, On Nearly All Issues, Hits New Low -- Even Less Than in Watergate Era
From Editor and Publisher: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003647275 retrieved Oct. 14, 2007 by JMS.
GALLUP: Trust in Federal Government, On Nearly All Issues, Hits New Low -- Even Less Than in Watergate Era:
"GALLUP: Trust in Federal Government, On Nearly All Issues, Hits New Low -- Even Less Than in Watergate Era By E&P Staff Published: September 27, 2007 10:30 AM ET NEW YORK A new Gallup poll reveals that, as the organization puts it, Americans now 'express less trust in the federal government than at any point in the past decade, and trust in many federal government institutions is now lower than it was during the Watergate era, generally recognized as the low point in American history for trust in government.' "
Among the findings: Barely half trust the government to handle international problems, the lowest number ever. And less than half express faith in the government handling domestic issues, the lowest findings since 1976. Faith in the executive branch has fallen to 43% -- only 3% higher than it was just before President Nixon's resignation in 1974. At the same time, trust in Congress, at 50%, is its lowest ever.Gallup has asked about trust in government since 1972. It conducted this year's poll Sept. 14-16 and found the following: -- Barely half of Americans, 51%, say they have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in the federal government to handle international problems. -- Less than half of Americans, 47%, now have at least a fair amount of trust in the federal government to handle domestic problems. Gallup adds: "The candidates running for president in 2008 will be trying to win over a skeptical public. Just 55% of Americans express trust in the 'men and women in political life in this country who either hold or are running for public office.' That matches the low Gallup found in 2001."Americans are even losing faith -- in themselves. Currently, 70% of Americans trust the public's ability to perform its role in a democratic government, which is down from 78% two years ago when it was last asked, and significantly lower than any other reading Gallup has taken."The poll indicates that the lack of trust seems to be directed primarily at the federal government," Gallup concludes. "There has been no observable decline of public trust in state and local governments. Sixty-seven percent of Americans now express trust in their state government, matching the levels of 2004 and 2005. Sixty-nine percent also trust their local government, similar to what Gallup has found since 2001."
GALLUP: Trust in Federal Government, On Nearly All Issues, Hits New Low -- Even Less Than in Watergate Era:
"GALLUP: Trust in Federal Government, On Nearly All Issues, Hits New Low -- Even Less Than in Watergate Era By E&P Staff Published: September 27, 2007 10:30 AM ET NEW YORK A new Gallup poll reveals that, as the organization puts it, Americans now 'express less trust in the federal government than at any point in the past decade, and trust in many federal government institutions is now lower than it was during the Watergate era, generally recognized as the low point in American history for trust in government.' "
Among the findings: Barely half trust the government to handle international problems, the lowest number ever. And less than half express faith in the government handling domestic issues, the lowest findings since 1976. Faith in the executive branch has fallen to 43% -- only 3% higher than it was just before President Nixon's resignation in 1974. At the same time, trust in Congress, at 50%, is its lowest ever.Gallup has asked about trust in government since 1972. It conducted this year's poll Sept. 14-16 and found the following: -- Barely half of Americans, 51%, say they have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in the federal government to handle international problems. -- Less than half of Americans, 47%, now have at least a fair amount of trust in the federal government to handle domestic problems. Gallup adds: "The candidates running for president in 2008 will be trying to win over a skeptical public. Just 55% of Americans express trust in the 'men and women in political life in this country who either hold or are running for public office.' That matches the low Gallup found in 2001."Americans are even losing faith -- in themselves. Currently, 70% of Americans trust the public's ability to perform its role in a democratic government, which is down from 78% two years ago when it was last asked, and significantly lower than any other reading Gallup has taken."The poll indicates that the lack of trust seems to be directed primarily at the federal government," Gallup concludes. "There has been no observable decline of public trust in state and local governments. Sixty-seven percent of Americans now express trust in their state government, matching the levels of 2004 and 2005. Sixty-nine percent also trust their local government, similar to what Gallup has found since 2001."
Trust in Government
Trust in Government: "The Origins of Civic Mistrust" - A set of resources brought to you by the Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington
"Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," by Robert D. Putnam, Journal of Democracy 6:1, January 1995
"Reclaiming Confidence in Government: Can this Relationship be Saved?" by Beverly Stein at the Portland City Club, January 12, 1996
"Why Civil Society? Why Now?" by E.J.Dionne, Jr., The Brookings Review, Fall 1997 Vol. 15 No.4
"America's Civic Condition: A Glance at the Evidence," by William A. Galston and Peter Levine, The Brookings Review, Fall 1997 Vol. 15 No.4
"Why Don't Americans Trust The Government?", The Washington Post / Kaiser Family Foundation / Harvard University Survey Project 1996
"Attitudes Towards Government" () NPR-Kaiser-Kennedy School Poll, May-June 2000.
"Americans Distrust Government, but Want It to Do More: NPR/Kaiser/Kennedy School Poll Points to Paradox" Summary of "Attitudes Towards Government" NPR-Kaiser-Kennedy School Poll, May-June 2000" () from Morning Edition, July 28, 2000.
"Reconnecting Government to the People", () by Mayor Norman Rice, City of Seattle, from City News, 1996
"Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," by Robert D. Putnam, Journal of Democracy 6:1, January 1995
"Reclaiming Confidence in Government: Can this Relationship be Saved?" by Beverly Stein at the Portland City Club, January 12, 1996
"Why Civil Society? Why Now?" by E.J.Dionne, Jr., The Brookings Review, Fall 1997 Vol. 15 No.4
"America's Civic Condition: A Glance at the Evidence," by William A. Galston and Peter Levine, The Brookings Review, Fall 1997 Vol. 15 No.4
"Why Don't Americans Trust The Government?", The Washington Post / Kaiser Family Foundation / Harvard University Survey Project 1996
"Attitudes Towards Government" () NPR-Kaiser-Kennedy School Poll, May-June 2000.
"Americans Distrust Government, but Want It to Do More: NPR/Kaiser/Kennedy School Poll Points to Paradox" Summary of "Attitudes Towards Government" NPR-Kaiser-Kennedy School Poll, May-June 2000" () from Morning Edition, July 28, 2000.
"Reconnecting Government to the People", () by Mayor Norman Rice, City of Seattle, from City News, 1996
Thursday, October 11, 2007
egov -- The Official Web Site of the President's E-Government Initiative
egov -- The Official Web Site of the President's E-Government Initiative: "Expanding E-Government is the President’s goal of utilizing technology to improve how the Federal Government serves you, citizens, businesses and agencies alike. This website provides an overview of the program, the Presidential E-Government Initiatives and the Federal Enterprise Architecture. Please discover the many ways Federal employees are serving citizens, businesses and local communities via E-Government."
Trust
Trust: "Trust To be successful, e-government projects must build trust within agencies, between agencies, across governments, and with businesses, NGOs and citizens. When conceptualizing e-government, developers often do not realize the many boundaries, both physical and administrative, that the proposed project will cross. Yet, the success of e-government often comes down to building trust and common understanding with the variety of players early in the process. The biggest concern for most parties is that change brought about by a new system will negatively impact them. Almost every successful e-government project is a case example in building trust."
Understanding New Models of Collaboration for Delivering Government Services:
Understanding New Models of Collaboration for Delivering Government Services:
Sharon S. Dawes and Lise Prefontaine
Communications of the ACM, Volume 46, Number 1, January 2003, pp 40-42
Download PDF
Download PDF
Abstract: In the last decade, countries all over the globe have sought to deliver public services through new working relationships among governments and private and nonprofit organizations. The defining characteristic of these collaborations is the voluntary combination of separate organizations into a coherent service delivery system supported by advanced IT.
This article presents a summary of an international research project that is studying eleven of these collaborations.
Theme; Collaboration & Integration; Overview
Theme; Collaboration & Integration; Overview: "Overview Very few service needs (such as health care) or important public issues (such as environmental quality or domestic security) can be addressed by single organizations acting alone. Many of our needs as a society demand that perspectives, information, and other resources be shared across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. In some cases, agencies or levels of government need to integrate their work processes and information flows into complex joint operations. Increasingly, these organizational networks also involve private businesses or nonprofit organizations. Information technology is an essential part of these initiatives, but it must be applied in the context of well understood political, organizational, and economic concerns."
Monday, September 3, 2007
eGovernment for Development - Basic Definitions
eGovernment for Development - Basic Definitions: Richard Heeks, IDPM, University of Manchester, UK, 2004
"A. What is eGovernment? eGovernment is the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the activities of public sector organisations. Some definitions restrict e-government to Internet-enabled applications only, or only to interactions between government and outside groups. Here, we do not – all digital ICTs are included; all public sector activities are included. In our definition, then, governments have been practising e-government for more than 50 years: using that first mainframe in the Statistics Office was 'e-government'. We just didn't give it that name 50 years ago.
B. What Does eGovernment Cover? There are three main domains of e-government, illustrated in Figure 1 (adapted from: Ntiro, S. (2000) eGovernment in Eastern Africa, KPMG, Dar-es-Salaam): · Improving government processes: eAdministration · Connecting citizens: eCitizens and eServices · Building external interactions: eSociety Respectively, these particularly address the problems that government is too costly, too inefficient and too ineffective (e-admininstration); too self-serving and too inconvenient (e-citizens and e-services); and too insular (e-society)."
"A. What is eGovernment? eGovernment is the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the activities of public sector organisations. Some definitions restrict e-government to Internet-enabled applications only, or only to interactions between government and outside groups. Here, we do not – all digital ICTs are included; all public sector activities are included. In our definition, then, governments have been practising e-government for more than 50 years: using that first mainframe in the Statistics Office was 'e-government'. We just didn't give it that name 50 years ago.
B. What Does eGovernment Cover? There are three main domains of e-government, illustrated in Figure 1 (adapted from: Ntiro, S. (2000) eGovernment in Eastern Africa, KPMG, Dar-es-Salaam): · Improving government processes: eAdministration · Connecting citizens: eCitizens and eServices · Building external interactions: eSociety Respectively, these particularly address the problems that government is too costly, too inefficient and too ineffective (e-admininstration); too self-serving and too inconvenient (e-citizens and e-services); and too insular (e-society)."
Course Updates
Good evening. Both sections of the course should be updated and ready with new assignments by Monday evening. You'll see a lot of new information, including the unit topics, dates, assignments, grading policies and several other items.
The new unit deals with the history, background and context of e-government. Watch this blog for postings and resources that should help you learn more about it.
The new unit deals with the history, background and context of e-government. Watch this blog for postings and resources that should help you learn more about it.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Welcome
Welcome to Gov. 4903. Please look through the course web site to get a better understanding of the course structure and information. As you can see, we'll be using course blogs, individual blogs and collaborative wikis - probably the first time many of you have used these tools. Our first week's work is designed to get you comfortable with the tools and the materials.
Assignments for this week can be found in the Course Information tab in the Blackboard course shell.
Next week, this blog will become the main source of information sharing and will be moved to the start page of the web site.
Assignments for this week can be found in the Course Information tab in the Blackboard course shell.
Next week, this blog will become the main source of information sharing and will be moved to the start page of the web site.
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