bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Citizen Consultaions via Government Web Sites
Authors: Holzer M. , Schwester R. W.
Published: May 2011

Cynicism toward government is largely a function of trust and social capital (Berman 1997; Putnam 2000). The relationship between government and its citizens has been strained. First, some citizens cynically feel as though government officials abuse their powers in the interest of self-aggrandizement; second, citizens often feel disconnected from government; third, government service delivery is frequently portrayed as inadequate. Administrative strategies to reverse these perceptions typically emphasize the benefits of government and improved service delivery. Some go further, offering individuals a means of influencing public policy and government decision-making, as opposed to traditional structures and cultures of policymaking that minimize citizen input. The Internet is a potentially powerful means for citizen consultation, and may help cultivate a governmental landscape in which information is more accessible, people feel more connected to government, and citizens are better able to participate in political and decision-making processes. This article examines the Internet as a consultative medium, whereby emphasis is placed on government efforts to use Web-based applications as a means of promoting meaningful citizen participation.
Civil Servants' Resistance towards E-Gopvernment Development
Authors: Gasco M.
Published: May 2011

As the new UNPAN E-Government Readiness Report (2004) stated, during the last years, governments worldwide have made rapid progress in embracing information and communication technologies for electronic government. All over, several projects have been carried out in order to offer more and better information to citizens and to improve public service delivery. Nevertheless, not all of them have been successful. Several factors have restrained governments at all levels from implementing thriving e-government initiatives. Research has shown that workers’ resistance to change is one of the major obstacles that organizations face when trying to implement innovation change processes. The public sector is not an exception. Due to its intrinsic characteristics, the introduction of information technology and, particularly, of electronic government programs requires paying special attention to the potential crisis situation to which these initiatives could lead. The intention of this article is to make clear how public servants experience and react to those changes that result from the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) within the public administration; that is, to analyze the people dimension of change.
Digital Governance and Democratization in the Arab World
Authors: Wheeler D.
Published: May 2011

Making the choice to be an Internet society is not a process governed simply by a state’s attitudes towards computers and the data that flows between them. Rather, being an Internet society means fostering the wide embrace of perspectives modeled on the technology itself. The basic components of designing an Internet society include a commitment to the free flow of information across and among hierarchies; a belief that it is best not to privilege any single information node; a realization that censorship is difficult if not futile; and a commitment to the idea that communities, companies and individuals have the right to represent themselves within electronic landscapes. All of these information attitudes have spill over effects in the real world. While constructing an Internet society is also about building information infrastructure and teaching people to use new tools, it is the clear spill over effects linked with the technology’s design principles that have most developing countries proceeding with caution. For many countries around the world, especially (semi) authoritarian ones, no matter how strong the economic incentives for being an Internet society are, politically and socially, accepting such processes of change without selective state intervention is uncommon. Nowhere are these interventions more apparent than in the puzzling mosaic of Internet led development in the Arab World. This article entertains a series of questions regarding emerging Internet societies in the Arab World: 1. To what degree is the Internet spreading in the Arab World and what factors are most commonly driving (or inhibiting) these processes of technological change? 2. In what way is the Internet contributing to processes of political change in the region? And how is the authoritarian state intervening to regulate Internet use in an attempt to control the spill over effects of such use? 3. What might be the longer term impacts of emergent Internet cultures in the region?
Digital Knowledge Flow Platforms for Regional Innovation Systems
Authors: Cooke P.
Published: May 2011

For the first time in history, practically all the information required to navigate the oceans of a globalising knowledge economy are embodied in the Internet. Yet the demand for proximity to sources of economically valuable knowledge has never been greater. The rise of knowledge clusters like Oulu in Finland, Kista in Sweden, Cambridge in UK, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, let alone Silicon Valley, are testimony to the human desire for face-to-face and handshaking business contact. This paradox is widely commented upon by leading economists and business analysts (Chesbrough, 2003; Krugman, 1995; Porter, 1998) who show that the age of the hierarchical, vertically integrated production function embodied in the fabric of the multinational firm has changed significantly. Ushered in to replace it is a system, we have called Globalisation 2 (Cooke, 2005) based on externalised “node and network” forms of interaction. The Internet and other digital means of managing such informational complexity were said to be essential if we would but learn its rubric and adapt practice accordingly. But, rather like “e-learning” and “online learning” as means to do this, much less is heard of their virtues now than hitherto. The reason is that they underplayed and even ignored the important corollary regarding “learning organisations,” which is that good knowledge management also requires “developing organisations.” By that is meant reconfiguring inherited hierarchies and their associated technologies and incentive systems.
E-Democracy and E-Economy in Africa
Authors: Hellsten S. K.
Published: May 2011

A new world governance and economy characterised by globalisation has an increasing emphasis on knowledge and knowledge-transfer as the primary driver of economic growth, competitiveness, and participation. The economic, social, and political landscape in which future development will take place has then also changed. All countries, rich and poor, must now reconsider their approach to development to incorporate this new reality. Opportunities exist for poor countries to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to make rapid advances in their economic and political development, but there are also risks that a digital divide might widen the inequality between the “have’s” and “have not’s” across the world. This article focuses on the role of ICT and the development of e-democracy and e-economy in Africa. The chapter will discuss the prospects and problems in enhancing e-democracy and e-economy in Africa by examining global and local obstacles to the access and use of ICT in many African countries. It also discusses whether ICT can empower people locally and regionally to participate more actively in politics, public affairs and economics.
E-Development in Bangladesh
Authors: Sarwar M. J.
Published: May 2011

Numerous factors, like political stability, physical infrastructure, basic healthcare, and so forth influence the extent and speed of social and economic development. There is no suggestion that ICT can eliminate the need for these or offer a panacea for all development problems. But detail analyses of experience around the world reveal ample evidence that, if used in the right way and for the right purposes, ICT can have a dramatic impact on achieving specific socio-economic development goals, as well as, play a key role in broader national development strategies. The real benefits lie not in the provision of technology rather in its application to create powerful socio-economic networks by drastically improving communication and the exchange of information (Vulkan, 1999). Recent developments in the fields of communications and information technology are indeed revolutionary in nature. Information and knowledge are expanding in quantity and accessibility. In many fields, future decision-makers will be presented with unprecedented new tools for development. In such fields as agriculture, health, education, human resources and environmental management, or transport and business development, the consequences could be really quite revolutionary. Communications and information technology have enormous potential, especially for developing countries, and in furthering sustainable development (Hamelink, 1997). ICTs have therefore brought about a new hope for the developing world. Many of these countries continue to labor in the agricultural age and their economic development is thus restricted and unable to move on and catch up with the developed world. Most developing nations have also been unable to industrialize their economies leading to greater impoverishment and dependence. In this context, the very prospect of “leapfrogging” the traditional stages and cycles of progress, is seen as revolutionary. Telemedicine, distance education, wireless applications, the use of the Internet for a wide variety of critical information dissemination tasks—hold the promise of overcoming fundamental barriers of infrastructure which have plagued the developing world (Mody, 1999).
E-Government as a New Frontier for Legal Theory
Authors: Culver K.
Published: May 2011

E-government has the potential to change fundamentally the organization of governments, and the governance practices used in relations with citizens and other governments. Legal theory is clearly affected by these changes. Yet there is no rush to publish on e-government in leading legal theory journals, and there is no visible surge in student demand for courses in e-government. Just as only some areas of governments in developed states have taken advantage of new information communication technologies, so only some areas of legal theory have engaged e-government. Issues in Internet governance and personal privacy dominate legal theory’s engagement with e-government, while e-engagement of citizens plays an increasingly important yet still limited role in governments’ interaction with citizens. Yet there are signs that this gentle pace may soon change, as leading jurisdictions approach completion of the first wave of service transformation at the same time as concerns regarding a digital divide recede under the growth of access to new information communication technologies. New opportunities for e-government may soon make e-government’s progress revolutionary rather than evolutionary, and legal theory will be forced to keep pace.
E-Government in Transition Economics
Authors: Gatautis R.
Published: May 2011

In December of 2002, the Lithuanian government approved the concept of e-government. The objective of the e-government concept is to develop effective means that will allow for adapting of public administration to modern needs. To achieve this purpose, the Lithuanian government identified e-government’s implementation as one of political priorities. One step toward this purpose is the development of e-government, which ensures democracy, the promotion of e-business, the computerization of society, and the use of the Internet. Following the e-government concept’s adoption, the Ministry of Interior affairs has been obliged to prepare a plan of measures necessary for implementation of the concept. The e-government concept describes the official approach towards the electronic government’s phenomena in Lithuania.
Electronic Service Delivery in the Local Indian Community of Visakhapatnam
Authors: Venkatakrishnan V.
Published: May 2011

New public management (NPM) conceptualised public administration as a business, to be managed with business-like techniques. Since services had to be assessed by the criteria of quality, efficiency, and satisfaction of citizens, the public sector had to reorganize its processes. As strong emphasis was on the services, improving their delivery was expected to facilitate achieving the above criteria. The terms of the NPM approach such as “customer focus, managing for results, and performance management” have become part of the standard language of public administration (Ali, 2001; Bekkers & Zouridis, 1999; Crossing Boundaries, 2005; Spicer, 2004).
Ethics and Privacy of Communications in the E-Polis
Authors: Dodig-Crnkovic G.
Published: May 2011

The electronic networking of physical space promises wide-ranging advances in science, medicine, delivery of services, environmental monitoring and remediation, industrial production and the monitoring of persons and machines. It can also lead to new forms of social interaction. However, without appropriate architecture and regulatory controls, it can also subvert democratic values. Information technology is not, in fact, neutral in its values; we must be intentional about design for democracy (Pottie, 2004). Information and communication technology (ICT) has led to the emergence of global Web societies. The subject of this article is privacy and its protection in the process of urbanization and socialization of the global digital Web society referred to as the e-polis. Privacy is a fundamental human right recognized in all major international agreements regarding human rights, such as Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948), and it is discussed in the article “Different Views of Privacy”. Today’s computer network technologies are sociologically founded on hunter-gatherer principles. As a result, common users may be possible subjects of surveillance and sophisticated Internet-based attacks. A user may be completely unaware of such privacy breaches taking place. At the same time, ICT offers the technical possibilities of embedded privacy protection obtained by making technology trustworthy and legitimate by design. This means incorporating options for socially acceptable behavior in technical systems, and making privacy protection rights and responsibilities transparent to the user. The ideals of democratic government must be respected and even further developed in the future e-government. Ethical questions and privacy of communications require careful analysis, as they have far-reaching consequences affecting the basic principles of e-democracy.
Evaluation Framework for Assessing E-Democracy Policy
Authors: Henderson M. , Hogarth F.
Published: May 2011

E-democracy, defined in this chapter as “the use of information and communication technologies in democratic processes,” covers a range of methods by which governments and communities engage with each other. This includes a variety of activities that support public participation in democratic processes, such as electronic voting, online consultation, Web-based discussion forums, electronic petitions to Parliament, using the Internet to Webcast parliamentary debates, and digital polling and surveys. E-democracy is a fairly recent and evolving field, with rapid developments at both practical and conceptual levels. Innovative projects and initiatives are being introduced in many different countries, but this process is rarely guided by a comprehensive policy framework or informed by systematic evaluation. In 2001, an OECD review concluded that “no OECD country currently conducts systematic evaluation of government performance in providing information, consulting and engaging citizens online” (OECD, 2001 p. 4). Writers in the field have noted that the evaluation of e-democracy initiatives has not developed as quickly as public debate about the potential impacts, that evaluations are rare to date, and that there is no consensus on appropriate evaluation methodologies (Grönlund, n.d.). Examples of publicly available evaluations include the Scottish e-petitioner system (e.g., Malina & Macintosh, n.d.; Malina, Macintosh, & Davenport, 2001) and online consultation (e.g., Smith & Macintosh, 2001; Whyte & Macintosh 2000, 2001). Macintosh and Whyte (2002) have produced “a tentative interdisciplinary framework of evaluation issues and criteria” for electronic consultation. An OECD report (2003) lists evaluation issues for online engagement. However, overall there are few resources to guide evaluation in the e-democracy area to date.
From CCTV to Biometrics through Mobile Surveillance
Authors: Gallo J.
Published: May 2011

Surveillance is the act or process of observing, tracking, or recording personal details for the purpose of exercising control over the individual or population being watched. Control in this context can mean many things, from directly influencing the behavior of the observed to the use of gathered information for the purpose of management or governance. Mobile surveillance can be defined as two distinct, yet related, practices. The first is the ability to observe the physical movement of an individual through space. This is most often accomplished through documenting their interaction with a surveillance network. The object of surveillance is tracked from one node of the network to another, providing a record of behavior. The second practice is often referred to as dataveillance, or the ability to monitor an individual’s behavior through studying a trail of personally identifiable data, including credit card purchases, mobile phone calls, and health records. Mobile surveillance employs an array of technologies including video and photography cameras, visual recognition software, radio frequency identification (RFID), global positioning receivers (GPS), information and communication technologies (ICTs), and biometrics. Examples of mobile surveillance networks include the dense deployment of closed-circuit television (CCTV), video, and photographic technologies in a distinct geographic space to monitor activity, the tracking of automobiles and mobile phones via GPS, and radio frequency sensing that records motion as identity chips pass through a distributed network of receivers. As these networks proliferate, individuals are the exposed to overlapping layers of surveillance. Although many of these surveillance networks are deployed for limited purposes, the increasing ability to save and store personally identifiable information in searchable databases, and the ability to mine information from multiple sources raises privacy concerns for the individual. This is especially true in advanced capitalist societies that rely on sophisticated data gathering to track, model, and predict consumer behavior, as well as for citizen management.
The Government E-Procurement System in Korea
Authors: Lee J. Y.
Published: May 2011

Korea launched a national e-procurement system on September 30, 2002. The adoption of the e-procurement system in the government of Korea has been acknowledged as successful. This article presents a case study describing the public e-procurement system of Korea, analyzing the development process, and determining factors in the successful adoption of the system. The Government E-Procurement System (GePS: www.g2b.go.kr) is a portal site providing information on public procurement and an application service provider for public procurement as a whole. GePS advances procurement services by reducing paper work and red tape, expanding the range of commodity selection, and standardizing services. Government-wide support, including that of the president, had an instrumental role towards the successful adoption of GePS. The high capacity of information technology and institutional collaboration among public agencies were other foundations for the successful establishment.
Government E-Procurement through the Internet
Authors: Reddick C. G.
Published: May 2011

Electronic procurement (e-procurement) is one business-to-government e-commerce venture that can benefit from the Internet. Government e-procurement is different from private sector e-procurement because of concepts such as value for money, transparency and accountability, which may be considered the main benefits for the public sector. Public sector organizations have to meet multiple, often conflicting goals, and they are subject to constraints of a financial, legal, contractual, personnel and institutional nature. In addition, radical process changes from e-procurement can only be achieved with deep changes in bureaucratic practices. These changes cannot normally be achieved without either changes in the law or privatization (Panayiotou, Gayialis, & Tatsiopoulos, 2004).
Identification in E-Government
Authors: Leitold H. , Posch R.
Published: May 2011

Official procedures usually require that the citizen is unmistakably identified. This may be needed to ensure that the person approaching the authority is the one that has filed an application such as tracking the status of a request, for exercising certain rights such as representing a company or being a party in a proceeding, or for ensuring that the person is eligible to receive certain information such as her penal record. We define identification as the process necessary to validate or recognize identity. In addition to identification, authenticity of a declaration of intent or act is needed in order to establish assurance of the purported identity. In conventional paper-based processes with personal appearance identification is usually carried out using identity cards, deeds, or witnesses. Authentication is provided by handwritten signatures. When in e-government official processes are carried out electronically, both identification and authentication remain important aspects and need to be supported electronically. This may be provided by introducing electronic substitutes of paper-based official documents and handwritten signatures. At first glance, electronic signatures, digital certificates, and public key infrastructure (PKI) are such means. The legal basis for electronic signatures exists, for example, at the E.U. level (Signature Directive, 1999) or by national signature laws such as (Signature Law, 2000). However, some issues need to be considered when introducing identification models for e-government on the regional or national level. These issues include scalability, durability, sustainability, and last but not least data protection and privacy. In this article we discuss these issues on identification in e-government. Therefore, the requirements on identification are sketched in section “Requirements of an Identification Model.” Section “Identification vs. Electronic Signatures” continues by highlighting what shortcomings an identification model solely relying on electronic signatures and PKI faces. Section “Approaches to Electronic Identification” gives an overview of what solutions have been proposed and section “Fragmented Identifiers to Preserve Privacy” deepens one approach by introducing the model that has been followed by Austria (E-Government Act, 2004).
Information Use-Control in E-Government Applications
Authors: Mana A. , Yague M. , Karnouskos S.
Published: May 2011

Within the process of globalization and the permeation of all areas of life by technology, electronic government (e-government) is becoming a powerful tool that will effectively integrate and manage the huge amount of existing information, as well as seamlessly integrating citizen interaction with its services (Abie et al., 2004). E-government is the use of ICTs in public administration in combination with organizational changes and the development of new skills, in order to improve public services and democratic processes, and to strengthen support for public policies. The concept of mobile government (m-government) refers to the use of mobile wireless communication technology within government administration and in its delivery of services and information to citizens and firms (Ostberg, 2003). Digital government is a general term which includes e-government and m-government. In this digital world the management and protection of digital information content, and the rights associated with this, from unauthorized access, use, and dissemination has been a matter of concern for many rights holders. Moreover, the protection of privacy has been a matter of great concern for many citizens.
Inter-Governmental Relations in the Provision of Local E-Services
Authors: Kelso R.
Published: May 2011

Australia is a nation of 20 million citizens occupying approximately the same land mass as the continental U.S. More than 80% of the population lives in the state capitals where the majority of state and federal government offices and employees are based. The heavily populated areas on the Eastern seaboard, including all of the six state capitals have advanced ICT capability and infrastructure and Australians readily adopt new technologies. However, there is recognition of a digital divide which corresponds with the “great dividing” mountain range separating the sparsely populated arid interior from the populated coastal regions (Trebeck, 2000). A common theme in political commentary is that Australians are “over-governed” with three levels of government, federal, state, and local. Many of the citizens living in isolated regions would say “over-governed” and “underserviced.” Most of the state and local governments, “… have experienced difficulties in managing the relative dis-economies of scale associated with their small and often scattered populations.” Rural and isolated regions are the first to suffer cutbacks in government services in periods of economic stringency. (O’Faircheallaigh, Wanna, & Weller, 1999, p. 98). Australia has, in addition to the Commonwealth government in Canberra, two territory governments, six state governments, and about 700 local governments. All three levels of government, federal, state, and local, have employed ICTs to address the “tyranny of distance” (Blainey, 1967), a term modified and used for nearly 40 years to describe the isolation and disadvantage experienced by residents in remote and regional Australia. While the three levels of Australian governments have been working co-operatively since federation in 1901 with the federal government progressively increasing its power over that time, their agencies and departments generally maintain high levels of separation; the Queensland Government Agent Program is the exception.
Legal Knowledge Systems
Authors: Gordon T. F.
Published: May 2011

There are many conceptions of e-governance (Malkia, Anttiroiko, & Savolainen, 2004; Reinermann & Lucke, 2002). Our view is that e-governance is about the use of information and communications technology to improve the quality and efficiency of all phases of the life cycle of legislation. In this conception, computer models of legislation play a central role. We use the term “model” in a broad way, to cover every kind of data model of legislation or metadata about legislation, at various levels of abstraction or detail, including full text, hypertext, diagrams and other visualization methods, and legal knowledge-bases using Artificial Intelligence knowledge representation techniques. The appropriate kind of model depends on the particular task to be supported. In this article, the focus will be on the use of legal knowledge systems (LKS) to support the implementation phase of the life cycle of legislation. Legal Knowledge Systems are also known as legal knowledge-based systems (LKBS). LKS can greatly improve the correctness, consistency, transparency and, last but not least, the efficiency of the administration of complex legislation. The rest of this article is organized as follows. The next section explains the relevance of legal knowledge systems for governance. This is followed by a section motivating the use of LKS to support tasks in the implementation phase of the life cycle of legislation and providing a brief introduction to LKS technology. Next, various application scenarios for implementing public policy and legislation using LKS are discussed. Although research on technology for legal knowledge systems continues, it is a mature technology with many impressive applications in regular use by public administration. The article concludes by reiterating its main points and identifying open research issues.
Online Petitions to Queensland Parliament
Authors: Henderson M. , Hogarth F.
Published: May 2011

The right of a citizen to petition Parliament is arguably one of the fundamental ways individuals can engage in democratic processes, by providing their views on what governments should do and requesting action on a particular issue. In 2000, the Scottish Parliament agreed to a trial of an e-petitioner system whereby members of the Scottish public are able to lodge, sign and view petitions to the Scottish Parliament’s Petitions Committee using the internet. Originally developed and hosted by the International Teledemocracy Centre, constituents can now place petitions on the Scottish Parliament Web site in a format that offers a discussion forum for each petition. In 2002, the Queensland government (Australia) launched an e-democracy policy framework that introduced three digital democracy initiatives, including e-petitions. This particular initiative is presented in the case study below. A second Australian state (Tasmania) commenced a 12-month trial based on the Queensland model in July 2004. These three parliaments are the only parliaments to allow e-petitions as at October 2004, although the Canadian, Basque, European parliaments and the German Bundestag have apparently shown an interest in Scotland’s e-petitioner system (MacIntosh, 2004). Although these are only three parliaments that accept electronic petitions, online petitioning is also being used for engaging with governments and elected members. For example, in the United Kingdom, the prime minister’s office accepts electronic petitions and lists those with more than 300 genuine signatures on the number 10 Downing street Web page, together with a link to the government’s response to the petition. However, petitions are not hosted on that site and a separate Web site must be established to explain the purpose of the petition and to collect signatures. Fourteen petitions on a range of diverse issues were listed on the site for the period between April 2001 and July 2003, ranging from 306 to 83,440 signatures per petitioned issue. There are also non-government Web sites providing information about, and tools for, creating online petitions. For example, www.petitiononline.com (Artifice, Inc, 2004) provides a privately sponsored free online hosting service for public petitions that includes an automatic formatting system for the Web petition; collects, displays and maintains petition signatures; automatically rejects duplicate signatures and confirms receipt to signatories; and allows for electronic delivery through e-mailing the petition URL to the target recipient. In mid 2004, the site claims over 20 million signatures have been collected on a range of topics.
Performance Reporting on United States Digital Government
Authors: Mullen P. R.
Published: May 2011

Starting in the 1980s, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom faced serious economic problems, such as economies dominated by government spending and high budget deficits. Further, government studies in the four countries found that government organizations lacked accountability for achieving program results and that there were many constraints to increasing such accountability. In response to these problems, each of the countries embarked on comprehensive reforms intended to increase the accountability of the civil service for the effective and efficient management of government programs. In exchange for increased accountability for results, the countries provided program managers with more flexibility in their use of resources. The studies and subsequent reforms in these four countries proposed results-oriented management reforms that were subsequently adopted in the United States (U.S.). The approaches these countries took to implement results-oriented management reforms included departments and agencies establishing and communicating a clear direction by defining their missions and goals through strategic planning, establishing annual objectives that were directly linked to missions and goals, measuring performance to assess how well objectives were being met, and reporting on progress. The countries derived a number of key lessons from their experiences in developing performance measurement systems. These lessons focused on enhancing the usefulness of performance information to management for improving program results. The countries sought to reinforce this focus on results by holding agency management accountable for the results that agencies were trying to achieve. For example, the countries used performance agreements between different levels of management to ensure accountability for achieving agreed-upon performance goals. Cunningham and Harris (2005) discuss how performance reporting has been implemented in Canada, the United Kingdom, and three states in the United States. This article discusses how performance-reporting requirements in the U.S. are intended to promote a results-oriented management and decision-making process within Congress and the executive branch, as well as accountability to the American public, specifically for digital government programs.
Postal services and ICTs in Japan
Authors: Kaneko Y.
Published: May 2011

Postal service organization has a long history of exploiting ICTs in its business operation as a government ministry, then as a public corporation from April 2004. In the business world, ICTs play a central role of promoting operational efficiency and customer services as well as fostering new businesses for further development. The Japanese postal service organization will be privatized in October 2007 and privatized companies will be forced to make further use of ICTs. In this article, the use of ICTs in the postal services will be described with a view to clarifying the relationship between the incentives of introducing ICTs and the institutional arrangements, namely a government ministry and a public corporation.
Record Keeping for Digital Contracts
Authors: Sounderpandian J.
Published: May 2011

A challenge in electronic commerce is to keep proper records of business contracts made over the Internet. A common type of contract is a purchase order that a buyer places on a vendor using the Web or a private network. The government has to step in to adjudicate disputes if and when they arise. It is in the public’s interest, therefore, that formal and indisputable methods are developed for recording contracts digitally. On June 30, 2000, the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-sign Act) was passed in USA, and it legalized electronic signatures in contracts. This paved the way for the rapid growth in electronic commerce which is estimated to be $3.2 trillion in the USA (Freeman, 2004). With this sizable business, it is very likely that disputes involving electronic contracts arise. In this article, we suggest a few models and processes for creating and storing authentic contract documents so that future disputes can be settled more effectively.
Stumbling Blocks of Electronic Voting Revealed by U.S. and European Experiences
Authors: Delwit P.
Published: May 2011

The question of electoral participation has today become a major issue for the future of democratic systems. In the USA and Europe, voter turnout continues to fall. Faced with this strong erosion of political participation, the watchword is mobilization. In this connection, several proposals, chiefly technical in nature, have been put forward to curb this rising voter absenteeism. For example, several projects have been developed with a view to putting in place new voting procedures, including among others, telephone voting, postal voting, computer voting, Internet voting, using pre-perforated cards, mobile phones or digital terminals installed in public places (shopping centres, public buildings, etc.).
Theory-Based Models of E-Government Adoption
Authors: Orgeron C. P.
Published: May 2011

Too often, citizens view government as hopelessly ineffective and lacking in skill to deliver services in the same way that a bottom-line-focused private-sector business is able to effectively do. This view often informs a marked decline in political participation and a lack of confidence in the ability of public-sector agencies to effectively and efficiently solve problems (Hetherington, 1998; P. Norris, 1999). As a response, contemporary public administrators have been tasked with government “reinvention” as a way of increasing bureaucratic effectiveness and efficiency (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992). Some scholars have begun to view information technology as a critical component for creating a more capable government, one capable of providing better service and thus increasing citizen confidence in public-sector management (Norris, 2001). Electronic government (e-government) has in recent years attracted much attention as scholars have suggested that by leveraging cutting-edge information technology, government may reap benefits of increased efficiency, effectiveness, and citizen communication with public-sector agencies (C. Chadwick & May, 2003; Ho, 2002; Melitski, 2001; West, 2004). E-government can be defined as the implementation of information technology to supply services between public-sector agencies and citizens, businesses, employees, and other nongovernmental agencies (Carter & Belanger, 2004). E-government offers potential impact on the business of government in two fundamental, yet crucial, ways: by improving service delivery, including costs, and by improving communication between citizens and government (Fountain, 2001). Participatory forms of e-government, such as online public hearings or e-voting, are less common than informational uses or online transactions, such as tax e-filing. Carter and Belanger note that public-sector agencies at all levels of government have leveraged e-government applications to foster buying goods and services, the dissemination of critical information, and the acceptance of bids and proposals (General Accounting Office [GAO], 2001). Arguably, both the public sector and the citizenry benefit from the implementation of e-government services. As public-sector agencies reduce costs and improve efficiency, citizens receive quicker, better aligned services from a more focused and streamlined government (Kettl, 2000).
Trust in Digital Government
Authors: Rowe N. C.
Published: May 2011

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.
Voice Technologies in the Public Sector for E-Government Services
Authors: Headd M. J.
Published: May 2011

Spurred by the development of new Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based telephony markup languages and the adoption of requirements for universal access to government Internet content (CITA, 2005), more and more governments are making use of a new family of open-standard development languages to make their visual Web applications accessible by telephones and cell phones. This article will explore the development of the factors driving this trend, and explore possible future trends as these new technologies mature.
Web Sites for Senior Citizens
Authors: Taddeo G.
Published: May 2011

In the information era, the main source of productivity lies in the technology of knowledge generation, information processing, and symbolic communication (Castells, 1996; Van Dijk, 1999). As Rifkin (2000) observed, it raises a service industry that substitutes the material economy, and the wealth relations are decided in the arena of the access and correct exploitation of these services. For sociological scientists, the biggest challenge is to overcome the classical sociological concepts of knowledge gaps (Tichenor, Donohue, & Olien, 1970) and the digital divide, often technologically determined, aiming at investigating the social and cultural problems that obstacle elderly people, housewives, and many other social groups in using the Internet and making it useful for daily life. We need to make the cultural codes available for using new media through remediation work (Bolter & Grusin, 1999) linking digital languages to the main communication practices and media languages.
Electronic Data Collection Methods
Authors: Singh M. , Burgess S.
Published: May 2011

This chapter discusses the application of new technologies to scholarly research. It highlights the process, benefits and challenges of online data collection and analysis with three case studies, the online survey method, online focus groups and email interviews. The online survey method is described as it was undertaken to collect and collate data for the evaluation of e-business in Australia. The online focus group research is described as it was applied to complete research on e-commerce with small business. The email interviews applied to collect information from a virtual community of global respondents to assess the impact of interaction between members on B2C e-commerce. The research process, its advantages and disadvantages are elaborated for all three e-research methods.
Dual-Mode Electronic Survey Lessons and Experiences
Authors: Lang M.
Published: May 2011

This paper presents a number of insights gained from a dual-mode survey of software designers recently conducted in Ireland. It describes the sampling method, pilot test procedures, response patterns, and the mechanisms engaged to authenticate partipants and to filter duplicate responses. An outline is also given of how various factors with potentially beneficial affects on response rates were considered, as well as a breakdown of costs. Finally, the paper concludes with a summary of the main lessons learned.
Electronic vs. Conventional Surveys
Authors: Dixon R.
Published: May 2011

This paper discusses the outcomes of two data collection methods involving questionnaires distributed to members of an organization. One group received a paper survey through the post whilst the second group was asked to complete the survey on-line. The results indicated that although response rates were higher for the on-line group there were no significant differences in the responses of the two groups. These results suggest that for targeted groups of the type involved in this study, either method can be used with confidence but that the on-line method may result in higher return. However, the additional benefits of speed, convenience and cost make the on-line method appealing.
Online Advertising Metrics
Authors: Rosenkrans G.
Published: May 2011

Accurate and consistent metrics are critical for determining online advertising effectiveness and for the growth of online advertising spending. There are a variety of ways to measure online advertising effectiveness, and this chapter explains common online advertising metrics to measure effectiveness such as page impressions, ad impressions, clicks, visits, unique visitors, path analysis, conversion rates, and recency measures. This chapter also presents online metrics challenges as well as encourages researchers to employ other pricing and metrics models besides the CTR (Click-Through)/CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPM (Cost Per Thousands) models.
Surveying Online Scholarship
Authors: Wallace J.D.
Published: May 2011

Part of the importance of descriptive studies such as surveys is the identification of directions and issues that can be pursued in future research. Surveying online scholarship helps scholars to identify component features of their fields reflecting where research scrutiny and deficiencies reside. Online access is providing users with the ability to survey exhaustive datasets available previously to a relatively few information scientists. Because of the relative newness of this level of access, scholars outside information and library science are just beginning to wrestle with issues that have a mature but somewhat obscured literature available. This chapter describes technologies, components, and possible analytical techniques related to some of these struggles. Specifically it addresses their use in examining trends, producers, artifacts, and concepts of scholarly communication. Additionally, it provides a targeted application of these components to the literature concerning computer mediated communication.
Bit-Wise Coding for Exploratory Analysis
Authors: O’Daniel T.
Published: May 2011

Getting data to yield their insights can be hard work. This is especially true with survey data, which tends to be oriented toward the presence or absence of characteristics, or attitude relative to some arbitrary midpoint. A good example of the first comes from surveying the web by looking at websites: Ho (1997) analysed the value-added features used by 1800 commercial websites to form a profile of commercial use of the Web within various industries; the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (2000) examined the characteristics of the privacy policy on 426 websites; West (2004) looked at 1,935 national government websites for 198 nations around the world, evaluating the presence of various features dealing with information availability, service delivery, and public access. A good example of the second comes from any number of studies that use the ‘Likert scale’. These studies are characterised by (a) large sample sizes and (b) an analysis that must incorporate a large number of ’indicator’ and ’categorical’ variables. Coding and analysis should be considered at design time: not only ’what information to collect’ but also ’how to store it’ and ’how to use it’. This is particularly true with web-based surveys using HTML forms, since the data can be stored automatically without the intermediate step of transcribing the answers from paper questionnaires into the computer. Getting a relevant graphical view of the data is often essential, since the human eye is a powerful analytical tool. The help files that come with statistical analysis applications explain particular techniques, but the importance of coding is often obscured by the description.