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Norris, Donald F. ; Reddick, Christopher G.
2013 Information Polity
doi: 10.3233/IP-130312
Using data from two national surveys conducted in 2006 and 2011, we empirically examine whether, and the extent to which, grassroots or local governments in the United States have adopted electronic democracy (e-democracy). We contrast this empirical reality against the claims made by e-democracy advocates. The survey results show that few American local governments have adopted e-democracy, particularly meaningful elements through which citizens can actively participate in governmental activities, programs and decision-making. Even fewer local governments plan to do so in the near future. These empirical results are highly inconsistent with the claims of e-democracy advocates. Based on the survey results, we conclude that two important reasons account for the lack of e-democracy at the American grassroots: lack of funding to support e-democracy applications and lack of perceived demand for e-democracy. A third important factor may well be the fact that early predictions were, for various reasons, incorrect. Based on these findings, we would expect that e-democracy at the American grassroots will not be substantially different in the foreseeable future than it is now.
2013 Information Polity
doi: 10.3233/IP-130308
The field that tries to answer, through comparative research, the question of what factors explain the existence of e-democracy is, despite several recent contributions, quite undeveloped. Due to strong theoretical foundations and extensive quantitative data, this article adds to this field with an overall ambition of not only explaining variation in supply of and demand for e-democracy but also examining how these two dimensions are related. The case in this article is Sweden and the analyses report several unexpected findings. E-democracy provided by Swedish municipalities is positively related to citizens' level of education and population figures but not to the level of technological development. With an analogous logic, citizens in Sweden are more inclined to use e-democratic functions if they have high levels of income and education and, also have experiences of using computers. However, no significant variation exists among different genders or age groups. When these two perspectives are combined no significant relationship emerges, indicating a discrepancy between supply of and demand for e-democracy. Finally, the fact that this inclination for citizens' involvement in e-democracy is solely determined by micro characteristics points to the importance of theoretical development.
Michener, Greg ; Bersch, Katherine
2013 Information Polity
doi: 10.3233/IP-130299
Recent scholarship on transparency has been voluminous, and transparency policies continue to garner international adherents through global initiatives such as the Open Government Partnership. Yet extant scholarship has failed to address the empirical parameters for what constitutes 'transparency' and what does not. This lacuna gives way to misuses and abuses, jeopardizing the analytical utility of the term and the integrity of so-called 'transparency' policies. This article provides a framework and a vocabulary for identifying and evaluating transparency, which depends on two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions: the visibility of information, and its inferability – the ability to draw accurate conclusions from it. By disaggregating these two conditions for identifying transparency, this article provides a framework for the emerging research agenda on the quality of transparency.
2013 Information Polity
doi: 10.3233/IP-130310
The current financial crisis has reinforced the need for transparency and accountability in the context of open government. As such, governments have promoted transparency initiatives by developing portals where a huge number of datasets is made available. But simply to disclose datasets in a centralized web portal might not address the variety of citizens' and other stakeholders' information seeking scenarios. To characterize such scenarios we considered the role of scientists and researchers as 'information brokers' and analysed transparency assessment literature and the way information was being searched for in those exercises. Based on this analysis, we propose an overall data disclosure strategy which contemplates several different types of information sources (other than just one centralized web portal) and lay out a set of desired characteristics for those sources. We then use the proposed strategy as a framework to assess the Portuguese panorama with respect to information disclosure, and also to practically illustrate the strategy and its components. The assessment exercise showed that the proposed strategy could indeed be used not only as an open government policy guideline, but also as an open government (transparency) assessment framework.
da Silva, Liziane A. ; Magnus, Saulo ; Silveira, Milene S. ; Maciel, Cristiano
2013 Information Polity
doi: 10.3233/IP-130309
The Brazilian government has sought ways to maintain electronic contact with its citizens, making services and information available online. The latter needs to be easy to locate and access and readily understood by all. This requires providing ways to help users during their interaction, i.e. online help systems. In this ambit, this paper firstly verifies how these systems are provided and described in the Brazilian government recommendations for e-government (e-GOV) websites. By means of a survey conducted with users it also verifies their preferences in relation to help systems in general and their interaction with e-GOV websites. From the analyses and surveys conducted, it can be observed that the existing recommendations do not contain enough information to build help systems and a set of guidelines is proposed for their construction. These guidelines were presented to representatives of the target population of such websites: citizens, system developers and professionals from the e-GOV area. The first results show the possible improvement of these websites using the proposed guidelines; the e-GOV designers could use these guidelines with the aim of providing a better citizen-government interaction through technology.
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