dg.o > PROJECT PROFILE: Designing the Digital Government of the 21st Century: A Multidisciplinary Workshop

Designing the Digital Government of the 21st Century: A Multidisciplinary Workshop

Primary Investigator

Email

Institution

Dawes, Sharon S.

sdawes@ctg.albany.edu

Abstract
This workshop, organized by the Center for Technology in Government at the University at Albany/SUNY, was one in a series funded by NSF to promote interaction between researchers and government practitioners around the themes of Digital Government.

The October 1998 event focused particularly on the environment in which government information services are developed. It paid particular attention to the complex multi-layered federal-state-local system in which many organizations play significant and different roles. It also emphasized the importance of interactions among the political, organizational, technological, cultural, and human factors that shape the implementation environment. The 67 workshop participants included computer and information scientists, social scientists, and federal, state, and local government officials. During the two-day event they:

Identified issues, opportunities and themes for cross-disciplinary research to foster the creation, adoption, and diffusion of innovative and effective government IT applications.
Recommended ways to build mutually beneficial links between researchers and the information services and government management communities.
Developed ideas for specific research projects that would contribute to more effective use of advanced technologies in government.

Background papers, presentations, and small group discussions led to the identification of eight urgent research needs, which the Digital Government program should address:

Interoperable systems that are trusted and secure.
Matching research resources to government needs.
Better methods of IT management.
Citizen participation in democratic processes.
Electronic public service models and transactions.
New models for public-private partnerships and other networked organizational forms.
Intuitive decision support tools for public officials.
Archiving and electronic records management.

The group made six recommendations to NSF for further development of the Digital Government program:

1. Support research at every level of government as well as investigations into intergovernmental and public-private interaction.

2. Attend to issues of 'governance' as well as 'government' in the digital age.

3. Encourage both social science and technology research, multidisciplinary projects, and research designs and methods that address service integration and environmental complexity.

4. Seek innovative funding models that build a larger resource base for Digital Government initiatives.

5. Link research and practice in an ongoing exchange of knowledge, needs, and experiences.

6. Create a practitioner advisory group for the program and include practitioners in the review panels.

The final workshop report, Some Assembly Required: Building a Digital Government for the 21st Century, is available from the Center for Technology in Government and downloadable from the Web here.

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