Reviews collection of essays on e-government and its effects on participatory democracy. Also reviews U.S. Office of Management and Budget website on e-government

Keele, Benjamin J.

Government Information Quarterly

ScholarWorks  IU Indianapolis

Review of Citizens and E-Government: Evaluating Policy and Management

William &amp; Mary Law School Scholarship Repository

Book Review of Citizens and E-Government: Evaluating Policy and Management

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College of William & Mary Law SchoolWilliam & Mary Law School Scholarship RepositoryLibrary Staff Publications The Wolf Law Library2012Book Review of Citizens and E-Government:Evaluating Policy and ManagementBenjamin J. Keelebenjamin.j.keele@gmail.comCopyright c 2012 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository.http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/libpubsRepository CitationKeele, Benjamin J., "Book Review of Citizens and E-Government: Evaluating Policy and Management" (2012). Library StaffPublications. Paper 76.http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/libpubs/76Book ReviewsCitizens and E-Government: Evaluating Policy and Management.Christopher Reddick, Ed., Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2010. 552 pp. $180(hardcover), ISBN 1-61520-931-X.Ofﬁce of E-Government and Information Technology. Adminis-tered by the U.S. Ofﬁce of Management and Budget. New ExecutiveOfﬁce Building, Washington DC 20503. Retrieved November 12,2011, from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/e-gov/.Given the plethora of government websites, email addresses, andonline services, one may conclude that information communicationstechnologies have fundamentally reformed the relationships be-tween governments and their citizens. Citizens and E-Government,an edited collection of chapters, seeks to better understand how dig-ital technologies have changed how governments operate. Moreprovocatively, though, it also asks why e-Government has notgone even farther to make modern governments more transparentand participatory.The book contains twenty-four chapters that are categorizedinto three sections: theoretical and conceptual issues, issues andchallenges, and case studies. While the section divisions are useful,the lines between the sections are a somewhat vague. The chaptersin the theoretical section discuss basic questions such as whatpurposes should e-Government serve, how the effectiveness of e-Government should be measured, and whether e-Government ini-tiatives actually reduce government expenditures. Some chapters,such as a proposed framework for measuring citizen satisfactionwith e-Government and a review of social networking tools usedby governments, are primarily theoretical. Others, however, aremostly empirical, such as a survey of Taiwanese citizens and astudy of U.S. local government websites. By the end of this section,the reader is left with the impression that while e-Government isvaluable to citizens and affects their perception of their govern-ments, e-Government programs thus far tend to treat citizens asconsumers of public services, as opposed to active participants inthe political system.The issues and challenges section discusses why e-Governmenthas not drawn citizens into more active dialog with governments.These chapters indicate that human and social issues, not technical is-sues, are preventing e-Government from reaching its full potential.Chapters on both developing and wealthier countries ﬁnd that gov-ernments must become more transparent to their citizens to buildtrust. E-Government service channels do not shift demand frommore traditional service channels, such as mail or phone, but ratherlead to increased citizen use of government services. E-Governmentmay actually cost governments money.The case studies section contains reviews of e-Government projectsin several different countries, including online tax ﬁling in Malaysia,electronic community policing in India, and digital complaints againstlocal ofﬁcials in China. While these projects do not completely over-come the obstacles identiﬁed in the issues and challenges section,they do provide interesting examples of government expandingtheir online services. With the case studies and chapters in earliersections on social networking tools and social tagging, the book con-tains a wealth of ideas for researchers looking for e-Governmentinnovations.The book chapters present perspectives from a variety of countriesand utilize many different research methodologies. Content analysesof government websites, surveys of e-Government users, and inter-views with government ofﬁcials give the reader an understanding ofmultiple aspects of e-Government and its effect on citizens. The chap-ters are written by many different contributors, but several themesappear consistently. E-Government has been beneﬁcial to citizensby offering easier access to information and greater ﬂexibility inreceiving government services. However, a focus on citizens as con-sumers rather than democratic agents, insufﬁcient transparency toearn citizens' trust, and confusion as to what citizens want from e-government have hampered the reforming effects of communicationtechnologies. Finally, further research is needed to address thesequestions and help governments devise ways to encourage citizenengagement.The book is well-organized and includes copious references tohelp researchers ﬁnd further relevant literature. A minor critique isthat while the copyright page indicates that all content is original,notes at the end of ﬁve chapters indicate that they were ﬁrst pub-lished in the International Journal of Electronic Government Research,a journal published by IGI Global. The nineteen original chaptersalone make this book a valuable resource for research libraries thatcollect in political science and communications studies. Researchersfocusing on electronic government or government reform more gen-erally will be especially interested.The themes of the book highlight the U.S. federal government'scurrent e-Government efforts, led by the Ofﬁce of Management andBudget's (OMB) Ofﬁce of E-Government & Information Technology,which has spearheaded President Obama's government transparencyand e-Government initiatives; its e-Government website containslinks to major policy documents key initiatives. Consistent with thebook's ﬁndings, most of the projects seek to facilitate citizens' digitalconsumption of government information instead of increasing citizenparticipation. Examples of the participatory projects include OpenGovernment Dialogs, a tool by which agency ofﬁcials can engage inonline discussions with citizens, Regulations.gov, a site throughwhich citizens can submit comments on proposed regulations, andthe White House's We the People petitions site, which allows citizensto ﬁle and vote for petitions.A disconnect is evident between the government's and some citi-zens' expectations of online engagement. The White House has com-mitted to respond to petitions that garner a certain number ofsignatures, but thus far the responses have not resulted in a signiﬁ-cant policy shift. Many of the petitions request actions beyond the ex-ecutive branch's power (“crack down on puppy mills” or dissolvingthe Electoral College) or are politically unlikely (repeal the USA PA-TRIOT Act or abolish the Transportation Security Administration).The federal government has also sought to use digital technologiesto harness volunteer resources. The National Archives and RecordsAdministration invites online visitors to add metadata to newly digi-tized documents, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Ofﬁce encour-ages citizens to help look for prior art that would limit proposedpatents. These projects contribute to the public good and increase cit-izen awareness of the government's work, but do not increase citizenengagement in a participatory democracy.Benjamin J. KeeleWilliam & Mary Law School, PO Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23187, USAE-mail address: bjkeele@wm.edudoi:10.1016/j.giq.2011.11.002307Book Reviews

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Review of Citizens and E-Government: Evaluating Policy and Management

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