E-Government and Websites

A Public Solutions Handbook

Aroon Manoharan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317516309
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book presents a citizen-centric perspective of the dual components of e-government and e-governance. E-government refers to the practice of online public reporting by government to citizens, and to service delivery via the Internet. E-governance represents the initiatives for citizens to participate and provide their opinion on government websites. This volume in the Public Solutions Handbook Series focuses on various e-government initiatives from the United States and abroad, and will help guide public service practitioners in their transformation to e-government. The book provides important recommendations and suggestions oriented towards practitioners, and makes a significant contribution to e-government by showcasing successful models and highlighting the lessons learned in the implementation processes. Chapter coverage includes: * Online fiscal transparency * Performance reporting * Improving citizen participation * Privacy issues in e-governance * Internet voting * E-government at the local level

Part I

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E-Government and Public Reporting and Public Relations

1

E-Government and Public Relations

It’s the Message, Not the Medium

Mordecai Lee

Right now, somewhere, there’s a meeting going on at a government agency. Senior managers are pondering how to be au courant, to demonstrate that the agency is at the cutting edge of e-gov technology. After all, gotta keep up with the Joneses! And some of the newest and youngest employees are using a couple of platforms that none of the grown-ups have ever heard of, let alone understand what they do and what their attraction is to users. Adding insult to injury, a few agencies with similar missions in other regions of the country or other countries are already doing whatever the latest IT or techie fad is. Someone chirps up at the meeting and says, “Hey, let’s do all those new things!” Everybody else nods sagaciously, indicating yes, we should show that we are as up-to-date and with-it technologically as the next agency. Committees are formed, platforms are established, and—presto—the agency can now say it, too, is at the cutting edge of e-government.

The purpose of the chapter is to serve as the “Hey, wait a minute” interruption, with the designated role as the agency’s annoying spoilsport and party pooper. This focuses on the need to put the horse before the cart. Specifically, there are two killer questions to raise at the meeting to deflate the balloon of doing the Next Big Thing simply because it’s there:

• What, specifically, do you want to accomplish?

• Why does the agency need to do this?

Only after clarifying the answers to these questions should the management meeting proceed to the methods of doing it. E-gov, websites, platforms, and social media decisions should come only after purposes and goals are clearly determined and an informed judgment is made that the new effort is worthwhile because it clearly contributes to a basic and specific agency mission. After all, e-gov technology is merely a means to a goal, not a goal in and of itself.

Just as important, the specifics of e-gov are changing at a rapid, though incremental, pace (Norris and Reddick 2013). A decade ago, 4G, tablets, pads, smartphones, Twitter, and Foursquare did not exist. A decade from now, they will likely be so passé that they will be considered primitive, anachronistic, and quaint; superseded by better, faster, and smarter online technology and devices. With just about everything networked online, government managers are in a continually changing “new social operating system” (Shoop 2012). In 2014, a Midwestern public university was on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Flickr, YouTube, Pinterest, and Pandora (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 2014). In just a few years, this list will be old-fashioned. Given this reality, the intent here is to focus on what you’re trying to accomplish, not on using any particular platform, mobile device, or media to get there. In this case, the destination is the only thing that counts, not the journey.

The above two questions about doing e-gov also relate to the difference between business administration and public administration. Some people assert that these two management activities are essentially the same, merely occurring in different sectorial settings. Countering them, Wallace Sayre quipped that public and business administration are “fundamentally alike in all unimportant respects” (Allison 1980, 27). The constraints, context, and democratic environment truly impinge on government management so significantly that the skills of a successful businessperson would not automatically transfer to the public sector. So, just because something is new in IT or digital communication that has been successful in business does not guarantee that it’s the same for government. For example, the Obama White House sought advice from top business executives on the use of new technologies, “but the private sector’s entrepreneurial zeal may not translate so easily to federal agencies” (Kang 2010). Government is different.

It is also important to note one of the impacts of the e-gov transformation now under way. Preceding it, there had been a relatively stable typology of the silos of marketing, customer service, transparency, accountability, citizen participation, performance reporting, public relations, co-production, and branding. However, new technologies, means of communication, and platforms have largely blurred those separate categories. They are no longer mutually exclusive, one-goal-one-activity kinds of undertakings. Rather, in a public administration equivalent of multitasking, different goals and roles are converging and often accomplished through the same effort. The traditional silos of line and staff functions in government are gradually coalescing, overlapping, and becoming interwoven. For example, marketing and e-customer service are increasingly the same. Ditto for citizen participation and co-production. These discrete subject areas increasingly share and use the same e-gov platforms and technologies to accomplish their (somewhat) distinct goals. But, the goals of those different activities continue to be relevant and important. In that sense, all the following chapters, while differentiated by varying starting points and topics, need to be seen as pieces of a whole. Different areas of expertise and literatures are largely ending up in the same zone, namely that e-gov and websites are transforming public management. Everything relates to everything else.

The increasingly unified field of e-gov applies to this chapter as well. While using the prism of public relations (PR), note the wide scope that e-gov PR encompasses in the totality of the organization’s external communications. In general, the emergence of Web-based and cloud-based government has been to change qualitatively the orientation of public-sector bureaucracies. According to Margetts (2012, 456), the revolutionary effect of e-gov is to make government agencies “become externally facing.” Hence, by its inherent nature, e-gov orients government agencies outward toward external communication and interaction with the public.

In that context, PR is closely related to such activities as marketing, accountability, and customer service. The key is that the purposes of government PR are inherent to public administration and reflect many silos and functions. No matter how much e-gov transforms the public sector, these PR purposes are valuable and important to good government.

OVERVIEW: WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH?

Back to the two questions of the preceding section: What, specifically, do you want to accomplish, and why does the agency even need to do this? This reflects a basic approach to governmental external communication in general. In the context of this book, you will see that public relations as an aspect of e-gov is not a collection of media tricks, hot technologies and platforms, and the latest personal devices. Rather, it is a purpose-oriented management activity.

First, public relations is a venue for government agencies to engage in the public accountability that they are obligated to in a democracy. Given that an informed public is the sine qua non of democracy, public administration imposes on civil servants the duty to keep the citizenry informed of the general record and stewardship of the agency. In the amorphous way that democracy works, this public reporting activity contributes to the processes of modern democracy. These are required for all government agencies. Second, public relations helps a government agency accomplish its tangible mission by using external communications to implement the agency’s raison d’être. In that respect, public relations is a pragmatic tool for doing public administration. There is a third purpose that public relations serves, but one that is politically very sensitive. An effective public relations program can help an agency obtain the support of various public constituencies. In turn, that support can influence the decision making by elected officials about the future of the agency.

The combination of government PR with the new tools of e-gov implements the definition of communication as a two-way and circular activity. The most influential PR theoretician of modern times, James Grunig (1997), has posited that sophisticated and effective government PR (as well as for the business and nongovernmental organization sectors) is two-way symmetrical communication. The tools of e-gov PR are not merely a way for governments to communicate outwardly with its citizens, but, just as importantly, they are a way for people to connect with their governors. For example, citizens are now much less likely to write a member of Congress or call city hall. Now, citizens have quicker and more convenient ways to initiate communication with government. These trends affect government management as much as the elected side of the public sector. An agency’s commitment to e-gov must include facilitating two-way communication, such as the receipt of communication from the public and the proper handling and responsiveness to those incoming messages.

Here is a model of best practices for twenty-first-century government public relations (Lee 2012b). It is based on purposes; that is, what specifically is the public administrator trying to accomplish? Building on the previous three underlying reasons for external communication (democratic, pragmatic, and political), the model identifies eight potential purposes for government PR:

I. Mandatory activities: Democratic purposes of e-gov PR

1. Media relations

2. Public reporting

3a. Responsiveness to the public: As citizens

II. Optional activities: Pragmatic purposes of e-gov PR relating to program implementation

3b. Responsiveness to the public: As customers and clients (4–7. Public outreach)

4. Increasing the utilization of services and products

5. Public service and public education campaigns

6. Seeking voluntary compliance with laws and regulations

7. The public as the eyes and ears of an agency

III. Dangerous, but powerful activities: Political purposes of e-gov PR

8. Increasing public support

In this model, there are eight discernible purposes for PR, e-gov or otherwise. For each of these purposes, there is a clear intention underlying what the communication effort is aimed at accomplishing. The first grouping (I) details what a government manager must do, regardless of the mission of the agency. In a democratic form of government, every agency must engage in external communication to be responsive to the news media; to report to the public and other oversight institutions on its record of accomplishment and performance; and to be responsive to the public-at-large as citizens, who are ultimately the sovereign in a de...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• The Public Solutions Handbook Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Editor's Introduction, Marc Holzer
• Introduction, Aroon Manoharan
• Part I E-Government and Public Reporting and Public Relations
• Part II E-Governance and Citizen Participation
• Part III Applications
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index