What should be taught to students about e-government?:
A comparison of education versus practice in two sub-national governments
Carmine Scavo, East Carolina University, USA
Andrey Poltavets, Urals Academy of Public Administration, Russia
Paul K. Dezendorf, Winthrop University, USA
The growth of e-government in the U.S. represents a fundamental change in the structure and processes of government itself as well as a change in the role that government performs in society. The leading edge of change in government -- in voting, information to citizens, and transactions -- is stimulated by the advances in technology, changes use of technology by society, and an evolving vision of government in a post-industrial age. In Russia, IT changes in government are slower and IT education in schools for future public administrators are sometimes more advanced than the government's practice. However, as e-government expands in Russia, practice will outpace education.
The IT changes in government will require a more rapid rate of change by educators of future public administrators than in the past. A variance between actual practice and education is not unusual during periods of rapid change in society. During such periods, the study of the new patterns in government leads to a better understanding of what new patterns may be introduced in education.
This study is an attempt to study these new patterns in government so that we can develop a better understanding of what new patterns may be introduced in education. We offer no dramatic discoveries. None of our recommendations are controversial. Instead, this paper illustrates a practical approach that educational institutions might use to examine the changing nature of e-government and develop changes in their own curriculums. We share our own work today in order to demonstrate our own self-examination. We hope by making this presentation to encourage other schools to also examine e-government developments, whether on the local or regional level, in comparison with their own curriculums.
We suggest that the goal of our effort to better educate students is the same trio of goals suggested by the conference them: professionalism, impartiality, and transparency. Students who are better educated in an e-government perspective and tools without a doubt will increase the professionalism of public servants. Will better education lead to increased transparency in government? We believe that many of the students who become grounded in e-government will tend to take a perspective that leads to working to increase transparency in government. We are less certain that teaching more e-government increases impartiality. Instead, we believe the increased professionalism and increased transparency will encourage our graduates toward more impartiality.
The E-government Paradox
Our perception is that we are living in a time of an e-government paradox: government is rapidly changing or will change toward an e-government model but education of public servants is not keeping pace with that change. During the past 150 years, the role of information in society increased as a result of industrialization, the increase of knowledge-based jobs, the need by the state for information, accelerating technology developments, and the information-based demands of a growing consumer society. The growth information technology eventually produced improvements in the production sectors of society; today, application of information technology is producing improvements in the public sector. Over the last few years, changes in government due to information technology resulted in a growing number of innovations.
At the same time, many schools educating future public servants offer some basic improvements such as use of statistical packages, office applications such as word processing and spreadsheets, and advice to future administrators regarding contracting for technology, security of information systems, and so on. However, we find that the changes in education appear to focus on instrumental functions (analogous to the idea of teaching someone how to use a software application) rather than understanding the interaction between the new technology and organizations/society (analogous to the idea of examining the changes in an organization due to the introduction of a LAN and office applications. As a result, we have a paradox between the rate of change in government due to e-government improvements and the rate of change in the institutions that are educating the next generation of public servants.
Current Project
That difference between the advances in e-government in many different countries and the slower evolution of e-government education in programs to educate future public servants led to an interest among the three authors. During the 2005-2006 academic year, we began to talk about our ideas for a trial project. Our efforts to better understand what students should be taught about e-government began with discussions about comparing what is taught regarding e-government in public administration at one school in the United States and one school in Russia. The first author, Dr. Carmine Scavo, is the director of the Master of Public Administration Program at East Carolina University teaches the program's course in information technology. His concern about what should be taught includes concerns both about his course as well as about the curriculum as a whole. The second author, Dr. Andrey Poltavets, is the Vice Rector for Information Technology and Distance Education, is responsible for understanding the use of technology in the school. He also has a professional interest in how technology is used by government because those changes will eventually lead to demands in the school for those technologies. My own interest comes as a new teacher of e-government who wishes to understand what should be taught as well as someone who has an interest in comparative studies among nations.
The authors identified three objectives to our ongoing project. The first is to establish a better knowledge of what students need to know about e-government. What students need to know may be understood in three dimensions. First, students need to understand the current state of e-government in their own jurisdictions. Second, students need to know the current "best practices" of e-government. Third, we believe that students should be helped to understand an overall theoretical framework of e-government that reflects both the ideal goals of public administrators as well as the powerful influences of special interest group.
Methodology
In each location, at East Carolina University and at the Urals Academy of Public Administration, the two researchers, Dr. Scavo and Dr. Poltavets, conducted research regarding the use of e-government technology in the State of North Carolina and in the Sverdlovsk Oblast, respectively. As this was a trial project, both focused on convenience samples as we will describe. Next, the key items of the curriculum were identified by examination of course syllabus and interviews with selected faculty. Then, in both locations, we identified what is not taught and possible responses for each deficiency. The next part of our work is to compare the two studies to highlight educational improvements that might be made. Finally, we intend to identify those deficiencies in e-government education that are most critical with regarding to professionalism, impartiality, and transparency based on a framework of current theory and research. During these work, we developed ideas regarding a number of research topics that might be carried out.
U.S. Research
In North Carolina, we first examined the extent of e-government by examination of technology use by state agencies in health and human services. In this pilot study, we limited examination of e-government to use of web sites that were functioning as of January 1, 2006. We did not extend our examination to include plans for the future and we did not examine technology used in the agency that might be accessed during visits to the agency.
In addition, a sample of public servants was generated by identification of health and human service agencies in North Carolina government. A sample of department heads in thirty agencies was identified. After several attempts, successful telephone or email surveys were conducted with sixteen respondents. In several cases, the original person contacted told the interviewer that somebody else in the agency—more familiar with e-government operations—should be answering the questions. The interviewer then contacted that second person. Additionally, several individuals contacted asked that survey questions be emailed to them and they then responded to those emailed questions.
Questions asked of the agency heads included the following:
1. How can e-government or IT assist with future decision making for your department?
2. Who can e-government aid with revenue grants within your field?
3. What should be done with IT or e-government to help make advancements for your field to the public sector?
4. What skills are necessary to be successful in an e-government related field within your department?
5. What areas are most effective for decisions involving e-government and IT and should receive more financial support? What specific areas in your field are least essential to e-government/IT and should be cut, if revenue cuts are necessary?
6. What specific technologies are necessary for success and an effective delivery of online services and information to the community by your department?
7. What do you feel would aid in making e-government more convenient and user-friendly to the citizens?
8. What specific challenges/limitations are most encountered in your division as government strives to make its services more accessible through technology
9. What program or training related activities have/would enhance employee productivity in this area?
10. Is there any way the University system could help e-government to advance and improve?
For the first question, answers clustered in three areas. First, six respondents cited the improvement in planning and decision-making that IT has added to their departments. Specific mentions included collecting data that indicates programs are meeting measurable goals, sharing of information electronically thus facilitating joint decision-making, increasing the possibility of inter-departmental cooperation through the sharing of electronic data bases, and enabling change. A second set of six responses focused on IT increasing access by the public. Specific mentions here included utilizing a chat function to answer questions from clients rather than relying on the telephone, increasing citizen learning of benefits and other types of information the department offers, aiding in the legitimacy of the department (since IT use is an expectation in state agencies), and accessibility to the handicapped, and general increases in prompt, courteous, and professional service. The area was cited by only a single respondent who discussed the limitations that IT offered, especially in procurement.
For the second question, virtually all respondents stressed the electronic grant application process and the advantages this process had over the older paper process. This included mentions of not only the state applying for grants from the federal government and but also local governments and non-profit agencies applying for grants from the state. Respondents cited the speed with which grant applications could be processed electronically and the increase in the number and quality of grant applications as a result of the electronic submission process (some noting that the increase in the number of grant applications had increased their workload!)
There was again great consensus on answers to the third question. Many respondents discussed the need to make departmental websites more accessible and user-friendly to clients. Although some cited the ‘tremendous strides’ the state had made in the use of websites and the concomitant increase in accessibility that this use had caused, they also discussed the need to go farther. A second set of respondents cited the need to increase the visibility of state government websites. One wrote in an email response, “I often run across people who could use our services and who know nothing at all about the services offered by DHHS (Department of Health and Human Services. Recently the Division of Deaf and Hard of Hearing had been running radio ads promoting their services and it appears to have been successful in alerting the public sector to those services.” Included in these mentions of increased visibility were the need to market programs better and to make service delivery more equitable to traditionally underserved sectors of the state—rural populations, minorities, the poor, and handicapped.
Respondents stressed the need for IT skills for two different sets of workers (Question 4). First, for general employees in their departments, work processing, internet skills, database management, and spreadsheet manipulation were all deemed important. For IT employees, the list became more extensive with respondents mentioning both specific software programs—the list is too numerous to mention—but also business training as well as the technical training that might be thought of as a basic requirement.
When respondents were asked about funding many stressed that their departments were good stewards of public money. One mentioned, “We have been told that our office is the most effective [in the use of money] in all of state government [but] no good bureaucrat will ever tell anyone that they do not need more resources in order to improve and expand into other areas. . . . And no good bureaucrat will ever say that their office can withstand a revenue cut.” This two-edged sword was evident in most respondents’ answers to these questions—we are spending money effectively, we can use more, and we could not withstand a budget cut. In fact, in answering this question virtually all respondents provided lists of functions that could not withstand a budget cut rather than volunteering activities that could be cut. One summed this up by stating, “There cannot be cuts in this area. We need all the revenue we can get.”
Answers to Question 6 depended almost entirely on the specific individual answering the question. Different agencies require different technologies. For example, the Evaluation and Systems Coordination section reported that they needed people who knew JAWS (screen display to voice or Braille translation), and ZoomText (text enlarger for those with limited vision), software that was not mentioned elsewhere. Other agency heads cited needs for hardware, particularly high speed connections, reliable servers, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) hardware.
Answers to Question 7 mirrored some answers above. Respondents tended to cite communication and marketing as aiding in making e-government more convenient and user-friendly. Several discussed the need for Public Service Announcements (PSAs) on radio and television to bring e-government services to the attention of the public. One respondent said in response to this question, “You just stated the answer in your question. User-friendly is the key to anyone even wanting to use e-government. When citizens are seeking information they don’t need to be led to ten different directions to receive the information. We need to use the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) method.”