American Library Association's E-governement Toolkit

Are you looking for tips and best practices on how to make your government websites more functional? Check out the American Library Association (ALA) E-government online toolkit. The toolkit contains ten sections of E-Government best practices, tips, guidelines and checklists.

One interesting section, Civic Participation & E-Government, presents two models electronic citizen participation in government. The first is a structure in which government offers citizens the opportunity to access current, public documents and proposed policies so they can evaluate and discuss them. The other model stresses government consulting citizens for opinions on how to improve current policies and administrative procedures. Both models encourage citizen participation, not merely offering information. Suggestions offered for implementation of either model include:

• Connect citizens to interactive government websites that solicit citizen feedback and participation in policy making, design and innovation.
• Educate citizens about their civic role and provide opportunities for them to create their own mediated messages and interact with government agencies and officials using tools that fit individual or specific community needs.
• Provide citizens the ability to create a “My E-Government” page so they can personalize their interaction with government agencies and officials.
• Initiate “online town halls” for E-democracy which include agenda setting and discussion of public issues.

Another section of ALA's toolkit, Building E-Government Partnerships, stresses municipal governments networking with corporate and nonprofit businesses, educational institutions, and social services to offer centralized resources and forums to citizens. Roles these partners can play include electronic infrastructure improvement, training, citizen advocacy, assistance, translation, and assessment. Such partnerships can be sustained over the long-haul to ensure greater citizen exposure to e-government services. There is much more the ALA e-government toolkit has to offer. As is the case with all toolkits, the real value only comes if utilized, so check it out!

E-Gov Workshop

Many major universities offer workshops and seminars that broach contemporary issues in e-government by offering reviews of current research and presentations of case studies of successful implementation of e-government solutions. Here are PublicStuff, we think that Academic institutions' on going contribution to E-government is often overlooked and under utilized so we'd like to get the word out about some upcoming events.

On May 12, 2011, the Department of Public Administration in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago will be hosting the E-Government Workshop: Achieving IT Efficiencies Through Collaboration at the Hilton Lisle/Naperville in Lisle, Illinois.

According to the conference homepage, "This year's workshop will highlight ways that government agencies can achieve economies in the use of information technology through collaboration - collaboration with the private sector through cloud computing, and collaboration between levels of government through shared services arrangements."

Among the presenters will be Steven Clift - online strategist and founder of e-Democracy.org and Sam Ferguson – Schaumburg, Illinoi's first Director of Information of Technology. Schaumburg received the honor of begin chosen six years as one the top ten digital municipalities in the U.S. by the Center for Digital Government.

This workshop can fulfill the requirements for the ICMA Voluntary Credentialing Program and is an excellent foundation for the UIC e-Government online certificate program, and should be approved by any local government for in service and professional training credits.

The history section of the conference website contains files of presentations from the past two years. The 2009 theme was Beyond the Web Page and 2010 was Technology Solutions in a Time of Crisis. The 2010 plenary sessions are all available in streaming video. One particular 2010 presentation, Changing How Cities Work, is very informative and challenging with the City Manager of Dubuque, Iowa and the Sustainable Community Director of that city presenting.

Further information can also be found on the UIC E-Government Facebook page. The cost of the workshop is $109 which includes breakfast, lunch and workshop materials-- a steal, if you ask us!

New White House App!

Do you have the White House app for your phone?, asks the April 19, 2011 post from the White House Blog. The White House realized some time ago that the use of mobile device applications was on a meteoric rise and that the technology could enable allowed citizens to receive alerts, check out behind-the-scenes photos and videos, and read the latest news from the blog or the Briefing Room. Until this week, the White House app had only been available for the iphone. It is now available to Androids.

The White House has recognized what Federal Computer Week (FCW) sees as a growing trend throughout the federal government. In an April 8, 2011 article, Gov 2.0 on the go: Agencies hit it big with mobile apps, FCW quoted Gwynne Kostin, director of mobile applications at the US General Services Administration's Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, “In some ways, we have probably reached the tipping point for mobile,” said. “It will be exciting to watch.” Federal agencies currently offer more than thirty mobile apps on their USA.gov site, and they are continuing to role out more of these useful resources.

More and more Americans are accessing the Internet through their smart phones and other mobile devices. According to a recent Yahoo study 39 percent of USA residents were in the mobile information loop in 2010 and that is expected to grow to 59 percent by 2014. Financial analysts at Morgan Stanly predict that by 2014 more people will access the Internet on mobile devices than on desktop PCs.

A further step demonstrating the importance the federal government is placing on mobile apps is the launch by The Knight Foundation and the FCC of an Apps for Community competition to develop software applications that deliver personalized, actionable information to people that are least likely to be online. The FCC is offering $100,000 in prizes.

The reason for the advance of mobile app offerings is obvious, citizens want information when and where they need it, and that is more often then not somewhere other than at their desks in front of computers.

Municipal and local governments have begun to use the Internet for to offer services and participation to their citizens. The bulk of these offerings are wedded to computers. Continuing to offer only 'at your desk' resources will situate local governments on the wrong side of the growing curve of mobile use. Citizens now have an increasing expectation not only to access mobile apps for private companies but also for communicating with their local government.

Does Your Government Offer Both E-Government Services and Participation?

Public sector implementation of online technology remains far from reaching its full potential. E-government has been a major strategy in large American cities for some time. Municipal websites contain city ordinances and regulations, notices of upcoming public meetings, job openings, and downloadable permit forms. Some government websites have gone as far as facilitating online filings for permits and electronic requests for further information. These are all forms of e-government, focusing on government provision of web-based services to its citizens.

Some governments have begun to offer e-governance, which allows citizens to interact among themselves and with officials through multiple, dynamic channels such as:

· Comments or feedback forms

· Online discussion of policies through bulletin boards, forums or chat sessions

· Scheduled e-meetings

· Online surveys

· Online voting and decision making.

In a recent academic paper, “A study of e-government and e-governance: an empirical examination of municipal websites” published on March 3, 2011 in the Public Administration Quarterly the authors report on the progress the 20 largest American cities have made in offering online services and online interaction to their citizens. The study found that these large cities are providing more components of e-government than e-governance. They are doing a good job of making information available and allowing citizens to transact business via the web. Yet, they have been much slower and less effective at developing interactive web-based applications that give citizen opportunities to provide feedback on policies or debate proposed governmental actions. The review of literature in the article that points out that e-governance technology promotes “egalitarian purposes of increasing equity and democratic discourse.” It breaks down cultural and economic barriers between government officials and citizens, giving them the feeling of being true participants in government, not merely customers. The authors point to a federal website Regulations.gov as an example of quality e-governance.

The report found that in the combination of both e-government and e-governance New York significantly outperformed the other cities scoring 53.99 out of a possible 100. Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Dallas followed. Detroit and Baltimore scored lowest. While the report deals with America's largest cities, cities of all sizes would do well to further their e-government offerings and initiate meaningful e-governance technologies via the web and mobile devices. We'd love to hear your thoughts on how these public sector communication goals can be incorporated into the PublicStuff platform. Please email us at ps@publicstuff.org

Government Implementation of Social Media: Transparency and First Amendment Rights

Blogs, Facebook updates, and other interactive social media are fantastic aids to local government transparency. In the current economic environment local governments are increasingly aware that they benefit from showing their citizens that they are using their resources well. Social media allows local governments to showcase progress on endeavors from the construction of facilities to detailing how federal stimulus dollars are being used.

While local governments realize how social media can benefit them, they must also negotiate some of the pitfalls in implementation of such public forums. The Institute for Local Government has posted an informative paper Social Media and Public Agencies:Legal Issues to Be Aware of.

The paper discusses several legal issues that constituents might raise, chief among them is the first ammendment issue. If a local govenment chooses to allow comments on its blogs, comments or likes on its Facebook page, or other imput on its interactive web presence, the paper points out that local govenments "can control what its part of the conversation says, there are limited options for managing what others might say.” If the agency allows its constituents to leave feedback on the website, it cannot exclude (or delete) comments that are negative toward the agency. Facebook and some blog software allow adminsitrators to filter out comments that use profanity. One way to do deal with public input that the agency does not desire to appear on their site is to draw up and publish a social media policy deliniating what comments are not acceptable. However, public forums operated by local goverments cannot delete or prohibit comments simply becuase they express views different from or critical of the agency, its employees or officicls.

Social media offers so many opportunities for local goverments to inform and interact with their constituents that the pitfalls should not cause them to shy away from this new technology, but they would do well to approach it with a broad knowledge of what legal issues they may encounter in its implementation.

The City of Bradenton, FL Launches New Constituent Services Platform

The City of Bradenton, FL has selected PublicStuff to power their new Constituent Communication System. The system enables residents to submit requests and issues directly to City officials through web and mobile phone tools.

Check out the details at: http://pro.publicstuff.com/bradentonfl.html

The City of Riverton, UT Launches New Constituent Services Platform

The City of Riverton, UT has selected PublicStuff to power the new service request system. The system enables residents to submit requests and issues directly to City officials through web and mobile phone tools.

To check out the full press release, please visit:
http://pro.publicstuff.com/rivertonutpr.html