The National Center for Digital Government (NCDG) seeks to build global research capacity, to advance practice, and to strengthen the network of researchers and practitioners engaged in building and using technology in government.
Visit our Research pages for more information on our recent presentations and publications and our People pages for more information about our staff, fellows, and researchers.
Toks Oyedemi, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has received a 2010 Student Research Grant from the NCDG.
The award will help Oyedemi conduct doctoral field research on the pattern and quality of Internet access and the role of technology in social change in South Africa. [more]
Scientists at UMass Amherst, including NCDG Associate Director Charlie Schweik, have launched the Mobile Gulf Observatory (MoGO) iPhone application to help save wildlife in the gulf. Visit savegulfwildlife.org.
R. Erdem Erkul, 2008-2009 NCDG Doctoral Fellow, was elected to the European Commission Informatics Portal Informal Expert Committee on epractice.eu. Epractice.eu is a European Commission egovernment portal for the professional community of eGovernment, eInclusion and eHealth practitioners.
NCDG Fellow, Jeffrey Rothschild, was awarded a 21st Century Leader Award at the UMass Amherst 2010 Commencement. The award is given annually to recognize graduating seniors who have demonstrated exemplary standards of achievement, initiative and social awareness. Congratulations, Jeff!
Jane Fountain, Raquel Galindo, and Jeffrey Rothschild have published a new case study on the European Union's Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market (OHIM). The case study is part of NCDG's research on the management innovations implemented at the OHIM. Click here for more information on this project and to download the case study.
Current Projects Networked Governance: Jane Fountain, NCDG Director, is investigating the structural, behavioral, and political antecedents of sustainable cross-agency relationships in the federal government. She is examining the implications of these relationships for state structure and the policymaking process. See one of her latest working papers and the Building Cross Agency Initiatives page for more information on the topic.
Crowdsourcing and the Environment: Charles Schweik, NCDG Associate Director, and colleagues at UMass Amherst are creating the Mobile Gulf Observatory, an iPhone application that creates "citizen scientists" and uses crowdsourcing technologies to help locate and rescue injuried and oiled wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico.
Collaboration in Free and Open Source Software and Open Content: Charles Schweik, NCDG Associate Director, is currently conducting research around open source programming and open content projects as "commons" and as new paradigms for the production of scientific research. More information about his research is available here.
eRulemaking and Democracy: Stuart Shulman, NCDG Associate Director, has been PI on National Science Foundation-funded research projects focusing on electronic rulemaking, human language technologies, coding across the disciplines, digital citizenship, and service-learning efforts in the United States. For more information on Dr. Shulman's research, see his web site. For more information on his e-rulemaking research click here.
Ethics in Science and Engineering:
Jane Fountain, NCDG Director, and Marilyn Billings, Scholarly Communication & Special Initiatives Librarian at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at UMass Amherst are developing a beta site to test cybertools and cyberinfrastructure for an interdisciplinary, multimedia, and international online beta repository to support ethics in science and engineering. Visit the Ethics in Science and Engineering National Clearinghouse (ESENCe) Beta Site here. Fountain, MJ Peterson, and several other faculty at UMass Amherst are also developing modules and frameworks to introduce international dimensions of ethics into S&E courses. For more information on this project, visit the International Dimensions of Ethics Education in Science and Engineering Project page.
For more NCDG projects, please visit our Research section.
Acknowledgment and Disclaimer - This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers 0131923 and 0630239. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
National Center for Digital Government
