NATIONAL CENTER FOR DIGITAL GOVERNMENT
 Integrating Information and Institutions

Project Description

The central goal of the workshop was advancement of deeper, broader research capacity in the domain of digital government. The focus was on the relationship between information technologies and government organizations, institutions, and networks, that is, the structure, processes and operations of government. The workshop was meant to draw from the social and applied science disciplines and fields that focus on organizations, institutions, networks, public management and administration. To this end, workshop participants included experts on organizations, institutions, and networks, public management and administration, information sciences, and government.Discussions focused on the following types of questions:

• What are the most important impacts of information technologies on the structure and processes of government organizations? Which impacts are already discernible? Which are likely to emerge during the next decade?
  
• Reversing the causal arrow, how are public managers and policymakers using information technologies to craft new organizational forms or to make important modifications to present forms? What decision making and problem-solving processes are emerging as the principal means of mutual adjustment?
  
• What is the impact of increasing use of information-based, networked forms of organization on the institutional structures -- for example, oversight, budgeting, accountability systems -- that regulate governance?
  
• What perspectives, theories, conceptual frameworks, and methods seem particularly useful for the study of the developmental processes and organization of digital government?
  
• What forms and processes of collaboration between social, policy, and information scientists might further a research agenda for digital government? How might an organization like the National Science Foundation Digital Government Program provide incentives for the advancement of high-quality multidisciplinary research?

The immediate product of the workshop will be a report outlining a research agenda and long-term vision for digital government research that participants will aid in crafting. Although important, topics such as the digital divide, service delivery, and digital democracy lie outside the scope of the workshop. The results of discussions included promising research topics, theoretical and conceptual perspectives and methodologies, central studies and databases, and a stronger connection between present scholarly and applied research and examination of emergent phenomena in the domain of digital government.We also hope to advance knowledge by producing and publishing an edited volume, tentatively titled Digital Government: Structure, Process, and Action. Participants were invited to forward white papers and work in progress that might be suitable for such a volume. Such papers on this project website formed a basis for discussion at the workshop, and, ultimately, will be available in the published volume.