Welcome

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.

News The National Center for Digital Government (NCDG) co-sponsored the 2nd Korea-U.S. Information and Communication Technology-Based Policy Forum at the World Bank on November 5, 2009. [more] Jane Fountain has been appointed for a second year to the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Government. The information and recommendations developed in the Councils provide the central ideas and proposals presented at the WEF’s annual meeting of world leaders in Davos, Switzerland. [ more] Researchers in the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) at UMass Amherst and the University of Pittsburgh have launched a free, Web-based beta version of the Public Comment Analysis Toolkit (PCAT) to enable government officials to listen to and engage with the American public about regulations that impact their lives and businesses. [ more] Jane Fountain has been appointed to the World Economic Forum's Council on the Future of Government for a second year. The Future of Governments Council examines globally the public sector’s response to technological change, particularly how technological innovation impacts transparency, accountability, and civil society. Fountain is one of fourteen expertise invited to serve on this council. Stuart Shulman, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Director of the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) at UMass Amherst, and Associate Director of NCDG, has been appointed to the Committee to Investigate the Relationship between Threatening Communications and Actual Behavior within the Intelligence Division of the U.S. Secret Service. For more information click here. NCDG Director, Jane Fountain, is featured in a cover story in Informatics magazine (Turkey) about the future of e-government. To read the complete Turkish version, click here. An English version of the article is available through www.digital-government.net, which is edited by R. Erdem Erkul, 2008-2009 Fellow. Congratulations to Steven Jackson, 2004-2005 NCDG Fellow and current Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, on his recent CAREER Award, "Governing Collaborative Science: Cyberinfrastructure, Scale, and Governance in the Networked Ecological Sciences." Raquel Galindo Dorado, NCDG Fellow, and Jane Fountain are partnering to explore management innovations at the Office of Harmonization in the Internal Market in Spain. Together, they will produce a case study documenting OHIM's e-business strategies, which will be available for use in graduate classrooms in late 2009.

NCDG Welcomes Hacettepe Univ., Turkey's Secretary General Turhan Mentes NCDG was pleased to host Hacettepe University's secretary General, Turhan Mentes September 24, 2009. Dr. Mentes' visit kicked off the Fall 2009 semester of NCDG events. Visit our calendar for more information about upcoming events and our events page for additional photos.. Recent Publications by NCDG Affiliates Matthew Hindman. 2008. The Myth of Digital Democracy. Princeton University Press.   Enrico Ferro, Yogesh K. Dwivedi, J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, & Michael D. Williams, Eds. 2009. Handbook of Research on Overcoming Digital Divides: Constructing an Equitable and Competitive Information Society. IGI Global. Lazer, D. et al. 2009. Computational Social Science. Science, 323(5915), 721-723.   Hamel, M.P. & Schweik, C. 2009. Open Source Collaboration: Two Cases in the US Public Sector. First Monday, 14(1). Online. Luna Reyes, L. and Gil-Garcia, J. R. 2008. E-Government and Inter-Organizational Collaboration in Mexico: Survey Results [PDF]. NCDG Working Paper #08-003. Schellong, A. 2008. Citizen Relationship Management - A Study of CRM in Government. Frankfurt: Peter Lang Publishing.

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.

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.

Scholarly Communication Initiatives:
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.

For more NCDG projects, please visit our Research section.