WelcomeThe 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 NCDG, the Korean National Information Society Agency (NIA), the Center for Advanced Technology Strategy, and the International Academy of CIO are hosting the 2nd Korea-U.S. ICT Policy Forum at the World Bank in Washington DC on November 5, 2009. Visit the forum's website for more information.

Jane Fountain, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the National Center for Digital Government and Marilyn Billings, Scholarly Communication & Special Initiatives Librarian at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at UMass Amherst, have been awarded a $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Office of Integrative Research to beta test cybertools and cyberinfrastructure for an interdisciplinary, multimedia, and international online beta repository to support ethics in science and engineering. See a complete press release here. Visit the National Digital Library for Ethics in Science and Engineering's Beta Site here.

For reflections on the YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle Conference, watch this YouTube clip. The complete proceedings are available here and individual papers may be downloaded through ScholarWorks.

NCDG Director Jane Fountain discusses the advantages and possible drawbacks of using technology to promote transparency in government operations. Read more here.

For coverage of the YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle Conference visit Masslive.com (story 1; story 2) and WWLP TV. You can also watch the conference live (or archived) at Panopto.com (use username "guest" and password "youtube")

Stuart Shulman, Associate Director of NCDG, comments in a story about the use of IT in politics.

Seok-Jin Eom, former NCDG Fellow, has joined the faculty at Soon Chun Hyang University in Asan, South Korea. Congratulations, Seok-Jin!

NCDG is pleased to welcome R. Erdem Erkul to the Center as a Doctoral Research Fellow. Erdem is a PhD candidate at Ankara University in Turkey and a researcher at Hacettepe University. More information about his research interests is available here.

MASSPIRG has released a new report highlighting the benefits and need for an open and transparent state budget. The report, Transparency.gov 2.0, Using the Internet for budget transparency to increase accountability, efficiency and taxpayer confidence, is available here.

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.

For more NCDG projects, please visit our Research section.

Recent Publications

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.