Fountain speaks at World Bank workshop

Jane E. Fountain, professor of Political Science and Public Policy, gave an invited lecture at the World Bank workshop on “Small States: Growth Challenges and Development Solutions” on Dec. 7 in Washington D.C.

The workshop examined the integration of small states in increasingly globalized economic systems. Topics include economic growth, information and communication technologies, migration and brain drain, regulation of public utilities in small states, banking supervision and dissemination.

Fountain’s lecture, titled “E-Government and Development: Key Challenges” discussed the potential for information and communication technologies to not only modernize governments in small states, but to transform and lead institutional changes in those governments.

According to Fountain, who directs the National Center for Digital Government, “Information technologies offer important capacity building opportunities to small states and offer possibilities for integration into globalized systems that have not been possible previously. Yet, state actors must understand the political and organizational influences that shape the implementation and use of electronic government and related information technologies in order to realize the potential of the Internet and web.”

More information about the World Bank’s work with small states is available online at www.worldbank.org/smallstates.

The National Center for Digital Government works to build global research capacity, to advance practice, and to strengthen the network of researchers and practitioners engaged in building and using technology and government. It aims to apply and extend the social sciences for research at the intersection of governance, institutions and information technologies.

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National Center for Digital Government

December 8, 2006.

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