Information Technology, Public Administration, and Citizen Participation: The Impacts of E‐Government on Political and Administrative Processes

• Date: 01 November 2012
• Published date: 01 November 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2012.02671.x
• Author: Hua Xu

Book Reviews 915

Hua Xu is assistant professor in the

Department of Political Science and Public

Administration of Auburn University at

Montgomery, where he teaches for the

graduate programs in public administration

and policy. His research interests include

public budgeting and f‌i nance, e-governance,

public management, and comparative

public administration. His research has

appeared in Public Administration

Review, Public Administration

Quarterly, Journal of Public

Budgeting, Accounting and Financial

Management, Journal of Public

Affairs Education, and several books.

E-mail: hxu@aum.edu

Book Reviews

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 72, Iss. 6, pp. 915–920. © 2012 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.111/j.1540-6210.2012.02671.x.

public organizations, and citizen participation;

whether e-government has fulf‌i lled its promises; to

what extent citizens are satisf‌i ed with online govern-

ment services; whether e-government has increased

public trust and government accountability; and what

are the impediments or constraints to the develop-

ment of e-government.  ese two selected books, with

dif‌f erent focuses and styles, provide some answers to

these questions.

 is essay f‌i rst will review each book, starting with

Michael Milakovich’s Digital Governance and then

moving on to Christopher G. Reddick’s Public

Administration and Information Technology.  en the

books will be compared. As these two books were

published later than G. David Garson’s inf‌l uential

book on e-government, Public Information Technology

and E-Governance: Managing the Virtual State (2006),

there is a good reason to use his book as an important

reference in the present review. For this reason, a brief

summary of the key topics in Garson’s book is of‌f ered

before the reviews.

Based on his extensive literature review, Garson

provides a description of competing theories of

information technology, visions of e-governance at

dif‌f erent time periods ranging from the 1960s to the

2000s, and a brief history of public sector information

technology since World War II.  e book addresses

the policy and political implications of public sector

information technology, discussing issues such as

e-democracy, access to information, and the digital

divide, as well as policies concerning privacy, security,

regulation, and taxation.  e book also explores in

a comprehensive manner managerial issues concern-

ing the application of e-government models in the

public sector, such as IT-enabled par tnering, out-

sourcing, procurement, and contracting; the planning

and implementation of public information systems

(including IT project management); the factors

that contribute to successful implementation; as

well as ways to evaluate public information systems.

Finally, the book discusses the ef‌f ects of information

Michael Milakovich, Digital Governance: New Tech-

nology for Improving Public Service and Participa-

tion (New York: Routledge, 2012). 351 pp. $135.00

(cloth), ISBN: 9780415891431; $44.95 (paper),

ISBN: 9780415891448.

Christopher G. Reddick, Public Administration and

Information Technology (Burlington, MA: Jones

and Bartlett, 2012). 253 pp. $75.95 (paper), ISBN:

97807763784607.

R

esearch on the impact of information and

communications technologies (ICTs) in the

public sector—that is, e-government—has

consistently been an important topic in the f‌i eld of

public administration since the publication of Jane

E. Fountain’s book Building the Virtual State (2001).

Past research focused mainly on such topics as the

adoption of e-government and the degree to which

ICTs are applied in government (Moon 2002; Norris

and Moon 2005). More recent research has focused

on the new generation of ICTs—Web 2.0 technolo-

gies and social networking media—and their ef‌f ects

on democracy and public administration (Manoharan

and Holzer 2012; Kloby and D’Agostino 2012).

By now, no one can ignore the power of new media

technologies in political participation in light of their

contribution to the success of Barack Obama’s presi-

dential campaign.  e current economic recession and

resulting f‌i scal stress certainly underscore the urgency

of applying ICTs in the government sector in ef‌f orts

to achieve additional cost savings in the delivery of

public services.

 e potential benef‌i ts of applying ICTs in the public

sector are manifold: improved transparency, account-

ability, and access and increased trust in government.

In addition, the emergence of new media, or social

networking technologies, may aid in the process of

democratization and may even catalyze the democ-

ratizing process, as seen in some Middle Eastern

countries. One may wonder to what extent the new

generation of ICTs has transformed public service,

Information Technology, Public Administration, and Citizen

Participation:  e Impacts of E-Government on Political

and Administrative Processes

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

Hua Xu

Auburn University at Montgomery