Management.

• Author: Ho, Alfred Tat-Kei
• Position: From the Library - Excerpt from Public Administration Review, local government and the Internet - Brief Article - Excerpt

"Reinventing Local Government and the E-Government Initiative"

Alfred Tat-Kei Ho

Public Administration Review, July/August 2002, pp. 434-441.

For better or for worse, governments have long been characterized by the Weberian model of organization, which focuses on internal and managerial concerns and emphasizes departmentalization, specialization, standardization, and routinization of the production process. The "reinventing government" movement that started in the late 1980s has been heralded as a better alternative to the traditional model of government organization--one that would turn government inside--out, so to speak. Transaction costs, however, have limited the adoption of such reforms to mostly isolated cases around the country. The proliferation of the Internet in recent years has refocused attention on customer-focused government by reducing the costs of communicating with citizens and enhancing the flexibility of public service delivery. Indeed, one need only look at local government Web sites to see evidence of this paradigm shift. The author's content analysis of the Web...