| Review of: | Public information technology and e-governance: Managing the virtual state by G. David Garson Implementing and managing e-government: An international text by Richard Heeks |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Andrew Chadwick |
| Reviewed in: | Public Administration |
| Date accepted online: | 14/01/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 85, Issue 03, Pages 857-883 |
Reviews
Has e-government gone mainstream? The publication of these two books would suggest so. Both begin from the premise that scholars can no longer afford to ignore what is arguably the most decisive shift in attitudes towards public bureaucracies since the 1980s. Both attempt to provide an overview of the main developments, themes and issues. And both are clearly aimed at the growing market for public sector management education, particularly MPA programmes. Yet they differ hugely in terms of their approach and, perhaps most oddly, even the working definitions of their subject matter. Reading these texts, it is difficult to avoid the impression that writing them must have been a little like trying your hand at wheel pottery for the first time. As soon as you think you've shaped the object to your satisfaction, one slip of the hand makes the whole thing go wobbly.
Consider, first, those working definitions. Garson tries to mould his subject by using four terms: 'virtual state', which refers to 'the present-day reality that information technology and networking infuse every level of government' (p. xii); 'digital government' - an 'umbrella term that comprises all uses of information and telecommunications technologies in the public sector' (p. 18); 'e-government', meaning the 'provision of governmental services by electronic means, usually over the Internet'; and 'e-governance' - a 'vision of changing the nature of the state' in which 'networks blur the lines separating governmental, nonprofit, and private sector actors' (p. 19). Heeks, meanwhile, tries to avoid ambiguity, and even steers clear of mentioning that most nebulous of terms, 'governance'. He prefers a simple definition of e-government as 'the use of information technology in the public sector ' but is still unable to resist adding that e-government is '
Given these differences, but the unifying fact that both these books set themselves up to be comprehensive textbooks, what do students and teachers actually get? Garson's is the weightier volume, with 15 chapters divided into five sections: an introductory section dealing with some ideas about ICTs and governance and a brief history of public sector IT policy; a section entitled 'politics and policy' which deals with political participation, the digital divide, freedom of information, privacy, security, regulation of the IT industry and e-commerce; a section on 'management' looking at models of e-government, partnerships and outsourcing, planning and project management; a fourth section on 'implementation' covering factors for success and project evaluation; and, finally, an interesting stand-alone chapter dealing with e-government's implications for power relations within public sector organizations.
Heeks, on the other hand, includes 12 chapters divided across two basic sections. After a very brief introduction entitled 'Understanding e-government' we move to Part One on 'Managing e-government'. This includes chapters on approaches to e-government systems, strategy, managing public data, and what are called 'core' and 'emerging' management issues. Part Two is about 'Implementing e-government' and contains a set of chapters with unintuitive titles but which are concerned with the nuts and bolts of system design, putting e-government ideas into practice and monitoring the new system. Heeks rounds off his treatment with a 'hybrid' approach, which recognizes the properties of technologies but blends this with a sensitivity to human factors. He calls for the emergence of a new hybrid public sector manager who understands IT but also the vagaries of the public sector.
Both books contain devices designed to stimulate student discussion: questions, bullet points, text boxes and subheadings feature in copious quantities, especially in Heeks' book, which sometimes has a fragmented feel. Garson assembled a team of sub-authors to provide vignettes of varying length and quality at the end of each chapter. These are labelled 'case studies' but this is perhaps a little ambitious. They do add colour and contemporaneity but often they do not refer back to the substantive themes of the chapter. Heeks employs a multitude of graphical devices and is an incurable inventor of acronyms, including the delicious 'CIPSODA Checklist' ('Capture, Input, Process, Store, Output, Decision, Action'). This is certainly more appetizing than his final chapter 's 'POSSET' ('Philosophy, Organizational level, Stakeholders, Sector, Extent of change, Technology'). (I'm reminded here of one of the early Clinton-Gore National Performance Review entities, the Government Information Technology Services Working Group, widely shortened to 'GITS'.) Both texts have companion web sites: Heeks' is a guidance-free static single page containing downloadable Word documents. These are a mix of extra diagrams, longer group exercises and digressional subsections that are relatively weakly linked with the main text. By themselves, however, they are both substantial and freely available. Garson's publisher offers PowerPoint slides to registered 'qualified instructors' adopting the text. I dutifully completed the tedious registration form on the publisher 's web site. At the time of writing I have yet to receive a reply.
Heeks' previous work has mainly focused on the implementation of management information systems in developing countries. The subtitle of his book is 'An International Text'. It was surprising therefore to find that the vast majority of examples come from the United States and that there is nothing at all on e-government in developing countries. Garson, on the other hand, makes no claim for an international perspective and is firmly rooted in the US context. There is nothing intrinsically bad about this but it does mean that both authors miss an opportunity to explore the comparative dimensions of e-government.
The key difference between the two books revolves around the authors' attitudes to theory. It is here that Garson's book shines.
Where Garson explores, Heeks often just asserts. Sometimes this produces a bizarre form of reductionism. For instance, at the start of a chapter unhelpfully entitled 'Analysis of current reality', Heeks suggests that the best way for a manager to try to analyse the need for e-government involves the equation 'Trust + triangulation = Truth' (p. 173).
If this type of thing leaves you cold, Garson's approach is not without its difficulties. For all of its theory, breadth and emphasis on the difference made by the Internet, it is sometimes unclear what the subject matter actually is. The whole of section two (six chapters) is, apart from a chapter on 'e-democracy' (itself problematic as a stand-alone chapter), given over to discussion of policy issues such as privacy, the digital divide, security, taxation of e-commerce, freedom of speech, online pornography, and so on. When these are added to the misleadingly titled introductory chapter on the 'Vision of e-governance' (which actually considers a small set of historical ideas stemming from texts such as Marshall McLuhan's
All textbook authors face a dilemma: do you write a critical synthesis of the state of the art in the research literature, or do you stick to up-to-date summaries of the main empirical developments in the field? The best texts tend to do both, but it is a huge challenge when you are faced not only with having to introduce but also to define the field itself. Most texts on British politics, for example, stand on the shoulders of giants. In a decade or so will we look back and see that these books have provided the foundation for myriad texts on e-government? Time will tell.