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Dave Karpf, Ph.D. @davekarpf Shoutingloudly

The Limits of E-government: Assessing the True Demand Curve for Online Participation. Dave Karpf, Ph.D. @davekarpf Shoutingloudly.com. Two distinct conversations about e-government. In the academic literature

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Dave Karpf, Ph.D. @davekarpf Shoutingloudly

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  1. The Limits of E-government: Assessing the True Demand Curve for Online Participation Dave Karpf, Ph.D. @davekarpf Shoutingloudly.com

  2. Two distinct conversations about e-government • In the academic literature • Discussion focuses on governmental transformation (West 2005), citizen empowerment (Noveck 2009), “horizontal integration” (Layne and Lee 2001) • In government, among practitioners • Discussion focuses on service delivery, transparency. Practical challenges (Govloop). Occasional references to aspirational goals.

  3. What are the boundaryconditions of wiki government?

  4. We need to learn not only from our successes, but also from our failures

  5. Two types of failure “Field of Dreams Fallacy” “Blessed are the Organized”

  6. “Write it down: Americans Elect. What Amazon.com did to books, what the blogosphere did to newspapers, what the iPod did to music, what drugstore.com did to pharmacies, Americans Elect plans to do to the two-party duopoly that has dominated American political life — remove the barriers to real competition, flatten the incumbents and let the people in. Watch out.” -Tom Friedman, July 24, 2011.

  7. The Results Total Primary Votes for Obama: 6,158,064 Total Primary Votes for Romney: 9,414,851 Obama received 8,064 votes in the Iowa caucuses alone

  8. The Field of Dreams Fallacy (There Is No Radical Center)

  9. An Old Lesson “…Commercial companies make software for money, so money is the limiting factor. Open Source developers make software for the love of the thing, so love becomes the limiting factor as well. Unloved software can't be built using Open Source methods.” -Clay Shirky, 1999 “The Interest Horizons and the Limits of Software Love” http://www.shirky.com/writings/interest.html

  10. The Internet Does Not Create Our Interests. It Reveals Them.

  11. Lesson 1: Technology Does Not Create Participatory Communities. It Supports Them.

  12. A Second Problem - Blessed are the Organized

  13. In practice, there is rarely any such thing as “the public.” • Instead, we act as a nation of publics. • If e-government initiatives assume a participatory mass public, they set themselves up for failure

  14. Lesson 2: Be aware of trend toward“Geek-Based Governance” • Techies are one such public. • Reddit, Slashdot, BoingBoing constitute the hubs of an online community. • We must remember that most citizens do not, cannot, and will not write software code.

  15. E-government projects must engage in user-oriented design • Some areas of government receive high public interest, others low. • Some areas of government are highly polarized, others are not. Low interest High interest Low polarization High polarization

  16. A simple model Low public polarization, high public interest High public polarization, high public interest (Education reform) (Space exploration) High public polarization, low public interest Low public polarization, low public interest (EPA standard-setting) (Department of Transportation)

  17. Appropriate E-gov Initiatives Wikis, user-generated content Open data (Education reform) (Space exploration) Streamlined public comment systems Online service delivery (EPA standard-setting) (Department of Transportation)

  18. Digital government can be transformative. But it will not be transformative everywhere, all at once.

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