E-Government and E-Governance

SOME OTHER peoples BLURBS ON defining the terms

E-Government and E-Governance

"E-governance is beyond the scope of e-government..."

http://www.iadb.org/ict4dev/governance.htm

“E-governance is beyond the scope of e-government. While e-government is defined as a mere delivery of government services and information to the public using electronic means, e-governance allows direct participation of constituents in government activities. Blake Harris summarizes the e-governance as the following; E-governance is not just about government web site and e-mail. It is not just about service delivery over the Internet. It is not just about digital access to government information or electronic payments. It will change how citizens relate to governments as much as it changes how citizens relate to each other. It will bring forth new concepts of citizenship, both in terms of needs and responsibilities. E-governance will allow citizens to communicate with government, participate in the governments' policy-making and citizens to communicate each other. The e-governance will truly allow citizens to participate in the government decision-making process, reflect their true needs and welfare by utilizing e-government as a tool.”

http://www.iadb.org/ict4dev/governance.htm

e-governance

What is e-governance?
http://www.bangaloreit.com/html/egovern/egovern.htm

“E-governance or electronic governance may be defined as delivery of government services and information to the public using electronic means. Such means of delivering information is often referred to as information technology or 'IT' in short form. Use of IT in government facilitates an efficient, speedy and transparent process for disseminating information to the public and other agencies, and for performing government administration activities.”

http://www.bangaloreit.com/html/egovern/egovern.htm

http://www.aspanet.org/solutions/egov.html

What is E-Government?

“E-government is the pragmatic use of the most innovative information and communication technologies, like the internet, to deliver efficient and cost effective services, information and knowledge. It is an unequivocal commitment by decision makers to strengthening the partnership between the private citizen and the public sector. E-gov is a practical and permanent realization of government's vast potential.”

http://www.aspanet.org/solutions/egov.html

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2000/0612/pol-egov-06-12-00.asp

“Pat O’Neil, deputy assistant secretary for program and data analysis at the VA and chair of the steering committee, stressed the distinction between e-governance and e-government. E-governance entails the processes used to provide services to the public, while e-government is the tool to accomplish e-governance”.

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/1203/news-egov-12-03-01.asp

Center offers e-governance resources

BY Dibya Sarkar
Dec. 3, 2001

The National Academy of Public Administration and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University intend for the Center for eGovernance (www.napawash.org/ce) to serve as a focal point for the emerging topic of e-governance, said Mike Dunham, who co-directs the center.

Dunham defines e-governance as the "people, processes and policies associated with managing technology," in contrast with the more familiar concept of e-government, which he describes as the technical aspects of putting government services online.

_________________________________END

"Democracies don't prepare well for things that have never happened before."

"Democracies don't prepare well for things that have never happened before."

-RICHARD A. CLARKE,
former White House counterterrorism chief.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/30/national/30TERR.html?todaysheadlines

Coming to a power socket near you: Internet, telephony

Coming to a power socket near you: Internet, telephony

S'pore Power arm to launch commercial trials of new communications technology

By
Tang Weng Fai ,, Business Times - 28 Dec 2001
http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,2276,31650,00.html?

(SINGAPORE) Singapore is all set to be the first country in the Asia-Pacific, including Japan, to commercially try out a new breakthrough in communications technology.

By channelling data traffic through the existing network of electrical cables and wires, the technology will allow users to simply plug into their electrical wall sockets to access services such as fast Internet and telephony.

All they need is basically an adaptor - which also functions as a modem - to plug into a power socket. The technology also offers an alternative to home networking without having to undertake messy rewiring.

(((((((())))(((((((((((((((((

Internet Misuse Still a Problem

Friday, December 28, 2001

Internet Misuse Still a Problem

by Demir Barlas, Line56

http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?NewsID=3254

"While the Internet is a powerful tool for business efficiency, it can also be a massive drain on productivity when misused. Different sources estimate that American businesses are losing anywhere from $1 billion (Newsweek) to tens of billions of dollars (IDC) because of Internet misuse, which is simply defined as non-work-related use of the Internet while on company time. In 2001, Gallup found that the average employee spends 75 minutes per workday day on the Internet. Given the Department of Labor's finding that the average cost of employing an American worker is $20 per hour (including wage, insurance, and benefits), this means that companies are losing an average of $125 a week per worker."

"""""""::::::::::::::""""""":

U.S. Providing $8.2 Million to Rebuild New York City TV Antennas

New York Times , December 23, 2001

U.S. Providing $8.2 Million to Rebuild TV Antennas
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ,

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/23/nyregion/23CABL.html?todaysheadlines

"Roughly 20 percent of the 7.3 million homes in the New York metropolitan television market are not hooked up for cable or satellite service.

Many homes have only some of their sets wired for cable and depend on the broadcast signal for other sets."

================

"Net News Lethargy"

Features Posted December 21, 2001

Net News Lethargy
"Most sites fail to make use of the medium's main strength – speed"

http://ojr.usc.edu/content/story.cfm?request=676

By Amy Langfield, OJR Contributor

"For purposes of this story, the 15 most-trafficked news Web sites were examined on a routine basis during the past three weeks and more closely as breaking news happened. Those top 15 sites were chosen based on Jupiter Media Metrix' September ratings of news sites with the most unique visitors.

They are as follows:
1] CNN.com,
2] MSNBC.com,
3} Time.com,
4} ABCNews.com,
5} NYTimes.com,
6} WashingtonPost.com,
7] USAToday.com,
8] Slate.com,
9] FoxNews.com,
10] LATimes.com,
11] AP.org,
12] Boston.com,
13] Miami.com,
14] USNews.com,
15] WSJ.com.

In addition, several other wildcards were thrown in,
including BBCi, CBS.com, the DrudgeReport, CSMonitor.com, NandoTimes.com and the Guardian."

OOOOOO…………….OOOOOOO

E-Mail Gets the Cold Shoulder in Congress, December 13, 200I

Mr. Larry Neal, deputy chief of staff for Senator Phil Gramm (Republican-Texas), in response to a New York Times reporter on the impact of e-mail lobby campaigns stated:

"The communication that Sen. Gramm values most certainly does not arrive by wire. It is the one where someone sat down at a kitchen table, got a sheet of lined paper and a No. 2 pencil, and poured their heart into a letter." [69]

It is axiomatic in the lobbying game that a hand-written letter by a concerned constituent has by far the strongest impact on an elected representative.

As well, the more personal and relevant to the voter’s life the communication is, the more likely the letter will elicit a genuinely interested response from the representative's office.

When a family without health insurance and mounting medical bills writes to their elected representative about Health Care Legislation, they will most surely get a personalized response.

Other personalized contacts from the home district[70] like impassioned telephone calls and even hand written postcards also carry some weight.

Mass snail-mail-letters and postcards, where people just sign at the bottom of a form are weighed much less by elected officials. E-mails as we shall see are practically "mass-less", carrying almost no political weight. ~~ Technopolitical

Notes:
[69] Raney, New York Times . E-Mail Gets the Cold Shoulder in Congress, December 13, 200I

Accessed on date of publication @ http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/technology/circuits/13CONG.html

Available via Lexis –Nexis (Or you could pay the NYTimes.com $2.95)

[70] I cannot emphasize this point strongly enough as a major flaw of e-mail campaigns is that they often come from outside a legislators district rendering them as meaningless.

"Asian-Americans and the Internet: The Young and the Connected"

Asian-Americans and the Internet: The Young and the Connected

For release at noon (Eastern), December 12, 2001

http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=52

34% of Asian-American users get the day’s news online during a typical day, compared with 22% of whites, 20% of Hispanics and 15% of African-American Internet users.

78% of Asian-American users have sought travel information online.

53% of Asian-American users have sought financial information online.

49% of Asian-American users have sought political information online.

68% of Asian-American users have used the Internet for school research, compared with 51% of white users;

59% of Asian-American users have gone online for work-related reasons, compared with 50% of white users.

A table comparing Asian-Americans’ use of the Internet with other groups is on page 10 of this report…………………//////////

*****

Online Asian-Americans are voracious consumers of information, especially on a typical day.

www.pewinternet.org

http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/reports.asp?Report=52&Section=ReportLevel2&Field=Level2ID&ID=352

" The most popular form of information gathering is simply accessing the day’s news – about three-fifths of Internet users of different races have ever gotten the news online.

However, Asian-American users are much more likely to have made getting the news online a part of their daily lives.

Just over a third (34%) of users get the news online on a typical day. In comparison, 22% of white users get the news daily, along with 15% of African-American users and 20% of Hispanics online.

Asian-American users are also more likely than other Internet users to have gotten news on the financial markets, sought travel information, looked up information about their hobbies and gotten political news on a daily basis. Much like others with Internet access, online Asian-American users frequently turn to the Internet to find the answer to a question. Fully three-quarters of Asian-American users have done so at one time or another, and about a fifth do so on a typical day."

*******
********

groups -- globally and locally -- use the Internet as an organizing too

The Pew Foundation American Life Project (www.pewinternet.org):

“Lee Rainie, the [Pew’s] project's director, said [that] groups -- globally and locally -- use the Internet as an organizing tool. A classic example on the global scale, he said, is how the protests against the World Trade Organization were organized.”

Quote from: Federal Computer Week @ http://www.fcw.com/

'Study defines 'local groupies'
by Dibya Sarkar. Nov. 2, 2001.

Last accessed September 1, 2002 @

http://www.fcw.com/geb/articles/2001/1029/web-pew-11-02-01.asp

Study defines 'local groupies'

Study defines 'local groupies': "
Study defines 'local groupies'
BY Dibya Sarkar
Nov. 2, 2001

Although a new study suggests that Internet use doesn't signal a revival of civic engagement, Americans are going online to 'intensify their connection to their local community,' using it for public discussion and to gather information about local governments and schools.

The study assessed the scale of two kinds of online users: 'Cyber Groupies,' who join online groups with no geographic boundaries, and 'Local Groupies,' who connect with groups based in their community.

The resulting report -- 'Online communities: Networks that nurture long-distance relationships and local ties' -- estimated that there are 90 million Cyber Groupies and 28 million Local Groupies. The study was conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project (www.pewinternet.org), a Washington, D.C.-based research group that studies the Internet's societal impact."

AFL-CIO Hosts Online Labor Day Festival

AFL-CIO Hosts Online Labor Day Festival
U.S. Newswire

http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0829-123.html
29 Aug 2001 : 13:53

AFL-CIO Hosts World's Greatest Online Labor Day Festival
To: National Desk
Contact: Lauren Cerand, 202-637-5295
Matt Painter, 202-637-5245
both of the AFL-CIO

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 /U.S. Newswire/ -- "The AFL-CIO opened its
second annual Online Labor Day Festival, billed as the "biggest
hometown Labor Day festival in the USA," at www.aflcio.org/laborday.
It will run through Sept. 21, 2001."

"Cyberspace offers immense new possibilities for working people
to make their voices heard and build 'community' in an entirely new
way," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. "This festival brings
together the best of our culture and history in a powerful way
that's building for the future."

"The AFL-CIO's second annual Online Labor Day Festival is part of
a broader trend of cyber unionism, as unions find new ways to bring
together working people on issues that are important to them.
Today's unions are using technology to help new members organize,
mobilizing members and activists, and celebrating union culture.

Many workers who are forming unions are using an online presence
to keep in contact with each other, and to update supporters.
National INS agents, Delta flight attendants, SBC and Verizon
workers, part-time community college teachers in California, and
SecurityLink workers isolated in trucks all day have all used the
Internet and e-mail successfully to come together in unions.

Mobilization has reached new potential online -- activists
e-mailed their Congressional representatives to oppose Fast Track
trade legislation, commercial actors utilized email and the
Internet to win their strike, and worker activists have used Palm
Pilots for political campaigns and member mobilization.

Some 60 percent of union members have computers, according to a
poll by Peter D. Hart Research, Inc., conducted in January 2000.
The survey also found that 74 percent of union members with
computers have Internet access."

Copyright 2001, U.S. Newswire

mmmmm

Internet Proves to be Powerful

Internet Proves to be Powerful

in Political, Legislative Battles
By Jim Buie
Copyright 2001

Impeachment Sparked Deluge of Downloading and Online Mobilization !!

"The success of Ventura and other Internet-savvy candidates in 1998 wasn't the only evidence of the Internet's emerging political power. The release of the Starr report over the World Wide Web in the fall of 1998 increased overall Internet traffic by as much as 80 percent, and sparked a deluge of heated discussions on and off the Internet.

Alerting and mobilizing people entirely over the Internet, Jim Robinson, the publisher of the conservative Free Republic web site, sponsored an "Impeach Clinton" rally at the Washington Monument on Halloween. It attracted more than 4,000 people, and set a new standard for grassroots organizing by Internet. "I don't think anything like this has ever happened before, where thousands of people who didn't know each other get together in a place thousands of miles from home," Brian Buckley, counsel for the web site, told The Washington Post."

"Conversely, more than 500,000 Internet users, fed up with the impeachment process, signed a petition and pledged more than $10 million through the web site Move On.org to defeat the politicians they believe ignored voters' wishes to censure President Clinton and move on to other business. MoveOn.org ultimately collected more than $2 million and donated it to progressive candidates in Campaign 2000. Since the election, MoveOn.org has established itself as an effective advocacy group."
http://www.us.net/indc/column2.htm#Impeachment

===================================================

the Internet

and the

Impeachment of Bill Clinton

by TechnoPolitcal

Blog Staff

~~ Bill Clinton's recreational dilly dallys and the disproportionate Republican impeachment , evolved , both from and into an important touchstone of early political & general internet history.

Matt Druge's pioneering website lit the Impreachment Scandal Fire, that spread in no small way by the internet, esp. so considering that there really was not that many people online in 1998.

The effect of the Internet on the Presidency of Bill Clinton cannot be underestimated. Clinton haters and muckrakers were among the first to use the Web to spread their wares, with Matt Druge becoming the first Internet news superstar by breaking the Monica Lewinisky story. (Though, where is Matt today in 2002?) As well the final report by the office of Special Prosecutor Richard Starr on the Whitewater ---(which grew into the Lewinsky mess)--- shook the world wide web in a way thatno event had no event had done so before.

“The release of the Starr report over the World Wide Web in the fall of 1998 increased overall Internet traffic by as much as 80 percent, and sparked a deluge of heated discussions on and off the Internet.” [111]

President Clinton had the mixed blessing of the Cyber-Activism and Political Information Portals (PIPs) taking root during his term.The Internet certainly was a contributing factor in his impeachment by the House as documented in these quotes from cyber-political journalist Jim Buie:

“Alerting and mobilizing people entirely over the Internet, Jim Robinson, the publisher of the conservativeFree Republic web site, sponsored an "ImpeachClinton" rally at theWashington Monument on Halloween [1998]. It attracted more than 4,000 people, and set a new standard for grassroots organizing by Internet,” [112]

However the Internet may haveplayed an even larger (but still minor in my opinion) role inClinton's subsequent acquittal by the Senate.

“… more than 500,000 Internet users, fed up with the impeachment process, signed a petition and pledged more than $10 million through the web sitewww.Move On.org to defeat the politicians they believe ignored voters' wishes to censure President Clinton and move on tother business. MoveOn.org ultimately collected more than $2 million[113] and donated it to progressive candidates in Campaign 2000.” [114]

-----------

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Case of Minnesota E-Democracy, by Lincoln Dahlberg

Extending the Public Sphere through Cyberspace: The Case of Minnesota E-Democracy

by Lincoln Dahlberg
First Monday, volume 6, number 3 (March 2001),
URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_3/dahlberg/index.html

Copyright ©2001, First Monday

"Over the last decade a lot has been said about the possibilities of the Internet enhancing the public sphere. The two-way, decentralized communications within cyberspace are seen as offering the basis by which to facilitate rational-critical discourse and hence develop public opinion that can hold state power accountable.

However, this potential has largely gone unrealized. Instead, cyber-interaction is dominated by commercial activity, private conversation, and individualized forms of politics. In this paper I investigate how the present Internet may be used to more fully facilitate the public sphere.

To do this I evaluate Minnesota E-Democracy, an Internet-based initiative that attempts to develop online public discourse. Drawing upon a model of the public sphere developed from Jürgen Habermas' work, I show how the initiative structures discourse to overcome many of the problems that presently limit democratic deliberation online.

While some significant limitations do remain, I conclude that Minnesota E-Democracy provides a basis from which online deliberative initiatives can, given adequate resourcing and further research, extend the public sphere through the Internet."

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{