The obvious difficulty and high failure rate of information technology (IT) innovations in government and elsewhere have been central concerns in much of CTG’s work over the past 15 years. Our first-hand experiences, coupled with reviews of the current research, highlight the importance of organizational capability as a critical success factor in IT innovation. It is clear that successful IT innovations, and the transformation they seek to support, depend at least as much on how well the organizations and individuals perform as on the chips, networks, and software. This finding led us, in turn, to further explore the concept of organizational capability and to work with government agencies to develop tools to enhance capability for IT innovation.

AIRNow-International (AIRNow-I) is an initiative led by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to redesign the US air quality monitoring and public reporting system to be scalable, interoperable, portable, and affordable to any country. Its guiding vision is a readily usable worldwide platform for sharing air quality information to improve public health. This case study assesses the internationalization of AIRNow through the lens of a collaborative project between EPA and the Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center (SEMC) in China. We trace the history of air quality policy and management in both countries and then explore the structure and dynamics of their joint effort to build AIRNow-I Shanghai. This report describes the influences of the separate Chinese and American contexts on the participants and their interactions, and identifies the ways in which they bridged many types of contextual distances to produce successful results.

Efforts to improve public safety in the United States are pointing to an increasing need for justice agencies to share information. This guidebook offers a series of lessons and tools justice officials can use to build business cases to win support and funding for integrated justice information systems.

With many different workflow management software solutions on the market, a variety of approaches to workflow management exist. This paper provides an introduction to Workflow Management Systems through a two-tiered approach: a functional review and a technical overview.

The Open Government Research and Development Agenda Setting Workshop was sponsored and conducted by a collaborative team from the Center for Technology in Government (CTG) at the University at Albany, the Tetherless World Constellation (TWC) at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute, the Institute for Law and Policy (IILP) at New York Law School, and Civic Commons was organized to outline a research agenda focused on opening up, federating, and using data to improve the lives of citizens. This activity report is an account of the contributions made at the workshop. Following the release of this activity report, we will focus on the analysis of the results working toward a set of recommendations and action steps.

This paper presents the challenges associated with developing a data architecture supporting information interoperability in the supply-chain for sustainable food products. We analyze information elicited from experts in the supply-chain for organic and fair trade coffee to identify relevant stakeholders and the issues and challenges connected with developing an interoperable data architecture. This study assesses the salience of individual stakeholder groups and the challenges based on the stakeholders’ attributes in terms of power, legitimacy and urgency. The following five issues/challenges werefound to be the most salient, requiring primary focus in developing interoperable data architecture: trust in data, cost to maintain the system, political resistance, oversight and governance,and the cost to consumers in terms of time and effort. In the conclusion we discuss potential future research and practical implications for designing an interoperable data architecture.

This report is a summary of the discussions that took place during the workshop A Step Beyond Research: Fostering IT Innovations in Government. The workshop involved 32 scholars from Europe and North American in an exploration of the issues and opportunities for applied research to support IT innovation in government.

Knowing the key concepts of electronic recordkeeping is essential as agencies move from a largely paper-based business process to an electronic system. The report covers those key concepts.

There are many different methods and techniques used to direct the life cycle of a software development project. This document provides an overview of common models that are used to guide the analysis, design, development, and maintenance of information systems.

Knowledge and information-sharing networks are emerging in an increasing number of government programs and policy arenas. This article reports the results of an exploratory investigation into ways in which leadership and formal authority shaped the course of four knowledge network initiatives. The study treats authority as both formal and perceived. Leadership is assessed in terms of style, focus, and communication strategies. Analysis of the various authority and leadership patterns found in the case studies generated a set of hypotheses with regard to their influence on success of knowledge networks. Finding s reveal that formal authority, perceived authority, and a variety of leadership behaviors appear to have important influence on the development and performance of public sector knowledge networks. These factors affect the ability of such networks to achieve their substantive goals and the degree to which these efforts provide satisfying and useful networking relationships among the participants.

The information needed to review a building permit application in New York's Adirondack Park comes from a range of sources. This report describes the work undertaken to develop and evaluate a prototype system to combine document records and geographic data into a unified “electronic reference desk".

Two important trends on openness are promoting improved accountability from government and private organizations. The case of private transparency finds its roots in consumer and other stakeholder movements. The open government movementin the US is looking for alternatives to “smart disclosure,” which implies providing consumers with better information to makebetter buying choices. We explore current knowledge on ethical consumption, as well as two influential technological tools to support consumer decisions. Our initial discussion suggests that the use of ontologies and data architectures, together with the appropriate policy environment and governance system, may solve some of the current problems identified.

Broadband access for households has become an important resource for individuals and communities. A high speed connection to the internet provides opportunities for a great many economic, social and cultural benefits. This study was to done to explore the extent to which those opportunities and benefits are currently available to households in New York State. With the support of the NY State Office of Cyber Security, and the New York State Broadband Development and Deployment Council, the Center for Technology in Government partnered with Stony Brook University to conduct the study. We surveyed 3044 New York households to discover the extent of availability and adoption of broadband services and how they are used. We also asked about the social and economic characteristics of the households to explore how those factors affect broadband adoption and use. The results presented here cover 1002 surveys covering the state as a whole and an oversample of 2042 surveys in low income counties.

Based on the findings of 2005 Library of Congress workshops and previous efforts on digital preservation, this paper discusses the challenges and opportunities regarding interorganizational collaboration and community building for digital preservation of state government information.

Having the right skills, competencies, and technical tools can help government managers use information more effectively in their work. This report, which summarizes the second seminar in the UIG Seminar Series, focuses on ways to get the most from government information.

E-commerce, and online auctions in particular, represent important examples of how information and communication technologies have been employed by public organizations to gain benefits in both efficiency and effectiveness. In this article, we discuss the three-year experience gained by New York State in the use of online auctions for the sale of surplus inventory and property.

Cross-cultural management research is a valuable but complex and error-prone endeavor. The main challenges the authors encountered in conducting a multinational research project included nonequivalence of key concepts, cultural stereotypes, assumptions of universality, and difficulties in comparative analysis. The authors identified crucial questions that need to be asked at each stage of the research for it to be both reliable and valid. These questions address such pitfalls as the importance of focusing on culture as an independent variable, the cultural dynamics of the research team, and the importance of translation and of finding culturally equivalent definitions of key concepts.

Land parcels are the foundation for many aspects of public and community life. This report presents the findings of a study of information about land parcels in New York State. It identifies stakeholders and their interests as well as the needs and issues associated with the uses of parcel data in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Governments around the world are moving toward a more global perspective in their efforts to address complex social, political, and economic issues. New requirements for international cross-boundary collaboration, driven by this global view, demand a new understanding about how individual nations respond to public problems and how nations work together in response to transnational problems. In addition, new forms of government enabled by information technologies and made possible through new models of collaboration are emerging. The future of public administration is clearly linked to the development and management of new forms of collaborative governance and the use of information technologies. Globalization is also contributing to the internationalization of the public sector, in which cross-boundary collaboration and information sharing will happen not only within a country, but between nations. This paper contributes to the exchange of knowledge about the future of public administration by presenting a view that considers important trends in public management and public service around the world. As a backdrop we first present a discussion about the emergence in public administration toward post-bureaucratic organizations and interorganizational networks. E-government and cross boundary information sharing are then introduced as part of the new context of public administration. We then draw the focus back to the importance of collaboration and information sharing in transnational public problems and international cooperation and characterize the need for new capability in working across the boundaries of organizations, governments, regions, and nations. Finally, drawing on this discussion we outline four topics of critical importance for inclusion in the public administration classroom to fully prepare students to work in the government of the 21st Century; Post-Bureaucracy and Organizational Networks, Information Technologies and Inter-organizational Information Integration, Collaborative Governance and Interoperability: Creating policy, management, and technology capability, and Transnational Problems and the Internationalization of Public Administration. The new generation of public administrators must understand the importance of collaborative governance, information technologies, and the internationalization of complex social problems for the public administration of the twenty first century.

This paper reports on a research effort designed to begin to systematically identify the most critical computing and information technology-related challenges facing financial market regulation activities. Computing and infor-mation technology adaptation in financial markets create a paradox. Information technology is needed for effective governing of financial markets, yet advances in information technology and the increasingly complex adaptations of that technology make it more difficult for regulators to have a clear picture of what is actually happening. Drawing on in-depth interviews with professionals from the financial market community, this paper outlines three primary challenges facing regulation efforts: 1) information sharing and integration, 2) mediating interrelationship among financial market constituents, 3) data-driven decision making. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research about the challenges.

In the era of globalization, sharing of knowledge, information, and practices across cultural and national boundaries has been recognized as a key for handling the most critical problems. Consequently, the number of Transnational Knowledge Networks (TKNs) that aim to address critical global issues and problems continue to increase. As exchanging knowledge and information represent core components of these networks, this paper provides the foundations to study knowledge and information sharing in these emerging organizations. The paper starts by describing the structures, goals, and objectives of TKNs and presents a simplified conceptual model to demonstrate the main characteristics of these networks. Then, we review the pertinent egovernment literature and argue the need to include findings from two additional research areas, cross-boundary information sharing and knowledge transfer. The paper discusses the ways in which contributions from these areas can enhance our understanding of the complexity surrounding the exchange process in these networks. The paper concludes with a summary of the elements of complexity and an overview of future research to empirically test these concepts.

This conceptual paper discusses how we can consider a particular city as a smart one, drawing on recent practices to make cities smart. A set of the common multidimensional components underlying the smart city concept and the core factors for a successful smart city initiative is identified by exploring current working definitions of smart city and a diversity of various conceptual relatives similar to smart city. The paper offers strategic principles aligning to the three main dimensions (technology, people, and institutions) of smart city: integration of infrastructures and technology-mediated services, social learning for strengthening human infrastructure, and governance for institutional improvement and citizen engagement.

In this paper, we propose to view the concept of open government from the perspective of an ecosystem, a metaphor often used by policy makers, scholars, and technology gurus to convey a sense of the interdependent social systems of actors, organizations, material infrastructures, and symbolic resources that can be created in technology-enabled, information-intensive social systems. We use the concept of an ecosystem to provide a framework for considering the outcomes of a workshop organized to generate a research and development agenda for open government. The agenda was produced in discussions among participants from the government (at the federal, state, and local levels), academic and civil sector communities at the Center for Technology in Government (CTG) at the University at Albany, SUNY in April 2011. The paper begins by discussing concepts central to understanding what is meant by an ecosystem and some principles that characterize its functioning. We then apply this metaphor more directly to government, proposing that policymakers engage in strategic ecosystems thinking, which means being guided by the goal of explicitly and purposefully constructing open government ecosystems. From there, we present the research agenda questions essential to the development of this new view of government's interaction with users and organizations. Our goal is to call attention to some of the fundamental ways in which government must change in order to evolve from outdated industrial bureaucratic forms to information age networked and interdependent systems.

As statistics show, violent crime is more prevalent in the US than in Hungary. Consequently, U.S. law enforcement, and a wide range of criminal justice agencies, are seen as an important part of government. These agencies embody characteristics that make them similar to and different from their counterparts in other areas of government. The research reported on here unveils some of these characteristics as it looks at interactions among criminal justice agencies in their efforts to develop structures within which to share and integrate information across organizational boundaries in order to reduce crimes.

Over the last two decades universities and post-secondary education policies have addressed globalization trends by internationalizing curricula and articulating global concern in their missions. This paper presents an evaluation of an international training program for early-career digital government researchers, designed to develop their interest and skill in cross-cultural, multidisciplinary, and practice-oriented research. The program overall appears to stimulate participants’ individual creativity, scholarly productivity, and professional networks, while broadening their appreciation for work that investigates internationally important topics and involves not only multidisciplinary but multicultural teams. The survey results also suggest that a short-term (one-week), intensive, immersive, and relatively inexpensive program can have strong and lasting effects on early-career scholars.

The quality of data in data warehouses is crucial to the effective use of the warehouse. This paper examines the issues associated with data quality and maps the issues to features available in data quality software tools. Examples of the tools are also included.

Proper data management is instrumental for successful information systems. This report, which summarizes the first seminar in the UIG Seminar Series, focuses on data quality management, data tools and techniques, long term maintenance and preservation, and real life experiences with data issues.

That electronic government information repositories are growing in number, use, and diversity is one manifestation of the emergence of e-government. These information-centered programs both shape and respond to user demand for electronic government information as computer-mediated user access has displaced traditional staff-mediated access. These programs are no longer concentrated in statistical agencies but increasingly are offered by a wide array of mission-driven operating agencies to complement their other services. This study identified the design dimensions of electronic information access programs by examining mature existing programs. These dimensions address users, uses, organizational capabilities, data characteristics, and technology. The study then explored the application and interdependence of these dimensions in three efforts to design and develop new access programs. The study produced an empirically based, testable model of observable dimensions that shape the cost, complexity, and potential performance of these programs. In addition, the article offers government managers some insight into the practical implications they will face in designing and operating electronic information access programs.

Government agencies are increasingly looking to leverage social media to improve the quality of government services and elicit greater citizen engagement. Developing a social media policy can be an important first step for government agencies considering using social media and can ultimately serve as a key enabler for responsibly and effectively leveraging social media tools. Yet, many governments are struggling with what such a policy should encompass and convey. This report outlines the different reasons government employees engage in social media use and begins to answer the question, what are the core elements of a government social media policy? Our analysis identified eight essential elements for a social media policy: 1) employee access, 2) account management, 3) acceptable use, 4) employee conduct, 5) content, 6) security, 7) legal issues, and 8) citizen conduct. The report closes with brief guidance on strategies for getting started.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a dynamic theory of the socio-technical processes involved in the definition of an Integration Information problem in New York State (NYS). In April 2003, the Criminal Justice Information Technology (CJIT) group of NYS was tasked with developing a framework to fulfill the goal of giving users of criminal justice data and information systems “one-stop shopping” access to the information needed to accomplish their mission. The research team of the Center for Technology in Government (CTG) collaborated with the CJIT group for an eight-month period during 2003 to accomplish this task. The CJIT-CTG team went through a series of conversations to specify the business problem and its context, and to identify feasible solutions and alternatives. This paper reports on a system dynamics model for understanding the dynamics of the socio-technical processes that took place during this project. This model building effort is looking for the development of a theory of interorganizational collaboration. The model is being developed in facilitated group model building (GMB) sessions with the team at CTG. Although the model presented in this paper is still preliminary, the model is capable to generated interesting scenarios with reasonable changes in the initial values of some parameters. Moreover, the model illustrates a powerful way to luse group model building and simulation as theory-building tools.

E-government is increasingly been used for government administrative reform. In fact, spending in e-government initiatives continues to rise and, among these projects, Internet-based applications are increasingly important. Using a nested research design, this study explores the complex relationships among the relative success of state websites and certain organizational, institutional, and contextual factors.

This report covers the findings from an evaluation of a prototype map retrieval system developed for the Adirondack Park Agency. Recommendations for a future system development strategy are included.

This current practices research report identifies and describes exemplary practices in providing electronic access to information.

In response to growing interest in and concerns about social media in the public sector among government professionals, CTG launched a project aimed at exploring some of the issues and benefits connected with social media tools. This report summarizes results from two workshops held with government professionals from New York State (NYS) as part of this project. The workshops were designed to collect information on the value NYS agencies seek in their current or future use of social media, as well as their most pressing questions and concerns regarding that use. The report summarizes the results from workshops, with full results provided in three apendices, and concludes with a section outlining the next steps in the project.

Transnational public sector knowledge networks (TPSKNs) are becoming crucial for addressing global problems in the environment, public health and other areas that require knowledge and information sharing among nations. This paper explores and compares a set of contextual distances that separate network participants and discusses their influence on network success. Based on previous research, we introduce nine contextual distances and compare and discuss their influence on two cases. We conclude with a discussion of the findings and suggestions for future research on knowledge and information sharing across national and cultural boundaries.

[Winner Best Paper Award in eGovernment Track, HICSS46]

This research study was designed to broaden understanding of the publishing of research datasets by distinguishing between the intention to share and the action of sharing. The data was generated from preliminary survey results conducted by DataONE work groups. The final data used in this paper is based on 587 observations. The analysis results show support for all of the path coefficients of the theoretical model except for the path of perceived self-efficacy, and legal context and policy variables. The intention to share a dataset was found to be a significant determinant in the action of sharing data. Acknowledging the key determinants of intention to publish datasets arguably entails significant policy implications on data sharing.

This report summarizes the results of a national survey of cross-boundary information sharing in the public sector conducted by the Center for Technology in Government (CTG). This national study, conducted by CTG and supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, was designed to understand how effective information integration and sharing occurs within and across boundaries of organizations. The purpose of the survey was to test the generalizability of a preliminary theoretical model of how policy, organizational, social, and technical factors interact to create criminal justice and public health information sharing capabilities. CTG developed this model based on the data collected and analyzed during earlier phases of the research project.

Throughout CTG’s partnership projects, there are four realities that stand out as success factors for IT innovation. This article presents the four recurring factors that we have encountered working on dozens of projects with hundreds of government individuals and organizations.

In recent publications in organizational communication, the phenomenon of nonhuman agency has been highlighted as a key element whose recognition might allow researchers to better account for the nature and functioning of organizations. This approach consists of showing that the roles machines, tools, documents, architectural elements, and artifacts more generally play in collectives tend to be neglected in social sciences in general and organizational studies in particular, and that recognizing the active contribution of these elements might help us solve both theoretical and analytical problems.

Current trends in making supply chains more transparent and bringing information usually not available to the consumer and other players into the market are changing the ways in which consumers make decisions about the goods and services they buy. One example of these changes is the networks of consumers, producers, and other players in the supply chain sharing value-adding information packages about the social and environmental impacts of the products they exchange, or Full Information Product Pricing (FIPP) Networks. Our current research suggests that these FIPP Networks have the potential to promote market-driven approaches to international trade systems, which may work as a complement to more traditional state-led trade systems, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in promoting sustainable trade. We envision that such an approach should involve collaboration among government, supply chain and sustainability experts, industry associations, and consumer organizations sustained by a technological architecture to support interoperability and information sharing. We discuss important trade-offs related to costs and sustainability, privacy, and access to information. The paper finishes with a set of recommendations involving the creation of a governance system to promote this market-driven approach to sustainable international trade.

The functional requirements of records include the reliability of the system in which the records reside, how the records are captured, and how they are maintained. This paper discusses the background, development, and usage of the functional requirements in CTG's Models for Action project.

While public officials at all levels of government play important roles in interoperability efforts, government leaders alone have the power to alleviate the institutional constraints that impede these potentially transformative, but highly complex enterprise initiatives. Unfortunately, while leaders have the unique power to make these changes, experience shows that the policy environments they have created, or in many cases inherited, often limit the capability of governments to share authority, to collaborate, and to jointly and strategically manage enterprise initiatives. To change this, leaders must understand the link between their policy decisions and the capability of governments to create the systems necessary to share information and other resources across boundaries. This paper is for government leaders and presents a unique focus on creation of the policy and management capability, rather than technical capability, necessary to create interoperable government,. It presents a set of recommendations to guide these leaders in the development of policies and principles for action.

Information technology tools and applications are supporting all types of government work. This report presents the results of a series of prototyping experiments conducted by CTG and state agencies on custom workflow, project management, document management, and meeting support systems using groupware tools.

In this paper, we address the challenges and opportunities that the new development in ICT poses for governments, and begin to outline some potential solutions. Governments in North America have set explicit goals to increase the environmental sustainability of their infrastructure, promote sustainable local economic development, protect consumer health, promote nutrition, or establish greener, more efficient supply chains. These commitments are real, and substantial, but the information problems found in real markets have, until now, made many of those goals more elusive. This paper presents observations from research sponsored by the National Science Foundation (through its Community-based Interoperable Data Networks Program), the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT-Mexico), and the Canadian and COMEXUS Fulbright Commissions. Our interdisciplinary and multinational research team blends approaches from digital government research, public policy analysis, and system science to investigate new ways of combining traditional regulatory tools with crowd-sourced information from stakeholder networks.

A 311 system provides quick and easy access to non-emergency municipal services and information through a consolidated channel. This study explores the operation of 311 contact centers in New York and Philadelphia and identifies critical success factors and challenges of 311-driven service integration. Analyzing the qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 311 center staff and city government officials, the study presents some key findings. Having the right technology in the right time is identified as a critical technological factor. While the lack of interoperability between a 311 system and departmental legacy systems remains a major technical barrier to connecting a variety of systems, human agents fill the middle ground so that training for qualified agents is crucial for their role. Inter-agency coordination and collaboration is pivotal to creating and updating service level agreements and knowledgebase. However, turf protection raises cross-organizational concerns. The mayor’s strong leadership, political champions, and the executive support help resolve interdepartmental conflicts.

This paper presents a framework for governments as they begin to move beyond the vision of a more effective government to the reality. Governments are finding that a typical hierarchical bureaucracy is not necessarily the best form of organization to meet citizen and other demands. Rather, governments are finding that a network form of organization where new groupings of persons and organizations must learn to work together and share information, exchange knowledge, and respond to demands in new ways is more appropriate. Interoperability is key to the success of these government networks. The framework focuses first on understanding the capabilities needed to develop and manage (i.e., plan, select, control, and evaluate) initiatives to improve interoperability among government agencies and their network partners, and second on determining the right mix of capabilities needed to share information across a network of organizations. The complete framework is provided for immediate use by government managers to assess existing and needed capabilities for improving government interoperability.

Information, Technology, and Governance: A Grand Challenges Research Agenda was a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation to craft a multi-year research program to address the grand challenges of government and governance in an environment of rapidly evolving social and technical change. The key event in the project was a workshop that brought together leaders from social and information science research and government to explore these grand challenge questions and develop a next generation research agenda, with a particular focus on socio-organizational contexts. The Pre-Workshop Paper was used to introduce the ideas behind the workshop and spur discussion on the issues.

In February 2010, a group of leading social and information scientists and government practitioners came together to develop a new understanding of the way technology and social forces shape the workings of government. The workshop—Information, Technology, and Governance: A Grand Challenges Research Agenda—was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, with additional support from the National Association of Chief Information Officers (NASCIO). The Center for Technology in Government (CTG) at the University at Albany led the organizing effort of this two-day workshop with over 40 participants from across the country. This document presents a non-attribution account of the contributions made at the workshop as well as a brief analysis of the discussions and findings. The information presented in this report begins to shed light on complexities of identifying and addressing grand challenges in information, technology, and governance.

This paper argues for a dedicated, social science-based research program to address the question “How do the societal context and institutional character of government interact with emerging information and communication technologies to shape the capabilities and performance of the public sector?” The ability to answer this question can only result from non-domain specific research that studies the societal context of government and the information resources and technologies affecting government. Because of government’s inherent complexity and unique role as the leader in addressing the world’s grand societal challenges, there is an urgent need to understand the practice context of government and how it influences the policy, management, and organizational political, and public factors that shape information use and IT applications. Currently there is a lack of research on the public sector and while there are devoted resources to government areas there is little scientific attention to the government organizations and processes that are both the sources and customers of the programs. With focus on this cross-cutting research, government can improve its capacity to serve society and researchers can seek opportunities for new theory development that links government context to the fundamental questions of organizational and technical action.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009) promised strict accounting of all funds spent and the publication of that information to the public in relative real-time. The federal requirements for reporting Recovery Act funds relied heavily on the ability of recipients, primarily state governments, to capture, manage, and deliver the data required. This paper presents the experience of one state agency, in particular how they leveraged the reporting mandate to improve real-time informational capability for transparency and openness. The case, together with insights from a Recovery Act Knowledge Network, provides five recommendations to guide decision makers who seek to increase the capability of government to use information to further transparency agendas.

In testimony on April of 2012 before the House Financial Services Committee, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman, Mary Schapiro, stated that effective information sharing between financial market actors and their regulatory bodies is critical to fulfilling the regulatory obligations of the SEC. The 2008 financial crisis is recognized as a show case for the risks to the stability of the markets that ineffective information sharing among supervisory authorities represents. This paper constitutes a preliminary exploration of the challenges facing financial regulators building on prior research in the computing and information science community (CIS). Current literature as well as data from a recent study of financial market regulation is used to identify key actors in financial market regulation information sharing relationships and to begin to outline the challenges faced in this unique context and the resulting risk if those challenges go unaddressed. A recently developed theoretical framework for cross-boundary information sharing (Garcia et al 2007) is used to present insights about challenges and risks from the literature and the field.

Research has identified the potential and challenges of information sharing in government settings mostly within the context of a single country. The challenges facing inter-governmental information exchanges that take place across national border governments, however, are thought to be different. To date, research has failed to provide theoretical guidance in understanding the complexities that the cross border environment brings to information sharing initiatives. This paper brings together Brunet- Jailly’s theory of borders [10] and definitions of crossboundary information sharing from Gil-Garcia et al. [39] to develop a framework that incorporates the information sharing and technology dimension with the economic, political and cultural contextual factors impacting border regions. This study is an initial step toward understanding the challenges that the border environment brings to information sharing initiatives. Future research is necessary to empirically test the utility of the proposed theory as a tool for understanding this new area of both practical and theoretical importance.

Information-based strategies to promote open government offer many opportunities to generate social and economic value through public use of government information. Public and political expectations for the success of these strategies are high but they confront the challenges of making government data “fit for use” by a variety of users outside the government. Research findings from a study of public use of land records demonstrates the inherent complexity of public use of government information, while research from information science, management information systems, and e-government offer perspectives on key factors associated with effective information use. The paper concludes with practical recommendations for information-based open government strategies as well as areas for future research.

Every day, the people inside government use information to develop policies, make decisions, evaluate programs, and deliver services. This Web resource draws from real agency experiences to provide a practical resource for government professionals who use information to do their jobs.

This executive briefing draws from real agency experience to provide a practical resource for the use of information by government professionals.

Traditional governmental structures have organized the capture, use, and management of information along agency lines. These “information silos” are not very useful in a dynamic environment. Information integration is considered one of the most significant ways to change the structure and function of public organizations. It has the potential to support the transformation of organizational structures and communication channels between and among multiple agencies working in different locations. This article contributes to this knowledge-building effort by examining the factors that influenced the success of selected criminal justice integration initiatives. Useful integration strategies are also identified.

This paper addresses and discusses the central issues that researchers have to deal with when conducting cross-national comparative research within the area of e-government. The issues are classified into two main categories. The first category represents the issues and challenges that may affect the reliability and the quality of data being collected for comparative studies. The second category represents the remaining issues related to the research objective, the selection process of countries and the analytical strategy. The paper discusses the major alternatives of these issues and provides a rationale for the selection process among them. The paper concludes by discussing the interrelations between the identified issues and clarifying the main decisions that researchers have to take when conducting cross-national comparative research.

Creating interoperability in the governmental context requires government leaders to take responsibility for improving the capabilities of government agencies to effectively partner with other agencies and governments as well as the private sector, non-profit groups, and research institutions. Governance is a foundational capability for creating and improving government interoperability. Recent research conducted by the CTG draws on a comparative case study of IT governance to illustrate that while effective governance structures include a consistent set of elements or capabilities, there are also a wide range of context specific issues that must be responded to in the governance design, development, and implementation processes.

This paper provides the practical perspective of studying government information technology issues. It is one of two papers that served as the background for discussions at an applied research workshop hosted by CTG in October 1997.

This paper provides the research perspective of studying government information technology issues. It is one of two papers that served as the background for discussions at an applied research workshop hosted by CTG in October 1997.

As government agencies increasingly collaborate with international counterparts on critical global issues, transnational knowledge and information sharing grow in importance. This paper explores the nature of Transnational Knowledge Networks (TKNs) and identifies critical contextual factors that hinder or enhance their performance. We explore a set of contextual distances that separate the participating organizations and discuss their potential influence on the success of TKNs. The paper concludes with a conceptual framework and a set of testable hypotheses to guide the next phase of our research in understanding knowledge and information sharing across national and cultural boundaries.

Using structuration theory, this paper argues that the World Trade Center crisis was a catalyst for a change in the conceptualization of GIT for emergency response and, consequently, much was learned about interoperability and inter- organizational geographic information systems.

IT innovation is risky business in every organization. In the complex public sector environment, these risks are even greater. This handbook is designed to help any government manager evaluate IT innovations before deciding (with greater confidence) to make a significant investment.

IT innovation is risky business in every organization. In the complex public sector environment, these risks are even greater. This handbook is designed to help any government manager evaluate IT innovations before deciding (with greater confidence) to make a significant investment.

IT innovation is risky business in every organization. In the complex public sector environment, these risks are even greater. This handbook is designed to help any government manager evaluate IT innovations before deciding (with greater confidence) to make a significant investment.

Based on findings from CTG's Advancing Return on Investment Analysis for Government IT project this paper discusses the similarities and differences of approaches, models, and methodologies developed and utilized for measuring ROI in IT investment, particularly in the public sector. The paper also provides a descriptive data analysis of trends in IT investments in the United States.

This report describes how a diverse mix of individuals and organizations representing two countries, three states, multiple levels of government, private industry, academia, and the public were able to successfully organize and then respond to improve air quality along the U.S. and Mexican border. The focal point of this study is the Joint Advisory Committee for the Improvement of Air Quality in the Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua/El Paso, Texas/Doña Ana County, New Mexico Air Basin (the JAC). It was through the JAC that this diverse mix of key actors were able to navigate the complex web of political, cultural, legal, and economic factors that posed challenges to developing a unified response to this shared air quality problem. The JAC’s strategies and methods were powerfully shaped by the characteristics of the physical setting and the organizational and political context. Many of these strategies and methods have considerable promise for other air shed regions, but must be tailored to the unique physical and social situations of each one.

Government leaders and IT executives increasingly recognize that interorganizational information integration (III) is a critical and complex process. Due to the need for integrated information at all levels of government, interorganizational information integration can no longer be pursued through ad hoc approaches that primarily rely on intuitive understandings of the way government operates. This paper presents an effort currently underway to model the social and technical processes of interorganizational information integration to improve our understanding of information system development and of interorganizational collaboration. This research seeks to enhance both the conceptual and practical models of III by building new understanding of the interaction among the social and technical processes in interorganizational information integration.

Organizations often lack adequate tools to manage the growing number and variety of electronic records. This article presents a set of practical tools that can help government agencies manage the records that are electronically created, maintained, and accessed.

In an environment where business is increasingly conducted electronically, the management of electronic records is crucial. This report describes tools that help incorporate electronic records requirements into the design of new information systems.

Digital government is a complex organizational and social phenomenon. It involves technical, organizational, and policy elements, as well as their complex and recursive interactions. Multi-method approaches have been shown as capable of presenting more comprehensive explanations of complex situations. This paper argues that multi-method approaches are valuable alternatives for e- government research.

Collaborative partnerships in the public sector are helping to pave the way for new innovations in information and service delivery. This white paper summarizes the findings of a preliminary review of collaborative public sector service delivery methods.

The Office of the New York State Comptroller decided to conduct an extensive stakeholder needs analysis before making any decisions about how to design and develop a next generation Central Accounting System (CAS). CTG worked with the agency on this project, and developed a set of recommendations for next steps in devising a plan for the CAS.

This paper considers open government (OG) within the context of e-government and its broader implications for the future of public administration. It argues that the current US Administration’s Open Government Initiative blurs traditional distinctions between e-democracy and e-government by incorporating historically democratic practices, now enabled by emerging technology, within administrative agencies. The paper considers how transparency, participation, and collaboration function as democratic practices in administrative agencies, suggesting that these processes are instrumental attributes of administrative action and decision making, rather than the objective of administrative action, as they appear to be currently treated. It proposes alternatively that planning and assessing OG be addressed within a “public value” framework.

This Guide was originally published under the title of Opening Gateways: A Practical Guide for Designing Electronic Records Access Programs in 2000 and revised in 2002. Since it was issued, technological advances have given us a much broader array of tools and approaches to providing access to information. These advances have created a broader and in some ways more sophisticated community of potential users and stakeholders whose expectations of ease of access and immediacy of information have grown exponentially. These changes, combined with a social and political environment that demands public sector entities be more open and transparent in their operations, have put increased pressures on government to provide access to more and better information through readily accessible means such as the Internet.

This guide is designed to help government agencies develop affordable, manageable, and effective information access programs. Given the changing technological and social environment, the type of planning processes facilitated by this Guide are more relevant than ever. The revisions have focused on updating many of the examples provided and language used as well as including an expanded discussion of program models available due to technological advances.

The online workbench is provided as a companion piece to Opening Gateways: A Practical Guide for Designing Electronic Records Access Programs. It is an interactive version of the Guide enhanced with features that support groups of people as they collaborate on the development of electronic records programs.

A state-local information system is one that links state and local agencies together in a coherent service delivery or administrative environment. This report discusses the findings of a research project that examined eleven state-local projects in New York State.

Most organizations are increasingly managing work and making decisions based on electronic information. This guide provides the tools that were developed to help information and program managers integrate essential records management requirements into the design of new information systems.

Global issues present many opportunities for digital government (DG) researchers to form long-lasting relationships that lead to shared research agendas focused on questions of international importance. The practical feasibility of international DG research partnerships is of interest for both investigators and funders. This paper reports the evaluation of an experiment to create sustainable international digital government research collaborations by providing legitimacy and modest funding within a minimal set of structural and management requirements. Participants rated the experience as highly positive, contributing substantially to their research productivity, community building, international awareness, and professional growth. While the working group strategy is not a substitute for direct research support, it is a readily replicable method to build international research communities, and to stimulate and enhance their scholarly work.

Organizations spend millions of dollars putting information together in data warehouses, but as many as 50 to 80 percent of those projects fail. This report, which summarizes the fourth seminar in the UIG Seminar Series, highlights the lessons learned from the creation of the prototype Homeless Information Management System.

In order to implement the state's new annual reassessment program, the New York State Office of Real Property Services set out to identify the needs of the local assessment community. CTG worked with this agency on the project, and produced a report that presents a collaboratively developed set of recommendations for moving the Annual Reassessment Program forward.

This study provides a complex but optimistic picture for improving the integration of justice information. It provides an analysis of the current integration realities and discusses enablers and barriers to criminal justice information integration.

Public and private sector organizations recognize the importance of information sharing as a way to improve planning and increase productivity. Because of this trend, the use of multiple data sources for enterprise level planning and decision making has become even more important. This paper identifies current research and practical experiences in the use of multiple data sources to support performance measurement, strategic planning, and interorganizational business processes.

New information technology (IT) systems are serious, and potentially risky, investments for government agencies and nonprofit organizations. This guide is designed to help public sector managers better understand how a return on investment (ROI) analysis can take some of that risk out of their next IT investment.

A prototype voice response system was designed to improve the way business permit inquiries were handled by the New York State Office of Regulatory and Management Assistance. This report presents the results of testing that prototype system.

The system dynamics group at Albany has been developing approaches to decision conferencing using a combination of group facilitation techniques linked to projected computer models in the room for more than 20 years. Over the years, the group has developed a series of pieces of small group processes to build system dynamics models with groups, i.e. scripts. The Group Model Building (GMB) process reported here has several characteristics that make it different from most other experiences in the group. While the common setting involves managers interested in tackling a specific problem, this work involves a research team interested in building theory about the complexity of intergovernmental information integration. Additionally, the reported GMB process took place in small sessions of two to three hours, while the common practice at Albany involves intensive one or two-day meetings. In this way, the paper will include general thoughts about the implications of these differences for the GMB process.

The justice enterprise faces many performance challenges that can be addressed more successfully through better information-sharing initiatives.This toolkit is designed for justice professionals to use when considering or planning for a justice information-sharing initiative.

This paper sees a smart city not as a status of how smart a city is but as a city’s effort to make itself smart. The connotation of a smart city represents city innovation in management and policy as well as technology. Since the unique context of each city shapes the technological, organizational and policy aspects of that city, a smart city can be considered a contextualized interplay among technological innovation, managerial and organizational innovation, and policy innovation. However, only little research discusses innovation in management and policy while the literature of technology innovation is abundant. This paper aims to fill the research gap by building a comprehensive framework to view the smart city movement as innovation comprised of technology, management and policy. We also discuss inevitable risks from innovation, strategies to innovate while avoiding risks, and contexts underlying innovation and risks.

Information technology plays a crucial role in the public sector, and has the potential to transform the way government works. This report provides a set of recommendations for the National Science Foundation to design its Digital Government Research Program to help support that transformation.

This paper is a conceptual and empirical exploration of the tensions inherent in the drive to increase openness and transparency in government by means of information access and dissemination. The idea that democratic governments should be open, accessible, and transparent to the governed is receiving renewed emphasis through the combination of government reform efforts and the emergence of advanced technology tools for information access. Although these initiatives are young, they already exhibit daunting complexity, with significant management, technology, and policy challenges. A variety of traditional and emerging information policy frameworks offer guidance, while diverse research perspectives highlight both challenges to and opportunities for promoting information-based transparency. Early experience with Data.gov, a central component of the U.S. Open Government Initiative, suggests that two fundamental information policy principles, stewardship and usefulness, can help guide and evaluate efforts to achieve information-based transparency.

This study investigates the dynamics of a knowledge sharing effort in New York State government that involved multiple organizations, divisions, and geographically separated offices in the development of the Multi-Purpose Access for Customer Relations & Operational Support System.

In order to design sound electronic recordkeeping practices within an organization, the necessary requirements must be identified and understood. This paper presents the two components of a tool that can help organizations complete that work.

Paperwork. Few words evoke such a negative picture of government operations. This report presents the results of a prototyping project that demonstrated document imaging and work flow solutions in the vehicle title operation at the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

This paper describes the transformation of a city government led by a 311 program, which provides a consolidated channel for non-emergency services and information. The paper first discusses the concept of “smart city” as a foundation for the examination of the 311 program as a practice of government innovation. The paper then presents the details of the 311 program as it is being instantiated in the City of Philadelphia. In-depth interviews with city government officials and managers responsible for operating the city’s 311 system (Philly311) offer insights into the contributions the system is making to a more efficient, effective, transparent, accountable, and collaborative city government. Performance data provided by Philly311 enables more efficient resource allocation and informed decision making. Philly311 is credited with making the process of service delivery more transparent to the public, and providing traceability of requested services imbues service departments with a sense of accountability. Service level agreements are providing measurable standards of municipal services and are used to support accountability in terms of service status. Regular reviews of service level agreements and content of the system promote interdepartmental collaboration. 311 systems are broadly recognized as powerful tools to engage residents in improving their neighborhoods. Interviews also revealed challenges Philly311 is facing including limited funding impeding further improvements in software, systems, and staffing, and provided some insights into innovative strategies for addressing resource constraints. Institutionalizing interdepartmental collaborations also emerged from the interviews as a critical new capability required for advancing from the initiation stage of Philly311 to the operational, expansive, and sustainable stages.

[Winner of Best Innovations in Practice Paper Award, ICEGOV2012]

Sharing of knowledge, information, and practices across cultural and national boundaries has become a means to address critical global problems. As government agencies increasingly collaborate with international counterparts on these issues, transnational knowledge and information sharing networks grow in importance as mechanisms for collaboration. This paper explores the nature of Transnational Public Sector Knowledge Networks (TPSKNs) and identifies critical contextual factors that shape their performance. In these networks, each participating organization operates within complex national, organizational, and information contexts. The contextual differences between participants produce distances in culture, politics, intentions, organizational factors, relationships, knowledge, resources, geography, and technology. These distances influence their ability to engage in the processes and interactions that are essential to network performance. The paper concludes with a conceptual dynamic model that accounts for the relationships among these factors which can guide further research in understanding knowledge and information sharing across national and cultural boundaries.

State-local information systems must recognize and account for enormous diversity of community settings, organizational cultures, structures, staff. This report, based on eleven initiatives in New York State, presents principles and practices for ideal state-local information systems.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are rapidly changing and new technologies, processes, and skills are constantly emerging. An important challenge for the research community is to gain knowledge about these emergent technologies in specific contexts, sometimes before they are actually implemented. This paper draws on our experience in the use of comprehensive prototyping as a methodology for building understanding of emerging technologies in new contexts. A Testbed research strategy combines various prototyping, business analysis, team work, and training techniques to understand the specific characteristics of a technology and the context in which it is going to be embedded. The paper presents three cases of Testbed research approaches developed within a 10 year period and presents some insights based on those experiences to inform the efforts of both practitioners and researchers.

More and more government agencies are creating collaborative relationships to improve services they provide. This article presents a summary of an international research project that is studying eleven collaborative partnerships developed to deliver government information.

Making a city “smart” is emerging as a strategy to mitigate the problems generated by the urban population growth and rapid urbanization. Yet little academic research has sparingly discussed the phenomenon. To close the gap in the literature about smart cities and in response to the increasing use of the concept, this paper proposes a framework to understand the concept of smart cities. Based on the exploration of a wide and extensive array of literature from various disciplinary areas we identify eight critical factors of smart city initiatives: management and organization, technology, governance, policy context, people and communities, economy, built infrastructure, and natural environment. These factors form the basis of an integrative framework that can be used to examine how local governments are envisioning smart city initiatives. The framework suggests directions and agendas for smart city research and outlines practical implications for government professionals.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about multi-method approaches to studying social phenomena; in this contribution e-government is the social phenomenon of interest. A set of advantages and challenges to multi-method approaches are introduced and then used to frame a case analysis. Two case studies involving multi-method approaches to e-government research are presented to illustrate strategies for responding to implementation challenges in both large-scale and small-scale projects. The case discussion provides new insight into how the challenges to multi-method approaches can be managed.

Building an electronic reference desk that integrated government records and geographic information relied on a number of technical components. This report presents the technical results responsible for the development of that system.

The telephone is the means by which most people deal with the government. This report presents the results of a project that developed a prototype voice response system for the NYS Office of Regulatory and Management Assistance.

A multitude of private and public institutions are now using e-commerce to deliver products and services to customers and clients. For many of these organizations, jumping into the world of e-commerce means they must link legacy systems and their attached databases to new Web-based applications and distributed databases. The ramifications of this process are examined in this report.

Every government function depends on information, and each function has a set of policies behind it. This report, which summarizes the third seminar in the Using Information in Government Seminar Series, addresses the use of government information and the policies that govern that use.

Government faces many challenges that can be addressed more successfully when information is shared across organizational boundaries. Initiatives that depend on these kinds of information sharing are typically complex, difficult, and prone to failure. They are more likely to succeed when they include a comprehensive and systematic assessment of both organizational and technical information sharing capabilities.