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E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government 143

Chapter VIII

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government: A Study of Federal Government CIOs

Christopher G. Reddick, The University of Texas at San Antonio, USA

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between e-government and the creation of a more citizen-centric government. This study provides a conceptual framework showing a possible relationship among management, resources, security, and privacy issues that would lead to creating a more citizen-centric government with e-government. It explores the opinions of chief information officers (CIOs) on e-government issues and effectiveness. A survey was administered to federal government CIOs in June and July 2005. The survey results revealed that CIOs who have higher management capacity and project-management skills were associated more with creating a more citizen-centric federal government. The contri- bution of this study to the literature on e-government is that it identifies two key attributes that CIOs can attain in order to reach higher stages of e-government advancement for their department or agency.

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Introduction

Electronic government or e-government in this study is defined as the delivery of govern- ment information and services to citizens through the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This definition has been used in other empirical studies of e-government adoption (Moon & Norris, 2005a). This research adds to this definition with Grant and Chau’s (2005) interpre- tation of e-government as a broad-based transformative initiative, which is consistent with creating more citizen-centric government. Gronlund (2005) reviews the various definitions of e-government. That author has found they share a common theme of the need for organi- zational transformation through technological implementation. We realize that focusing on the Internet and e-government is a more limited way of examining e-government because of the rise of non-Internet technologies (Gronlund & Horan, 2004). Citizen-centric government is the delivery of government services continuously to citizens, businesses, and other government agencies through the Internet (Seifert & Relyea, 2004). Citizen-centric government through e-government acts more as a transformation tool that provides a new government model based on being citizen focused (Schelin, 2003). Some scholars have argued that for e-government to fully realize its capabilities, it must transform government from agency centric to citizen centric (Seifert & Relyea). The term e-government emerged in the late 1990s. It was born out of the Internet boom. The literature of IT use within government is different from e-government because it more often focuses on external use, such as services to citizens and organizational change (Gronlund & Horan, 2004). Definitions of e-government that focus exclusively on service-delivery components fail to capture the more complex aspects of government transformation be- cause of IT (Grant & Chau, 2005). This study attempts to address this issue by focusing on citizen-centric e-government.

Existing Research on CIOs

The existing research on chief information officers (CIOs) or information resource manag- ers (IRMs) has focused on the federal government (Bertot, 1997; Bertot & McClure, 1997; Buehler, 2000; McClure and Bertot, 2000; Westerback, 2000), state governments (Reddick, in press; Ugbah & Umeh, 1993), local governments (Fletcher, 1997), and comparisons between the public and private sectors (Ward & Mitchell, 2004). There have been no scholarly studies, of which we are aware, that examine public-sector CIOs and their opinions on e-government issues and its effectiveness. This is most likely attributed to the Internet being a relatively new research area in the public sector. In general, the management of IT in private-sector organizations has long been a focus of IS research, but the extent of diffusion has not been as extensively explored in public-sector organizations (Fletcher, 1997). This study empirically focuses on the connection between e-government and creating a more citizen-centric federal government. The existing research has begun to explore the relationship between e-government and increasing citizen-initiated contacts with govern- ment; this study fits into that research area (Thomas & Streib, 2003; West, 2004). However, much needs to be done to identify the key attributes of CIOs, which enable them to create more citizen-centric organizations.

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government 145

Existing Empirical Work on E-Government Adoption

In a survey of state and federal government CIOs and an analysis of their Web sites, West (2004) arrived at the conclusion that e-government has fallen short of its potential to transform government service delivery and trust in government, that is, creating a more citizen-centric government. E-government does have the possibility of enhancing the responsiveness of government and increasing beliefs that government is efficient and effective. There is also evidence that e-government increases citizen-initiated contact with public officials (Thomas & Streib, 2003). The potential of the Internet to improve citizens’ access to government and involvement in policy making is well articulated in the literature. However, citizen-centric government is difficult to achieve in the public sector since governments need to provide universal access to their services (Mahler & Regan, 2002). Citizen-centric e-government is consistent with the four-stage model of e-government adop- tion in that governments can reach higher levels of adoption if they become more citizen centric. Layne and Lee (2001) proposed a “stages of e-government growth model” that begins with first cataloging online information; second, moving to online transactions; and then third, moving to vertical integration in which local systems are linked to the national systems. The fourth stage of adoption is horizontal integration across different functions leading to one-stop shopping for citizens (e.g., a Web-site portal). Citizen-centric federal government would involve the final stage of the Layne and Lee model of horizontal integra- tion whereby citizens use Web portals to attain services rather than get information from individual departments or agencies. This study is different from the existing work on e-government adoption since it focuses on one of the highest stages of development, namely, citizen-centric government. Most of the existing empirical work that tests the impact of e-government adoption primarily examines the first two stages of providing online information and municipal e-service delivery (Ho & Ni, 2004; Moon & Norris, 2005b). Additionally, Andersen and Henriksen (2005) argue that the role of government in technological diffusion is studied the least and therefore is the focus of this chapter. A study of local e-government over 2 years found that as local-government Web sites ma- ture, they will become more sophisticated, transactional, and more integrated vertically and horizontally (Moon & Norris, 2005a). These authors and others found that e-government adoption is progressing rapidly if measured by the deployment of Web sites. However, a movement toward integrated and transactional e-government is progressing much more slowly in more of an incremental fashion (West, 2004). The key question that this study explores is, what can CIOs do to enable their departments or agencies to become more citizen centric to achieve higher levels of e-government adoption? In order to examine the views of federal government CIOs on e-government and the creation of a government that is more citizen centric, this study is divided into several sections. In the following section, this study articulates the evolution of the roles and responsibilities of federal CIOs. There also is a description of how the public-sector CIO’s environment is uniquely different from what can be found in the private sector. We identify what it means to create a more citizen-centric federal government through e-government. A conceptual framework is outlined explaining what factors one would expect to be associated with creating a more citizen-centric federal government. The final sections articulate how these findings

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can be used to move e-government to higher stages of development, and demonstrate two easily identifiable skills that CIOs can attain through graduate education.

Clinger-Cohen Act and CIOs

The Information Technology Management Reform Act (ITMRA) of 1996 (P.L. 104-106), also known as the Clinger-Cohen Act, established the position of CIO in executive-branch agencies. This act requires agency heads to designate CIOs to lead reforms to help control system-development risks, better manage technology spending, and achieve measurable improvements in agency performance through the management of information resources (General Accounting Office [GAO], 2004b). However, almost a decade after the passage of this act and despite the government’s expenditure of billions of dollars annually on IT, GAO’s management of these resources has produced only mixed results. The Clinger-Cohen Act is consistent with the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 (P.L. 103-62) that requires agencies to establish clear and measurable objectives, to implement a process, to report on the degree to which those objectives are ac- complished, and to report regularly to Congress on their progress in establishing and meeting performance objectives (McClure & Bertot, 2000). Together, the Clinger-Cohen Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act (P.L. 10413) of 1995 (which deals with the strategic acquisition and management of information resources by federal agencies) ushered in a new era of IT management practices in the federal government (Relyea, 2000; Westerback, 2000). With the passage of the Clinger-Cohen Act, federal departments and agencies had the au- thority and responsibility to make measurable reforms in performance and service delivery to the public through the strategic use of IT (Bertot & McClure, 1997). Prior to this act, the majority of agencies and departments had an IRM official as their top information person who was viewed as an administrative overhead function. IRMs were far removed from the agencies’ strategic decision making and program offices that they served with little or no ac- cess to senior agency officials. As a solution, the Clinger-Cohen Act states that federal CIOs will report to and work directly with agency directors. As a result, the CIOs were raised to the executive level and were expected to ask the tough questions about strategic planning, outsourcing, and attaining economy and efficiency (Buehler, 2000). The importance that CIOs place on strategic planning for their department or agency can be found in existing survey research. A survey of senior IT officers and managers of federal departments and agencies revealed that their top priority was aligning IT with strategic goals (AFFIRM, 2004). Existing research on federal CIOs has examined whether proper management of information resources can lead to effective, efficient, and strategic organiza- tions (Bertot, 1997). Evidence was found for a connection between federal agency strategic planning and agency mission attainment, which face different environmental constraints than private-sector organizations.

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government 147

The Environmental Context of Public-Sector CIOs In the seminal work by Bozeman and Bretschneider (1986), these authors argued that manage- ment information systems (MISs) developed for business administration are not altogether appropriate for public administration. Essentially, the different environmental context of the public organization is an important constraint, which makes public MIS diverge from business. The environment of public MIS differs from that of its private-sector counterpart through greater interdependencies that create increased accountability, procedural delays, and red tape (Bretschneider, 1990). Budget and other constraints on purchasing make it impossible for comprehensive approaches to work well, such as strategic planning (Roche- leau & Wu, 2002). In a survey of state agencies concerning the ability of public organizations to control and man- age information resources, the following was found: (a) Public agencies find their programs and sources of information externally oriented, (b) recruiting and retaining a technically competent workforce in public agencies to manage information resources effectively was found to be a problem, and (c) public agencies are constrained by fiscal crisis and a political climate in which they must operate (Ugbah & Umeh, 1993). These unique differences make public-sector Internet use especially worthy to explore.

Citizen-Centric Federal Government and E-Government

The E-Government Act of 2002 (H.R. 2458) defines electronic government as the use by the government of Web-based Internet applications and other information technologies. This act established the Office of Electronic Government within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to oversee implementation of its provisions. The E-Government Act was enacted with the general purpose of promoting better use of the Internet and other information technologies to improve government services for citizens and internal government operations, and provide opportunities for citizen participation in government (GAO, 2004a). According to the General Accounting Office, the OMB and federal agencies have taken many positive steps toward implementing the provisions of the E-Government Act. Creating a more citizen-centric government can be found in President George W. Bush’s management document, the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) of 2002. This docu- ment argues that the “… administration’s goal is to champion citizen-centered electronic government that will result in a major improvement in the federal government’s value to the citizen” (EOP, 2002b, p. 23). In evaluating the PMA, the GAO showed that the results in terms of e-government implementation were mixed, with many goals only being partially achieved or there being no significant progress made (GAO, 2005b). Citizen-centric e-government is further elaborated upon in the Bush administration’s document E-Government Strategy (EOP, 2002a). President Bush has made expanding e-government part of a five-part management agenda for making government more focused on citizens

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and results. According to the Bush administration, the three main aspects of expanding e- government are to make it easier for citizens to obtain service and interact with the federal government, improve government efficiency and effectiveness, and improve government’s responsiveness to citizens. E-government is “… critical to meeting today’s citizen and busi- ness expectations for interaction with government” (p. 3). Although the PMA does not specifically define citizen-centric government in its application to the federal government, we can discern from reading the document that it implies a focus on citizen expectations driving government responses rather than the other way around, with an emphasis on performance measures. Citizen-centric government essentially focuses on providing citizens with the services and information they require from their government.

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework demonstrated in Figure 1 shows the relationship between six factors that are predicted to create more citizen-centric federal government. Each of these factors is discussed along with its respective hypothesis.

Management Capacity

Managerial Innovation

Resource Capacity

Security and Privacy

E-Government Management

Top Management

Support

Project

Citizen-Centric Government

Figure 1. Conceptual framework of factors that predict creating a more citizen-centric federal government

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government 149

Management Capacity

The literature on public administration in e-government has often argued that effective man- agement is a critical catalyst for its advancement (Brown & Brudney, 1998; Ho & Ni, 2004). The benefits in the public-administration literature of the impacts of IT are often associated with the efficiency and rationality of service provision (Danziger & Andersen, 2002). For instance, putting a strong CIO in place can be done to address the federal government’s many information and technology management challenges (GAO, 2005a). The literature on management capacity and its impact on federal e-government initiatives is not as well developed as the local e-government literature. For instance, has e-government made the federal CIO a more effective manager? Empowering employees to make more decisions on their own is a desirable trait according to the total quality management (TQM) literature. Has e-government facilitated the empowerment of employees in the federal government? Finally, the literature on public administration also mentions that performance measures are of critical importance in both public and private sectors. Have federal departments or agen- cies been able to achieve greater results because of e-government? These three management factors are expected to have an impact on creating a more citizen-centric federal government. Indeed, in a survey of all three levels of government, public-sector IS managers attach more importance to managerial issues than technical ones (Swain, White, & Hubbert, 1995). The following hypothesis can be used to show the impact of management capacity on creating a more citizen-centric federal government.

H1: As CIOs believe that e-government management capacity factors are important, this will create a more citizen-centric federal government.

Security and Privacy

Besides the importance of management capacity outlined in the literature, there also is a growing trend to think about e-government in light of security and privacy concerns. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States, there has been an emphasis on homeland security and emergency preparedness as it relates to information systems (Dawes, Cresswell, & Cahan, 2004). One of the crucial and growing issues for the near future of e-government is the security of information infrastructure and government information applications (Stowers, 2004). This trend is consistent with the security and privacy of digital information. For instance, threats or attacks on information systems could compromise national security. In addition, the privacy of citizens’ personally identifiable information (PII) is of paramount importance with increased incidence of identity theft. The federal government must make sure that it has safe and secure information systems. IT security remains a top priority for federal CIOs in President Bush’s second term in of- fice (ITAA, 2005). Federal CIOs continue to focus on security and authentication as key building blocks for the advancement of e-government (ITAA, 2004). According to federal government CIOs, in the age of terrorism and identity theft, a clear authentication protocol is necessary for creating a more citizen-centric government (ITAA, 2004).

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However, in past studies on differences in the priorities of public- and private-sector IRMs, evidence has shown that public-sector IRMs were much less concerned with protecting in- formation. It was ranked almost last (out of 23 categories) compared to the private sector’s relatively high ranking of sixth place (Ward & Mitchell, 2004). This finding is somewhat perplexing given the recent emphasis on privacy and security issues in the federal govern- ment. Therefore, we predict that security and privacy issues should have an impact on the ability of the federal government to initiate a more citizen-centric government.

H2: As CIOs believe that security and privacy are important issues that must be dealt with in e-government, this will create a more citizen-centric federal government.

Top-Management Support The literature also suggests that if top management is supportive of e-government, this provides for greater advancement. For instance, having a champion of e-government, someone who is essentially a cheerleader identifying the benefits of an e-government project and translat- ing it into something of value, is of paramount importance (Ho & Ni, 2004). Additionally, with the increased emphasis on strategic planning in public organizations, leadership is said to be increasingly vital. If a manager is not enthusiastic about e-government and does not see its overall benefits to the organization, this is likely to wear against its advancement. Indeed, existing empirical research shows a connection between top-management support and IT planning at the local level (Ho & Ni; Ho & Smith, 2001). Therefore, support from top management is predicted to have an impact on creating a more citizen-centric federal government.

H3: As top management of a CIO’s department and agency is more supportive of e-govern- ment efforts, this will create a more citizen-centric federal government.

E-Government Project Management

Along with support from top management, there also is a need for finding and recruiting well-qualified project managers for e-government projects. Project managers are in short supply, especially for government agencies, which must compete for higher paying jobs in the private sector (ITAA, 2004). How widely and quickly have e-government projects been adopted in a department or agency is said to be the barometer of project-management success. Can e-government projects be seen through from start to finish on time and on budget? CIOs were unanimous in the belief that attracting and retaining qualified project- management personnel remains a significant challenge for moving e-government forward (ITAA, 2005). How have e-government projects changed the interaction of a department or agency with the clients or customers that it serves? Ideally, one would assume that e-government has increased citizen and business interaction with government and has provided for more satisfaction

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government 151

with contacts (Thomas & Streib, 2003). Therefore, we predict that good project management should have an impact on creating a more citizen-centric federal government.

H4: As CIOs become more involved in e-government project management, they are more likely to agree that e-government has created a more citizen-centric federal government.

Managerial Innovation The transformation agenda of e-government has been promoted under the label of the new public management, which calls for reinvention of government as an institutional reform (Grant & Chau, 2005). This managerial innovation has been one of the major thrusts of the theoretical work on e-government. Scholars have argued that e-government is associated with a more decentralized, flexible, efficient, and effective public sector (Ho, 2002; Moon & Norris, 2005b). Research shows that public agencies do indeed face higher levels of formalization and red tape than the private sector (Rainey & Bozeman, 2000). Existing studies maintain that e-government will break down the silos of information dissemination in government; it will decentralize government, allowing it to run more ef- ficiently and effectively. Agencies will share information more readily and there will be a greater amount of teamwork toward reaching a common goal. Departments and agencies will collaborate more on projects and look at IT not as part of a functional unit, but in terms of serving customers. An example of the managerial innovation having an influence on e-government is the http:// www.firstgov.gov Web portal, where instead of listing departments, the federal government lists services that a citizen most often uses. A number of CIOs also believe that the process of working together across departments, agencies, and in some cases levels of government has resulted in a new model of collaboration through e-government (ITAA, 2005). However, CIOs have started to raise significant concern about the difficulty of changing ingrained cultural attitudes in order to manage change (ITAA, 2004). Existing research suggests a connection between managerial innovation and e-government at the local level (Ho, 2002; Moon & Norris, 2005b), but there is little empirical work in this area on the federal govern- ment and the creation of more citizen-centric government.

H5: As CIOs believe that they have managerial innovation in their agency, this is likely to have an impact on creating a more citizen-centric federal government.

Lack of Resource Capacity One area that should also have an impact on creating a more citizen-centric government is whether the federal government has adequate resources to fulfill e-government mandates. The lack of resource capacity is a perennial problem that federal CIOs face in IT implemen- tation (ITAA, 2005). Is the budget Congress appropriates to an agency adequate to provide for e-government services? Has the government been able to save resources by eliminating

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manual processes through e-government? Does the department or agency have an adequate amount of IT infrastructure to fulfill its e-government mandates? What kind of outsourcing relationship does the agency have? Does the department or agency fit into the Office of Management and Budget’s vision of e-government project management—the OMB being the chief agency responsible for federal e-government? CIOs have expressed frustration with the difficulty of securing budget deliberations from Congress to fund e-government initiatives (ITAA, 2004). Existing empirical research does not show that resource capacity is a major constraint on public-sector IT planning (Ho & Ni, 2004; Ho & Smith, 2001). However, this factor is included in our model because of its importance identified in focus-group discussions with CIOs (ITAA, 2005). Finally, this chapter predicts that resource capacity should have an impact on creating a more citizen-centric federal government.

H6: The more that CIOs believe that resource-capacity issues are a problem for his or her department or agency, the less likely he or she is to agree that e-government has created a more citizen-centric federal government.

Characteristics of Federal CIOs This survey of federal government CIOs was administered during June and July of 2005. The contact information for the CIOs was taken from the CIO Council Web site at http://www.cio. gov. This Web site provides the most comprehensive listing of contact information for CIOs employed by the federal government. There were 115 federal departments and agencies that had a designated CIO official. All of them were sent a survey. In total, 38 CIOs responded to the survey, which indicates a response rate of 33%. This is a slightly lower response rate than West’s (2004) study of CIOs and e-government service delivery. The survey protocols were to initially send a cover letter to each of the CIOs indicating that in a few days they would receive a survey. The survey was seeking their opinions on e-government issues and effectiveness. Second, a formal survey and a cover letter with instructions were sent to the CIOs. This was an anonymous survey; therefore, we believe that the responses to the questions are candid. The majority of ideas for questions on the survey were taken from the series of ITAA focus-group discussions with federal CIOs and their views on IT planning and management (ITAA, 2004, 2005). Table 1 provides the characteristics of CIOs who responded to the survey and their depart- ment’s or agency’s size. The majority of CIOs who responded were from large departments or agencies that employed 5,000 or more full-time equivalent (FTE) employees. Large-sized departments represented 56% of CIOs surveyed. Smaller agency CIOs employing 99 or less FTE composed only 14% of the sample. Therefore, this research is more representative of larger department CIOs than smaller agencies. Table 1 also indicates that the typical age range of CIOs is between 45 and 54 years, rep- resenting approximately half of those surveyed. A third of the respondents were between

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government 153

Frequency Percent

How many FTE employees are employed in your department/agency?

99 or less 5 13.9

100 to 499 3 8.3

500 to 999 2 5.6

1,000 to 4,999 6 16.7

5,000 or more 20 55.6

What is your age range?

35-44 6 16.7

45-54 18 50.0

55-64 12 33.3

What is your gender?

Female 9 25.0

Male 27 75.0

How many years have you worked for the federal government?

Less than 5 years 5 13.9

5 to 10 years 4 11.1

11 to 15 years 4 11.1

16 to 20 years 2 5.6

21 to 25 years 5 13.9

26 years or more 16 44.4

How many years have you worked as a CIO?

Less than 5 years 14 38.9

5 to 10 years 13 36.1

11 to 15 years 3 8.3

16 to 20 years 4 11.1

21 to 25 years 1 2.8

26 years or more 1 2.8

What is your highest level of academic attainment?

High school diploma 2 5.6

2-year college degree 2 5.6

4-year college degree 9 25.0

Master’s degree 19 52.8

Law degree 3 8.3

Doctorate degree 1 2.8

Table 1. Descriptive characteristics of CIOs and their departments or agencies

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55 and 64 years of age. The smallest number of CIOs surveyed was between the ages of 35 and 44 years, representing around 17% of the sample. According to Table 1, almost half of the CIOs have worked for the federal government for more than a quarter of a century. Therefore, their tenure in the federal government is sub- stantial. However, those surveyed have not acted as CIOs for long. According to the survey results, 75% of the CIOs have been in that position for 10 years or less. This finding is most likely attributed to the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996, which established the new position of CIO for most federal government departments and agencies. The highest level of academic attainment for the CIOs was typically a master’s degree, with just over 50% of them holding this advanced degree. Only 25% of CIOs hold a bachelor’s degree as their highest level of academic achievement. This finding is what one would ex- pect as the requirement (having an advanced degree) when working at an executive-level position in the federal government. The characteristics of CIOs and their departments and agencies generally show that the CIOs are from large agencies. They tend to be baby boomers, are male, and have many years of experience in the federal government but fewer years of experience as a CIO. The majority of the CIOs are well educated. The survey results are more representative of large-sized federal departments and agencies than smaller ones. This should be kept in mind when interpreting the findings presented in the following section.

CIOs’ Opinions on E-Government

Structured Questions

In this section, the opinions of federal government CIOs on e-government are explored. It examines the views of CIOs on whether they agree that e-government has created a more citizen-centric federal government. We also outline the influences of management capac- ity, security and privacy, support from top management, project management, managerial innovation, and resource capacity on e-government. Table 2 presents the impact of e-government on creating a more citizen-centric federal government. Over 60% of CIOs agree that e-government has indeed created a more citizen- centric federal government. However, 14% disagree that e-government has created a more citizen-centric government. A quarter of respondents indicated that they neither agree nor disagree with this statement. However, only 40% of CIOs either disagree or are uncertain of its impact on e-government. Table 2 also shows the impact of management capacity on e-government. Has e-govern- ment made the CIO a more effective manager? First, approximately 40% of CIOs agree that e-government has made them more effective managers. Second, almost 50% of CIOs agree e-government has empowered employees to make more decisions on their own. Third, nearly 66% of CIOs believe that the performance of their agency has improved because of e-government. Overall, the management-capacity findings revealed that e-government has had a major impact on the federal government.

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government 155

Security and privacy issues are of paramount importance for federal government IT systems. This issue is evident in the CIOs’ opinions on security and privacy issues. Almost all CIOs believe that secure storage of citizen and business PII is the most important concern for the future advancement of e-government. Additionally, 92% of the CIOs believe that security and authentication are the key building blocks of e-government advancement. Finally, ac- cording to 95% of CIOs, information assurance and security is one of the most pressing concerns for e-government adoption. Not surprisingly, very few CIOs disagreed with these three above-mentioned security and privacy statements. Another category investigated is the support from top management for e-government adop- tion, which is one of the critical success factors noted in the literature (Ho & Ni, 2004). Does having a champion of e-government, someone who will spearhead the implementation of e-government efforts, make a difference toward attaining greater levels of adoption? Nearly 90% of CIOs believe that having a champion of e-government is one of the most important, critical success factors. Top management, according to over 70% of CIOs surveyed, has a vision and strategic direction for e-government. Additionally, top management is supportive of CIOs in the e-government decision-making process, according to over 70% of CIOs. There is a general agreement that the OMB has a vision and strategic direction for e-government and has been inclusive in the decision-making process. This survey outlines the level of adoption of e-government projects in the federal govern- ment. Project management has been identified as one of the most critical success factors for a department or agency to possess, according to the ITAA’s (2005) survey. E-government projects have been adopted widely and quickly, according to over 50% of CIOs. Over 60% of CIOs believe that e-government projects have increased citizen and business interaction with the federal government. E-government projects are a top priority of departments or agencies, according to almost 60% of CIOs. Seventy percent of CIOs believe that recruitment and retention of qualified e-government project-management staff is of critical importance. Has e-government been influenced by managerial innovation? The existing literature in this area shows that this has been the case (Ho, 2002; Moon & Norris, 2005b). E-government has allowed for a greater level of information sharing among departments, according to 70% of CIOs. Additionally, e-government has created more teamwork in federal departments and agencies, according to 42% of respondents. Two thirds of CIOs believe that e-government has created a new level of collaboration among departments and agencies. There seems to be support for these three aspects of managerial innovation that have a discernable impact on federal e-government. A lack of resource capacity in a department or agency is also said to have an impact on e-government advancement. Does the CIO’s department or agency lack the necessary IT infrastructure, which would inhibit e-government adoption? Only 20% agree with this state- ment of not having adequate IT infrastructure. However, approximately 50% of CIOs agree that they do not have an adequate budget to fund e-government in their department or agency. Only 28% of CIOs agree that they have not seen manual processes being eliminated because of e-government. Finally, there is a movement in the federal government to holistically and competitively outsource IT. Approximately 22% of CIOs agree that they do not take a holistic view when it comes to outsourcing e-government projects. The resource-capacity findings provide evidence that key e-government infrastructure is available, but the greater issue is not having adequate budgetary resources to fund e-government. This issue is also addressed in the open-ended question.

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ge o

f c iti

ze n

an d

bu si

ne ss

P II

is o

ne o

f t he

m os

t pr

es si

ng c

on ce

rn s

fo r e

-g ov

er nm

en t a

dv an

ce m

en t.

45 .9

48 .6

2 .7

0 .0

In fo

rm at

io n

as su

ra nc

e/ se

cu ri

ty is

o ne

o f t

he m

os t i

m po

rt an

t co

nc er

ns fo

r e -g

ov er

nm en

t a do

pt io

n. 40

.5 54

.1 2

.7 2

.7 0

Se cu

ri ty

a nd

a ut

he nt

ic at

io n

ar e

th e

ke y

bu ild

in g

bl oc

ks f

th e

ad va

nc em

en t o

f e -g

ov er

nm en

t. 35

.1 56

.8 5

.4 2

.7 0

To p-

M an

ag em

en t

Su pp

or t

H av

in g

a ch

am pi

on o

f e-

go ve

rn m

en t

is o

ne o

f th

e m

os t

im po

rt an

t cr

it ic

al s

uc ce

ss f

ac to

rs f

or e

-g ov

er nm

en t

ad va

nc em

en t.

52 .8

36 .1

11 .1

0. 0

0 .0

To p

m an

ag em

en t

ha s

a vi

si on

a nd

s tr

at eg

ic d

ir ec

tio n

fo r

e- go

ve rn

m en

t f or

m y

de pa

rt m

en t/a

ge nc

y. 22

.2 50

.0 13

.9 11

.1 2

To p

m an

ag em

en t

is v

er y

su pp

or tiv

e of

m y

de pa

rt m

en t’s

/ ag

en cy

’s p

ar tic

ip at

io n

in t

he d

ec is

io n-

m ak

in g

pr oc

es s

fo r

e- go

ve rn

m en

t. 27

.8 44

.4 16

.7 8

.3 2

Table 2. Summary of CIO opinions on e-government

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government 157

E -G

ov er

nm en

t Pr

oj ec

t M

an ag

em en

H as

b ee

n ad

op te

d qu

ic kl

y an

d w

id el

y 13

.2 42

.1 28

.9 13

.2 2

H as

i nc

re as

ed c

iti ze

n an

d bu

si ne

ss i

nt er

ac tio

n w

ith m

y de

pa rt

m en

t/a ge

nc y

22 .2

38 .9

22 .2

13 .9

2 .8

Is a

to p-

pr io

ri ty

o f m

y de

pa rt

m en

t/a ge

nc y

13 .9

44 .4

19 .4

2 .8

R ec

ru it

m en

t an

d re

te nt

io n

of q

ua li

fi ed

e -g

ov er

nm en

t pr

oj ec

t- m

an ag

em en

t an

d -s

up po

rt s

ta ff

i s

on e

of t

he m

os t

cr iti

ca l i

ss ue

s. 41

.7 27

.8 25

.0 2

.8 2

M an

ag er

ia l

In no

va tio

E -g

ov er

nm en

t h as

a llo

w ed

a g

re at

er d

eg re

e of

in fo

rm at

io n

sh ar

in g

am on

g de

pa rt

m en

ts /a

ge nc

ie s.

19 .4

50 .0

19 .4

11 .1

0 .0

E -g

ov er

nm en

t ha

s fo

st er

gr ea

te r

te am

w or

k in

pl oy

ee s.

5 .6

36 .1

38 .9

19 .4

0 .0

E -g

ov er

nm en

t ha

s de

ve lo

pe d

a ne

w l

ev el

o f

co lla

bo ra

tio n

am on

g de

pa rt

m en

ts /a

ge nc

ie s.

13 .9

52 .8

16 .7

0 .0

L ac

k of

R es

ou rc

e C

ap ac

ity

L ac

ks I

T i

nf ra

st ru

ct ur

e, w

hi ch

i nh

ib it

s e-

go ve

rn m

en t

ad op

tio n

2 .8

16 .7

44 .4

19 .4

D oe

s no

t ha

ve a

de qu

at e

bu dg

et ar

y re

so ur

ce s

to f

un d

e- go

ve rn

m en

t p ro

je ct

s 13

.9 33

.3 22

.2 22

.2 8

H as

n ot

s ee

n m

an ua

l p ro

ce ss

es b

ei ng

e lim

in at

ed a

s a

re su

lt of

e -g

ov er

nm en

t 5

.6 22

.2 19

.4 47

.2 5

D oe

s no

t ta

ke a

h ol

is tic

v ie

w o

f e-

go ve

rn m

en t

w he

n co

m pe

tit iv

el y

ou ts

ou rc

in g

e- go

ve rn

m en

t p ro

je ct

s 5

.6 16

.7 33

.3 27

.8 16

Table 2. continued

158 Reddick

Open-Ended Question

An open-ended question was also asked of federal government CIOs on their opinions con- cerning e-government issues and effectiveness. The most common responses were that CIOs had issues with a lack of budgetary resources, the OMB dictating e-government projects, and no role for smaller agencies in federal e-government initiatives. For example, in the budgetary-resources issue, one CIO believed that the most significant hindrance to implementing e-government is OMB’s practice of mandating implementation schedules that are shorter than the budget cycle. This CIO argues that agency budgets are developed 2 years in advance. Consequently, the OMB needs to either provide planning guidance that announces e-government initiatives or mandates 2 years in advance of their issuance, or allow at least 2 years for the implementation of initiatives. Another CIO stated that e-government project managers spend far too much time begging for money from reluctant agency partners. Finally, a CIO said that a lack of funding is the biggest inhibitor to e-government advancement. A second common theme was reaction from some CIOs about the role of top management being either the chief executive of the department or agency or the OMB. A CIO stated that he or she personally has not seen much value in the e-government policies promulgated by the OMB. According to another CIO, $60 billion in federal IT spending is simply too large to be managed on a top-down basis. According to another CIO, e-government is very important to my organization but has sometimes been stymied by the OMB. A CIO commented that executive leadership must really understand e-government opportunities. Thus, they must want and know how to leverage technology for successful e-government outcomes. A third common response was the role of small agencies in federal e-government initiatives. The scalability of e-government initiatives presents problems for small and microagencies, according to one CIO: One size does not fit all agencies. E-government needs to address the needs of the very small agencies (10 employees or less) as well as the larger agencies, according to another CIO. Less common responses indicated by CIOs were that too many silos of information and information technologies exist in the federal government. According to a CIO, departments and agencies are finding it difficult to keep up with new government regulations (privacy, security, etc.). A CIO commented that governments must close the digital divide for e- government to reach its full potential. One response that is consistent with creating a more citizen-centric federal government was the comment by a CIO that e-government initiatives are very worthwhile in giving citizens a participatory role in government and providing easy access to information. The results in Table 2 support many facets of e-government advancement and effectiveness. There is ample evidence that management capacity is an important catalyst for e-govern- ment adoption. Not surprisingly, security and privacy were the priorities for e-government advancement according to the vast majority of CIOs. Top-management support and direction is also crucial for e-government development. Project-management skills and support were noted as being critical success factors. Finally, the lack of resources of the department and agency was also found to have a discernable impact on e-government.

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government 159

The structured questions are also supported by some of the responses to the open-ended questions of a greater need for e-government budgetary resources, top-management support through the OMB of e-government initiatives, and the role of smaller agencies in e-govern- ment initiatives. There is some initial evidence that all of these categories are important factors that explain e-government advancement. The next section of this study investigates what impact they have as a group on creating a more citizen-centric federal government.

Descriptive Statistics of Dependent and Predictor Variables

In order to model these hypotheses on creating a more citizen-centric federal government, we composed indexes representing each of these categories. The indexes are presented in Table 3 along with their summary statistics. The dependent variable that is modeled creat- ing a more citizen-centric federal government is shown in this table. All of the statement variables outlined in Table 2 were coded in the following manner. A 2 was recorded for a response of strongly agree, a 1 for agree, 0 for neither agree nor disagree, -1 for disagree, and -2 for strongly disagree. For the dependent variable, creating a more citizen-centric federal government, the mean score was 0.58, indicating that most of the CIOs agreed with the statement. However, they did not strongly agree with this statement since the mean was above 0 and less than 1. The responses for the six categories of independent variables are outlined in Table 2. We simply added the responses for each of the categories to get an index score for each respon- dent. For example, in order to compose the management-capacity index, we added up the responses to the three statements in this category of e-government making the CIO a better manager, empowering employees, and creating greater performance results (see Table 2). For management capacity, there was a minimum score of -5 and a maximum score of 6,

Table 3. Descriptive statistics of dependent and predictor variables

Observations Minimum Maximum Mean

Have created a more citizen- centric federal government

36 -2 2 0.58

Management Capacity 38 -5 6 1.29

Security and Privacy 37 -1 6 3.95

Top-Management Support 36 -3 6 3.06

E-Government Project Management

36 -8 8 2.67

Managerial Innovation 36 -3 6 1.69

Lack of Resource Capacity 36 -6 5 -0.97

Note: Dependent variable shaded

160 Reddick

which means that there was a substantial range of responses when adding the three catego- ries together. However, the mean score was 1.29, which implies that there was more of a tendency for CIOs to agree that e-government affected management capacity. The remaining five predictor variables are also reported in Table 3. All of the mean values are positive, with the exception of a lack of resource capacity, which was negative. In this variable, a majority of respondents disagreed that resources were not much of a factor. The strongest level of agreement was for the issues of privacy and security, with a mean score of almost 4. Top-management support for e-government registered the second highest mean score of just over 3.

Results of OLS Regression Model

Using the six predictor variables alluded to in the previous section, which of these factors best explains creating a more citizen-centric federal government? Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used since we are modeling a dependent variable ranging from -2 to 2. Table 4 presents two statistically significant impacts of the predictor variables management capacity and e-government project management on creating a more citizen-centric federal government. These variables are both statistically significant at the 0.05% level. The management-capacity variable implies that as CIOs agree that management has been affected as a result of e-government, they are approximately 33% of a point more likely to

Table 4. E-government factors that predict citizen-centric federal government

OLS Regression Model

Beta Coeff. t-Statistic Prob. Sign.

Management Capacity -0.34 - (2.20)* 0.04

Security and Privacy -0.04 -(0.29) 0.77

Top-Management Support -0.02 (-0.10) 0.92

E-Government Project Management -0.38 - (2.31)* 0.03

Managerial Innovation -0.22 -(1.39) 0.17

Lack of Resource Capacity -0.07 (-0.49) 0.63

Constant (-0.55) 0.58

Model Diagnostics

F-Statistic (10.65)**

Adjusted-R2 0.62

Number of Observations 36.00

Note: * significant at the 0.05% level; ** significant at the 0.01% level

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government 161

increase their level of agreement that e-government has created a more citizen-centric federal government (beta coefficient=0.34). Additionally, CIOs who agree that project management has been affected are over 33% of a point (beta coefficient=0.38) more likely to increase their level of agreement with the statement that e-government has created a more citizen- centric federal government. These results essentially imply that the statements that e-government has made the CIO a more effective manager, has empowered employees, and has enabled the CIO to achieve greater performance milestones are correlated with creating a more citizen-centric federal government. If e-government projects have been adopted widely and quickly within a department or agency, the CIO believes e-government projects have increased citizen and business interaction with his or her agency, e-government projects are a top priority of the agency, and recruitment and retention of project-management staff are important (the four project-management statements). These statements were correlated with creating a more citizen-centric government. The six predictor variables in Table 4 explained just over 60% of the variance of the OLS regression model. The F-statistic of 10.65 indicates that the overall significance of the model is strong, being significant at the 0.01% level. However, since there were only 36 observa- tions for the regression model, this limits the interpretation of the results.

Discussion of Hypotheses

The six hypotheses mentioned previously should be reviewed in order to find out whether the evidence found in this study refutes or confirms them. Hypothesis 1 inquired whether CIOs agreed that manage-capacity factors related to creating a more citizen-centric federal government. The evidence found in this study indeed supported this hypothesis since man- agement capacity was correlated with citizen-centric government. This confirms existing literature that argues managers are more effective if they set performance targets and em- power employees to make more decisions on their own. This is consistent with the GPRA initiated in the federal government since 1993. Hypothesis 4 was also supported in the survey of CIOs. There was evidence that CIOs who had favorable views of project management and its impact on their department or agency were more likely to be of the opinion that e-government has created a more citizen-centric federal government. The ITAA (2005) has also found through extensive interviews with federal CIOs that project management is one of the most important critical success factors for IT advancement. This study lends support that good project management is also appli- cable to e-government as well. There is no evidence found in this study that top-management support is correlated with e-government. However, the open-ended question indicates that one of the issues that CIOs face is the OMB dictating e-government projects. Issues of security and privacy are critical to advancing e-government, yet they had no relationship to creating a more citizen-centric federal government. Security and privacy would override issues of citizen-centric govern- ment since it has dominated Washington agenda setting since September 11, 2001. There was no evidence found for the impact of managerial innovation popularized in the United

162 Reddick

States on creating a more citizen-centric federal government. This is surprising since the literature demonstrates such a connection. Finally, the hypothesis that a lack of resources in the federal department or agency decreases the creation of a more citizen-centric government was not supported. This finding coincides with some of the existing literature that resource capacity is not correlated with e-government advancement (Ho & Ni, 2004).

Conclusion

This study has examined some possible factors that might influence the creation of a more citizen-centric federal government. The existing literature on e-government has not provided a connection between e-government and the opinions of CIOs. This is an important area of IS research given that the federal government is the largest purchaser of IT in the United States. Creating a more citizen-centric government is one indication of the advancement of e-government into the highest stage of development (i.e., horizontal integration). This study has identified that having a greater management capacity, and project-management skills and development leads to the creation of a more citizen-centric federal government. CIOs can use these identified skills in order to reach higher levels of e-government adoption for their departments or agencies. Working more on project management and the ability to manage more effectively are skills that can be easily acquired through education at, for example, the CIO University. This is a virtual consortium of universities for federal CIOs that offers graduate-level programs that directly address executive core competencies. Since just over 33% of federal CIOs do not have a master’s degree, this would help in achieving these two important skills. Additionally, more emphasis should be placed on better recruit- ment and retention of federal project-management personnel. This issue was also mentioned in the ITAA (2005) CIO focus-group discussions. One of the major limitations of this study is that it examines the opinions of CIOs. Such responses from CIOs are limited because they are based on perceptions, not assessments of actual figures or data. CIOs have a self-interested stake in promoting the view that what they are doing is effective and efficient. As a result, future work might involve independent verification of CIO achievements in their departments or agencies in terms of e-government projects actually being implemented. A comparison across time might provide further evidence as to whether CIOs are achieving results in terms of e-government advancement.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all of the CIOs who participated in this survey. Without their generous support, this project would not be possible.

E-Government and Creating a Citizen-Centric Government 163

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166 Shulman

Chapter IX

The Federal Docket Management System and the Prospect for Digital Democracy in

U.S. Rulemaking Stuart W. Shulman, University of Pittsburgh, USA

Abstract

A large interagency group led by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked diligently to set up a centralized docket system for all U.S. federal rulemaking agencies. The result, the Federal Docket Management System (FDMS), is still a work in progress, reflecting technical, administrative, financial, and political challenges. A close examination of the effort to design, fund, and shape the architecture of the FDMS suggests many impor- tant lessons for practitioners and scholars alike. While both the new technology and the 60-year-old administrative process of rulemaking offer tantalizing glimpses of innovation, increased efficiency, and remarkable democratic potential, the actual progress to date is mixed. Neither the information system nor its users have turned the FDMS into a techno- fix for all or even much of what ails the sprawling U.S. regulatory rulemaking system. In the great American tradition of incrementalism, the FDMS represents a small step toward a number of worthy but perennially elusive goals now routinely linked to the prospect for digital democracy.

The Federal Docket Management System 167

Introduction

Agency personnel and the commenting public are adjusting to the increasingly digital landscape of the “notice and comment” process required under the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act (APA). While the APA sets a “floor below which an agency may not go in prescribing procedures for a particular rulemaking” (Lubbers, 2006, p. 6), scholars, activ- ists, and rulemaking practitioners have long recognized the benefits and burdens that accrue when the baseline requirements for gathering public input are exceeded (Furlong & Kerwin, 2004; Kerwin, 2003). Running parallel to agency and public efforts to adapt, there is a growing body of e-rule- making research and scholarship focusing on such fundamental issues as whether Internet- enhanced public participation results in better rules (Carlitz & Gunn, 2002) or in a process characterized by informed deliberation (Brandon & Carlitz, 2002; Emery & Emery, 2005). Information technology opens previously unimaginable avenues for engaging the public in meaningful and well-informed public discourse on a national scale. In its latest incarnation, the “new governance” is increasingly defined by the “tool makers and tool users” (Bingham, Nabatchi, & O’Leary, 2005, p. 547) who are building and using the architecture of electronic participation linking citizens and government. Inside the federal government, best practices continue to target efficient, cost-effective strat- egies for overworked information managers in budget-strapped agencies facing statutory deadlines and political pressure to promulgate complex rules, allocating billions of dollars of costs and benefits (General Accounting Office [GAO], 2005). Regulatory rulemaking in the United States can be a highly contested, time- and information-intensive process (Coglianese, 2003a; Johnson, 1998; Rakoff, 2000). How and whether outside commenters influence the process and final outcomes is a matter of some debate (Golden, 1998; West, 2004). Meanwhile, dedicated users of digital communications technologies have started to exploit the potential to flood agencies with vast quantities of public comments (Lubbers, 2006; Shulman, 2006). The outcome of this approach is often a boon for organized interests that instigate the campaigns. Benefits can include regulatory delay (which allows a return to Congress for redress), favorable publicity, and payoffs in terms of membership identification with a group’s mission. However, such efforts may also undermine or dilute the voice of the public as agencies face statutory and administrative deadlines to incorporate public input into a legally defensible final rule (Shulman, 2005). Large-volume public comment submissions that bash agency efforts may decrease the overall level of trust of citizens (Yang, 2005) or else hinder agencies’ options as they seek rational and coherent approaches to difficult problems (West, 2005). At the very least, they contribute directly to a preexisting “deep ambivalence about citizens directly participating in their government” (Roberts, 2004, p. 315). This chapter updates earlier reports on the status of electronic rulemaking. First, it briefly introduces the rulemaking process. Second, it documents the origin and progress of the Federal Docket Management System (FDMS) and looks closely at the evolution of the cur- rent interface for Regulations.Gov (the FDMS Web portal) in the context of recent literature on public participation and federally funded research into the impact of e-rulemaking. It draws on workshop, interview, and focus group experiences that have fed into a multiyear dialogue between researchers, regulators, and the regulated public.1 Finally, it concludes,

168 Shulman

without much surprise, that there is much work to be done to make the FDMS into a hub for enhanced digital democracy and better rulemaking.

The U.S. Regulatory Rulemaking Environment

While the slow pace of regulatory decision making may occasionally provoke controversy, rulemaking is of necessity methodical and time consuming. Precisely because it is a delib- erative process, it tends to be associated with some degree of administrative legitimacy. Yet, it is the often unmet challenge of assembling a complete and usable whole record of the multiyear rulemaking process that is cited by courts overturning final rules (Yackee, 2005). Online rulemaking offers solutions and new challenges in this regard. For example, in a rulemaking widely cited as a harbinger of things to come, the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Organic Program (NOP) conducted a 12-year rulemaking process involving numerous public hearings, national advisory-board meetings, and a mas- sive outpouring of public comments. Two rounds of notice and comment on the proposed and revised rules resulted in over 300,000 public comments. The challenges and opportunities were quickly apparent. For example, the precise number of comments reported depended on whether form letters were counted as discrete com- ments, and how and whether to count such letters remain matters of continuing debate for all parties in this process (Shulman, 2005). The evolving definition of “meaningful input” and the uncertain role of digital public participation are unsettled legal and political issues that constitute an important backdrop for the implementation of the FDMS at this early stage (Lubbers, 2006; Stoll, Herz, & Lazarski, 2006). Participants in the NOP rulemaking submitted just under 21,000 comments via a USDA Web site where they could also read the previously submitted comments of other participants. This introduced an interesting dialogical element to public input. Democratic theorists continue to watch for signs of two-way communication (give and take between officials and citizens or peer-to-peer citizen contact) that run counter to the tradition of one-way comment collection. Professor Lubbers (1998) has noted that public comments “are much more likely to be focused and useful if the commenters have access to the comments of others” (p. 214), and such was the case in the NOP rulemaking. While many stakeholders found cause to complain about substantive and procedural issues along the way, ultimately the organic standard, and the process by which it was finalized, benefited enormously from transparent, Internet-enhanced decision-making structures (Shulman, 2003; “Revisiting the Rules on Organic Food,” 1998). During the interviews with key agency personnel, one USDA official involved in the rulemaking noted,

we built an enormous amount of goodwill with the comment process with people who to this day don’t believe we got it right. Now the vast majority of the people think we did, but there still are lots of people out there, who think that we’ve sold everybody down the river, but there’s this enormous goodwill because of the comment process, because they really felt like we cared and we tried, we really tried to listen to what they were saying.

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Enhanced public participation and the credibility conferred on federal agencies are considered key e-rulemaking drivers (Beierle, 2003). When public values and knowledge infuse deci- sion making, the results are generally positive (Beierle & Crawford, 2002). For example, the Environmental Protection Agency’s review of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) showed that “informed public debate over competing interpretations of cost-benefit analyses and risk assessments can produce broad political support for enhanced protection levels” (Cooney, 1997, p. 11). A senior career official with rulemaking responsibilities at one federal agency remarked,

the public should participate because we the government agencies don’t have all the answers, we don’t know all the information. Indeed there are situations where we would have made mistakes if we did not have public input—mistakes that could have been very costly. Sec- ondly, I think that when you provide not just an opportunity to participate, but an effective opportunity to participate, those that are affected by the regulation would be more willing to accept it, to live with and comply with it. One of the basic arguments is that even if you don’t get everything you want, by participating effectively in the process, you are buying into the result. If we do normal APA type rulemaking in an effective way, bring the public in an effective way, they should feel better about the end product.

To date there has been little systematic documentation of the effect of this digital transforma- tion on either citizens or agencies. Indeed, one workshop report noted “a striking absence of empirical studies that examine the behavior of developers and governmental users of IT” (Fountain, 2002a, p. 40). While the move to Internet-facilitated governance is accelerating, there is a dearth of political science and sociological research on the impact of the Internet on the administrative state (Fountain, 2001). Scholars of public administration have made headway developing a meaningful research agenda focused on the impact of IT (Garson, 2003). However, perhaps one collateral indicator of the still-novel nature of this area is the membership of the IT and politics section of the American Political Science Association, which remains around 300 despite a total association membership of over 15,000. The interdisciplinary nature of the process may be a barrier, as well as the tendency of academic endeavors to disregard the rulemaking process generally. Political scientists have been particularly reluctant to take up the interdisciplinary challenges inherent in digital gov- ernment research. As a result, leading disciplinary journals and textbooks do not reflect the important change under way. One author, noting the lag time for well-developed theory and empirical research in the study of public administration, suggests “scholars and practitioners may be ill equipped to face the challenges of the information age” (Holden, 2003, p. 54). A classic text for students of regulatory rulemaking observes that political scientists have done a particularly poor job of studying the rulemaking process (Kerwin, 2003). Much of the available scholarship lays out a broad and complex research agenda that re- mains noticeably forward looking (e.g., Lubbers, 2002; Shulman, Schlosberg, Zavestoski, & Courard-Hauri, 2003). Initial attempts at genuinely interdisciplinary work are tentative but promising (Shulman, Callan, Hovy, & Zavestoski, 2004). While the practitioners in federal agencies are moving forward, the concept of e-rulemaking and its implications for democracy remain largely unexamined by academics. Jane Fountain (2002, p. 118) notes, “There is little theory and no coherent research program within the discipline of political

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science that seeks to account for the potential or likely effects of information processing on the bureaucracy.” For now, much of the e-governance scholarship remains speculative in nature. For example, Joseph Nye (2002, pp. 11-12) sketches a familiar bipolar vision of IT-enhanced govern- ment:

In a bleak vision of the future, one can imagine a thin democracy in which deliberation has greatly diminished. Citizens will use the set-top boxes on their Internet televisions to engage in frequent plebiscites that will be poorly understood and easily manipulated behind the scenes. The growth of thin direct democracy will lead to a further weakening of institutions ... Alternatively, one can envisage a better political process in the future. New virtual com- munities will cross-cut geographical communities, both supplementing and reinforcing local community. In Madisonian terms the extensive republic of balancing factions will be enhanced. Access to information will be plentiful and cheap for all citizens. Political participation, including voting, can be made easier.

It is against this historical backdrop that a broader e-rulemaking research community is emerging with the support of the National Science Foundation’s digital government program (Coglianese, 2003a). Collaboration between computational and social scientists imposes unique challenges, as does work between academic and governmental personnel (Dawes, Bloniarz, Kelly, & Fletcher, 1999; Dawes & Pardo, 2002). Nonetheless, significant inroads have been made over the past 2 years. The prominent role for federal funding and leadership in IT research and development is part of a well-established tradition whereby the public sector supports innovation and research with an eye toward socially beneficial applications (Comedy 2002; President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee [PITAC], 2000). Digital government research requires interdisciplinary collaboration with government part- ners to ensure that information technology used for citizen-government interaction meets the requirements of democratic institutions and traditions. Program managers in the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) at the NSF have recognized that “insight from the social sciences is needed to build IT systems that are truly user-friendly and that help people work better together” (National Research Council [NRC], 2000, p. 42). To that end, the research into, and practice of, e-rulemaking must continue to be informed by a broad, inclusive, and transparent dialogue about the tools and information systems that can balance competing visions for a democratically legitimate administrative state. This nascent research domain is likely to generate innovative data that will enable heretofore impossible empirical studies of rulemaking (Dotson, 2003). The lack of solid empirical stud- ies of rulemaking has vexed administrative-law scholars for some time (Kerwin, 2003). In the information age, however, one observer notes that “[f]ed by non-stop, real-time opinion polling, endless market testing of messages and images, and instant and cheap online focus groups, no social scientist need ever go hungry again” (Applbaum, 2002, p. 20). New automated collection techniques will track Web logs, click-through data, lengths of visits, page counts, and a host of other potential baseline data generated and easily captured by e-rulemaking systems using legally permissible session cookies. At stake in the research

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process is the potential to shape data collection and mining techniques that may fundamentally redefine the study and the practice of public participation in administrative decision making. The impetus to develop these tools emerges from observations such as the following from a rule writer working at the USDA:

As you know, one of the things that we had out of our 300,000 comments, we had probably 150-175,000 comments that were basically form letters, said the exact same thing over and over and over. Once you’ve read one, you’ve read them all. But that still leaves 100,000 individual comments that may have a kernel, a grain of a marvelous idea that you need to somehow bare it out and find it and use it. That either demands sophisticated IT infrastruc- ture, or lots and lots of people.

Computer science research will facilitate the development of e-rulemaking applications for duplicate and near-duplicate detection, stakeholder identification, and clustering issues and themes, and it will summarize content using natural language processing and informa- tion-retrieval algorithms. Over the next 5 to 10 years, these data, and the techniques used to harvest and analyze the data, will infuse a challenging yet energetic dialogue between social and computational scientists as they carve out the direction of interdisciplinary digital government-funded research (NRC, 2002; Shulman, Zavestoski, Schlosberg, Courard-Hauri, & Richards, 2001). Like much of the ongoing e-government rollout (Schelin, 2003), both fundamental and more subtle choices about the architecture of e-rulemaking will shape the new digital and democratic landscape (Lessig, 1999). The transition is fraught with peril for those who would design, approve, or use such a system. For example, information systems that provide seamless access and increased accountability can result in controversy for public-sector officials (Rocheleau, 2003). As the National Research Council (2000, p. 1) has noted, “IT is anything but a mature, stable technology,” and the leeway for innovations in democracy that has devolved to technologists and public administration managers is remarkable. The challenge for researchers in this unsettled context is to conduct interdisciplinary research capable of evaluating and anticipating the shifting terrain. Visions of e-rulemaking need to retain a long-term and evolutionary perspective in the face of demands for technical quick fixes for information management problems that plague the process:

Overwhelmingly, the most important opportunities lie in not simply automating existing applications, but rather in rethinking and remolding the structure and organization of the business process to reflect the best uses of IT and in redesigning and remolding the technol- ogy to make it most valuable in its (rethought) application context. (NRC, 2000, p. 146)

Governmental organizations, we are often told, are not prone to seeking business-process reengineering solutions. The new federal impetus to e-rulemaking, however, may do just that on a historically significant scale, comparable to that created by passage of the APA in 1946.

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The Origin of the FDMS

After an erratic and uncertain start government-wide in the mid- and late-1990s, e-rulemaking is moving toward a unified structural system for the entire federal government. Clearly, IT- based approaches to rulemaking hold the potential to increase the volume and lower the cost of citizen-to-government (C2G), government-to-citizen (G2C), and citizen-to-citizen (C2C) interactions. The potential for C2C, however, is only beginning to enter the practice of public administration (e.g., for European e-government, see Holmes, 2001), though it flourishes in the voluntary, peer-to-peer, self-organizing spaces on the Internet. The Bush administration situates its online rulemaking initiative in the government-to-business (G2B) category of its 24-point e-government plan (Office of Management and Budget [OMB], 2002a), leaving some doubt about both the immediate prospect for C2C and C2G development. The transition to e-rulemaking is attributable in part to the impetus from legislative (e.g., the Government Paperwork Elimination Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act) and adminis- trative directives (e.g., the National Performance Review) that seek to make the regulatory process open, transparent, deliberative, efficient, and effective (GAO, 2000, 2001; OMB, 2002b). Citizen demand for electronic access is also an impetus for this transition (Larsen & Rainie, 2002; Schorr & Stolfo, 1997). These various trends culminated in approval by Congress in 2002 of the E-Government Act, which specifically directs agencies “to enhance public participation in Government by electronic means” (Sec. 206[a][2]). Professor Michael Herz (2003) has noted that the act called for enhancements that were already in the pipeline, resulting in “a classic example of Congress leading from the rear” (p. 168). Indeed, many agencies already had begun to develop e-rulemaking systems when the act was signed into law (OMB Watch, 2002). What the act did was to translate a politically popular trend into a bipartisan victory for advocates of a more modern and accessible government. Despite the move toward a consolidated endeavor under the current eRulemaking Initiative, many federal agencies have been moving ahead with the implementation and refinement of their own in-house solution to the question of how to incorporate Internet-based public participation in rulemaking. More than 100 subagencies have integrated some form of elec- tronic comment process into their notice and comment rulemaking procedures, with varying degrees of success. At the individual agency level, electronic collection of public comments is often ad hoc and conducted via a nonstandardized process (GAO, 2003). Meanwhile, at another level and of relevance to the impact of e-rulemaking, some are questioning the statutory and constitutional basis for a recent expansion of the OMB’s role in rulemaking (Craig, 2003). Professor Lubbers (2006, p. 20) notes, “Perhaps the most sig- nificant administrative law development during the last two decades has been the increased presidential involvement in federal agency rulemaking.” Interestingly, many of the tools employed by the OMB when it exerts control over federal rulemaking (e.g., monitoring, prompting, or early collaboration in drafting proposals) are likely to be enhanced by seam- less IT systems for e-rulemaking. According to the President’s Management Agenda, promulgated in 2001,

IT offers opportunities to break down obsolete bureaucratic divisions. Unfortunately, agen- cies often perceive this more as a threat than as an opportunity, and in response they make

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wasteful and redundant investments in an effort to preserve chains of command that lost their purpose years ago. (OMB, 2002c, p. 23)

This theme emerged during many of the e-government interviews conducted over the last 5 years. In reference to a question about institutional obstacles to change, one long-time federal official stated, “We get in a rut. We get jaded. Bureaucracy can kill you sometimes. It truly can.” When cross-agency initiatives challenge traditional stovepipe, bureaucratic culture, a number of obstacles quickly emerge. One official at the OMB noted,

E-Government is much more about process transformation and change management than it is about the technology. The technology is the easy, easy, easy stuff. There’s an overwhelming amount of technology out there that’s applicable. It’s hard to drive that change. And you’re seeing that in rulemaking. People don’t want to lose their system. People don’t want to lose the way they manage their docket. People don’t want to lose something they identify with.

Early e-rulemaking adopters in the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) developed an impressive Docket Management System (DMS) that improved the flow of information across nine subagencies, as well as to and from the public. The DoT’s DMS was the first agency-wide e-rulemaking system that assembled entirely electronic dockets for the com- menting public to review (Perritt, 1995). In its infancy, it represented a major transformation of the rulemaking work flow. One person involved with the creation of the DMS recalled the numerous technical and organizational hurdles:

They all had their own individual processes, they all champion what they wanted to do, what they felt was best. And now you’re going to try and make everybody do it in a uniform fash- ion. A lot of resistance to that and technical barriers in the early days, the system required open forms based application, so everybody had to buy a big, expensive PC with a 21 inch monitor and do client server all for forms. Couldn’t afford it. This was a DoT wide system but they didn’t have the money and the technical configurations were horrible. We had 5 different network operating systems throughout the department. With all kinds of different protocols, all kinds of technical hurdles to make a very complicated client install happen.

Originally, the Department of Transportation played the managing partner role as the Online Rulemaking Initiative that emerged in February 2002 (GAO, 2005). The DoT commissioned Excella Consulting to perform an independent study of the seven major e-rulemaking ap- plications that were in existence at federal agencies.2 The goal was to find an existing system best suited to become the universal Web-based front end for members of the public wishing to read and comment on proposed federal rules. The report (Excella Consulting, 2002) listed several primary areas of interest:

• The public’s ability to comment • The public’s ability to search and view proposed rules and their dockets

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• The agency’s ability to review, report on, summarize, and incorporate comments • The agency’s ability to internally receive, upload, and process paper comments

Based on a complex scoring system, the DoT’s Docket Management System finished a close second to the EPA’s newer EDOCKET system. While the DoT’s many strengths were noted (automated work flow, strong internal reporting, proactive Listserv communication, flexible key-word search, and mature IT procedures), the areas for improvement included the need for better integration of content and comments, content sorting tools, and full-text search. One official at the OMB noted that there is:

a rule in technology that you really never want to be first. Sometimes first to take advantage of something is a good thing, but the best thing to be is second or third, so that you can learn from the mistakes from others.

Other agency personnel were less sanguine about the results of the selection process, com- menting that the EPA’s Capitol Hill lobbying for the managing partner role was decisive in the end. As a result, personnel at the EPA assumed the managing partner role developing the OMB- mandated e-rulemaking portal for all federal agencies. The EPA’s EDOCKET was praised in the Excella report for its integration of content and commenting, intuitive display, powerful full-text search and content manipulation and sorting tools, as well as an automated work flow based on an open, technically sound architecture. A unified regulatory access point, Regulations.Gov, went live on January 23, 2003 (Skrzycki, 2003). It expanded on the portal precedent set by FirstGov.gov (Fletcher, 2002). Officials at the OMB (2003b) estimated that the new consolidated system resulting from the eRulemaking Initiative could save the federal government close to $100 million by eliminating redundant systems. The portal Regulations.Gov was always conceived as an interim system, representing the first of three modules planned for the eRulemaking Initiative. In this first module, the Government Printing Office (GPO) hosted the front end (http://www.regulations.gov) and provided user support, while the EPA’s National Computing Center hosted the back-end collection and distribution of the comments. One of the few important innovations in Phase One was the ability to “search by keyword across all government agencies to find proposals of interest” (Brandon, 2003, p. 7). This ability lessens, but does not yet eliminate, the chal- lenge of knowing where to look within the labyrinth of federal government Web pages for an open rulemaking on a topic of interest. An EPA official used the example of a motorcycle to illustrate the long-term goal:

The guy that owns a motorcycle in the Midwest and the small business owner who manufac- tures motorcycles ... anybody that touches a motorcycle can go on line and find out what rules affect ... whatever his relationship with the motorcycle is. Whether he’s a parts distributor or the salesman, owner, operator, or whatever, that if they want to say something about these rules that they can readily, easily, in, as fast and cheap, of manner as they can.

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A GAO report in late 2003, noted that, despite some difficulties, during its first 3 months in existence, Regulations.Gov provided substantially greater electronic access to proposed rules and commenting than either the DoT or EPA systems. Nonetheless, this interim portal has received very few substantive comments in its short life span. The GAO report found Regulations.Gov was listed in only 2 of 411 rulemakings published over the period of its study. Part of the problem may be that Regulations.Gov is a passive system, “requiring users to take the initiative to find out about recently proposed rules” and the ability to comment on them (GAO, 2003, p. 17). While EPA officials suggested the low rate of use “could be because commenters have become used to filing comments in a particular way,” it remains to be seen whether a central portal will ever become popular with the commenting public. Focus group responses from organized interest groups suggested a number of technical and organizational reasons why Regulations.Gov may remain underused for some time. For example, groups will be unlikely to promote citizen-to-government communication that will steer traffic away from their own information-gathering Web sites. Instead, advocacy organizations will look for creative ways to reverse engineer public comment portals back to their own Web content, maximizing their influence over the message and the valuable respondent contact information. Nonetheless, over a 33-month period ending in September 2005, the initiative reports Regulations.Gov “is one of the most heavily trafficked E-Gov web sites,” with an excess of 11 million hits produced by 1.6 million visitors viewing over 8.6 million pages and files (Morales & Moses, 2006). In September 2005, the eRulemaking Initiative launched the second module, the Federal Docket Management System, which is presented as “a full-fledged content management system” (Morales & Moses, 2006). The FDMS will be the home for all electronic and paper dockets that are on a phased migration to the centralized system. The 2003 GAO report noted that “a number of legal and policy issues still must be resolved,” including the issues involved in making electronic documents the official record, as is currently the case at the DoT. However, the rollout of the second module did not hinge on the resolution of these issues. Indeed, the 2005 GAO report praised the initiative for following 28 of 30 “key practices” for managing the initiative. GAO reviewers were particularly happy with the extensive and effective collaboration with other agencies. Administrators of the initiative reported on a successful “cross-agency FDMS development workgroup” involving “more than 100 IT, regulatory, and docket managers and staff across 25 federal agencies” (Morales & Moses, 2006, p. 1). For the third module, the eRulemaking Initiative will create the Integrated Federal eR- ulemaking System. This system will create a seamless electronic process for developing, reviewing, and publishing federal regulations and similar documents for internal agency use. This desktop system (the Regulation-Writers Workbench) will provide a host of tools to assist in all phases of the process. Whereas the docket migration to the FDMS is manda- tory, participation in this third module by agencies is voluntary, and its future is far from certain (Stoll et al., 2006). Indeed, the initiative has already encountered, and has usually overcome, a number of specific and general challenges (such as bureaucratic resistance, a lack of awareness, and a temporary suspension of funding) stemming from the fact that, as Jeff Seifert (2006) of the Congressional Research Service points out, e-government has no natural domestic constituency.

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The Prospect for Digital Democracy in U.S. Rulemaking

For some, the rise of so-called “click-on democracy” eventually will lead to a viable pathway from public indifference to greater civic engagement on a massive scale (Davis, Elin, & Reeher, 2002). The electronic republic has been held out by some (and dismissed by others) as a remedy for inequities that plague democratic and administrative practice. It remains to be seen whether e-rulemaking will significantly alter the adversarial decision-making char- acteristic of much administrative procedure in the United States, particularly with respect to environmental matters (Dryzek, 2000; Fischer, 2000; Zavestoski & Shulman, 2002). To date, there is little empirical data, no developed theory, and too few studies to support any authoritative statement about the impact of e-rulemaking. Indeed, much of what is available fosters ad hoc speculation rather than substantive insight. So while the potential for IT enhancements to improve democratic processes is apparent to many, the risks associated with moving administrative decision making and public deliberation online may be less well understood (Coglianese, 2003b; Tesh, 2002). Some perils of online governance have been clearly identified, including social fragmentation, mass manipulation, and increased political and economic inequality due to the digital divide (Sunstein, 2001; Wilhelm, 2000). Yet, even Professor Sunstein’s widely noted fragmentation thesis is made suspect by examples, such as the Howard Dean presidential campaign, which uses peer- to-peer organizing to generate impressive levels of face-to-face political activity involving tens of thousands of people across the country. According to Cornelius Kerwin (2003) of American University, the core elements of rulemak- ing are information, participation, and accountability. Each of these elements potentially takes on new significance as IT-based applications are introduced and enhanced over time. The use of IT in rulemaking creates the possibility for transparent, low-cost information flows, improved rulemaking management, as well as many-to-many communication. Rulemaking offers the public a chance to participate in a way that is not present in Congress (Kerwin, 2003). It is a process designed to allow participants to sort through and challenge facts derived from numerous sources, experts, and laypersons alike. How individual agencies actually weigh such comments varies widely. One administrator noted,

I will say that in general, the most compelling public comments come from the most influential stakeholders and the stakeholders with the largest stakes, if that’s a proper way to put it. And I think the system pretty much has identified … I mean those folks know where they need to play, that sort of thing. Getting another member of the public … of course there’s probably rulemakings where that’s a much bigger, there are probably styles and kinds of rulemak- ings where comments from the individual or the collective opinion of individuals—like I can imagine food labeling or something. You know, food labeling rules by the FDA may be propelled by the aggregate weight individual commentary or something. The rules I have experience aren’t influenced by that.

In theory, IT-enhanced public participation will result in better and more durable rules that stand up to court challenges and better achieve the goals of the authorizing legislation. Ul-

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timately, the official rulemaking record will be more accessible once it is entirely electronic as existing and new tools (e.g., full-text search, self-indexing databases, or stakeholder iden- tification) allow rule writers and the regulated public to drill down into the many sources of relevant data.3 In the past, judges have been “somewhat perplexed and unhappy about some of the rulemaking records they have been called upon to review” (Lubbers, 1998, p. 216). As one judge noted, in a lengthy rulemaking proceeding, the record “too often resembles a safari through uncharted lands without benefit of a guide” (Judge Wald, as cited in Lubbers, p. 217). Agencies using mature electronic dockets will likely find it easier to compile the record needed to meet the standards under the logical outgrowth doctrine (Kannan, 1996). If rule-writing agencies can more easily show comments were submitted and considered, then a key threshold for rulemaking durability in the courts is crossed. Future enhancements to e-rulemaking will create innovative methods for advance notice, allowing agencies to target groups and individuals likely to be affected by proposed rules. While Listservs are the most likely method to transition from a passive to an active notification system, we also can expect to see more ubiquitous plain-English translations of regulatory language, as well as Amazon.com-style referral applications (Coglianese, 2003a). For example, if a commenter has submitted concerns about biotechnology in the organic rulemaking, he or she might be prompted via e-mail or during a future visit to a government portal to look at other open or pending rulemakings dealing with genetic engineering. Just as electronic commerce offers users referral and notification services, so too will electronic government, assuming the Office of General Counsel (OGC) can approve such practices. On occasion, significant rules are promulgated without targeted outreach to interested par- ties and thus potential commenters. As a result, public input is limited. For example, new treasury-department rules created under the authority of the USA PATRIOT Act to enhance law-enforcement surveillance raise a range of privacy issues for all users of U.S. financial institutions. Despite the widespread discussion of threats to privacy and other civil liberties post September 11th, only 180 public comments were received. While 70% of the comments came from individuals concerned with privacy, the final rule reflected only the “sophisticated statements made by financial institutions and their lawyers” (Cuéller, 2003, p. 4). In this case, the researcher concluded that layperson comments could have been more meaningful had they directly addressed the possible methods for allaying privacy concerns. We can expect future iterations of e-rulemaking will explicitly guide commenters to make substantive suggestions, perhaps through an optional TurboTax-style interface that leads the public not only to participate, but also to make more useful submissions that will effectively shape the final rule. What will be interesting will be to see where these more structured comment architectures develop. The most likely developers appear to be e-advocacy action- center firms on contract to interest groups seeking to streamline their role in the management of public sentiment. One can imagine a range of human-computer interfaces proliferating in the marketplace as groups seek to offer a menu of options for commenters of varying levels of sophistication and time commitment to the comment process. For many groups, these flexible comment portals may redefine the nature of advocacy and education in the American political system. Public access to agency procedures and methods, as mandated under the Freedom of In- formation Act (FOIA) and the Electronic Freedom of Information Act (E-FOIA; Leahy 1998; Strauss, 1989), will be standardized and hence more manageable. The use of IT in rulemaking should be able to ease the twin burdens of delay and cost that plague users of

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FOIA and E-FOIA (Grunewald, 1998). In addition, e-rulemaking will greatly enhance the “government in the sunshine” philosophy that “does more than merely create a visitors gallery and convert rulemaking into a spectator sport…[that] empowers the public to question the proposed regulation, and the data and assumptions on which it is based, before it becomes effective” (Kannan, 1996, p. 219). Ultimately, this increased transparency and accessibility will lower the number of FOIA requests and force agencies to better defend their decisions when they release their final rules. New systems for e-rulemaking can also be expected to result in user-friendly methods for navigation through complex and heterogeneous dockets. As noted by Professor Lubbers (2002), the growth of useful government Web sites in recent years is nothing short of re- markable. With that expansion of e-government services on the Web, both by rule-writing agencies and the National Archives and Records Administration, came a host of navigability challenges, not only for the commenting public, but also for end users and IT managers in the federal agencies. Access to more information is a boon to democracy only when it is easily penetrable with tools that eliminate insignificant documents from a query. One useful way to describe this capacity is in terms of horizontal and vertical axes (Lub- bers, 2002, p. 4) that allow online inspection and full-text search capacity from cradle to grave in a rulemaking life cycle. The horizontal view captures “every meaningful step” in rulemaking, with end users helping to define what counts as meaningful, while the vertical view allows access to all the studies and comments that shaped a final rule. While these tools are emerging rapidly in the private sector, the process of aligning all federal rulemaking to a “global seamless view,” as described by Professor Lubbers, remains a slow and cumbersome one. Nonetheless, IT visionaries like Eduard Hovy imagine a perpetual “Super-Google” on every rulemaking that goes backward and forward in time, gathering, sorting, and clustering documents from every imaginable electronic source. Others, such as Robert Carlitz who is very usefully exposing system flaws by unleashing his army of “bots” on the system, call for technology development with a normative bent. According to Carlitz (2006, p. 9),

an electronic docket should be more than an online incarnation of the old paper-based sys- tem; it should be a gateway to new forms of public participation, encouraging interaction among participants who can read each other’s comments as they are submitted; and it should provide a platform for online dialogue. It should also facilitate multi-media contributions, allow for complex, linked submissions and have the capacity for direct access to computer models used to generate data for specific comments.

Conclusion

A rich and challenging dialogue about the shape of e-rulemaking is under way. While in its infancy, an interdisciplinary research community has formed to assess and inform the development of information technologies that serve the public and rule writers. To date, little is actually known about whether this transition is likely to benefit or degrade the

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role of public participation, though the murmurs abound about the many perils of moving rulemaking online. As with all policy innovation, particularly technologically determined innovation, the risk of unintended consequences is present. While the Internet may usher in a new era of more inclusive, deliberative, and legally defensible rulemaking, it may be just as likely to reinforce existing inequalities, or worse, create new pitfalls for citizens wishing and entitled to influence the decision-making process. Still, much of the evidence gathered over the last 5 years of workshops and sustained dia- logue with agency personnel suggest that the parties responsible for building and using an integrated federal e-rulemaking system are aware of the high stakes measured in terms of democratic legitimacy, accountability, and regulatory effectiveness. To translate that aware- ness into a functioning architecture, scholars, federal officials, and many public stakeholders will need to continue to deliberate in a transparent and inclusive manner. The public rationale for e-government is often couched in the rhetoric of cost savings and other familiar efficiency metrics. Efficient, effective, and responsive e-government, as defined by the OMB, may be at odds with the core principles of participatory democracy as envisioned by advocates of wider and enhanced forms of public commentary. Since federal agencies are neither equipped nor well positioned to examine the impact of IT on democracy, it remains for students of democratic theory, administrative law, and many others to investigate how e-rulemaking actually impacts citizen notions of trust and legitimacy and the nature of the deliberative process (Schlosberg & Dryzek, 2002). A new generation of interdisciplinary scholars is embracing the study of public administration, intrigued by the unpredictable but seemingly powerful impact of information technology on the regulatory process. Given the importance of regulatory rulemaking and public participation, these efforts will necessarily provoke greater public scrutiny of the architecture of Regulations.Gov and similarly critical citizen-government interfaces. The dialogue under way will help inform those who find themselves steering the juggernaut known as e-government as well as the end-user public, whose practices and demands drive a cat and mouse game that can oc- casionally become a part of the rulemaking process. For now, all the parties encountered seem willing to support a wider and far-reaching debate about what a better e-rulemaking system might be.

Acknowledgments

This research was made possible with three National Science Foundation grants, EIA-0089892 “Digital Government: SGER: Citizen Agenda-Setting in the Regulatory Process: Electronic Collection and Synthesis of Public Commentary”; EIA-0328914, “SGER Collaborative: A Testbed for eRulemaking Data,” and SES-0322662, “Democracy and E-Rulemaking: Com- paring Traditional vs. Electronic Comment from a Discursive Democratic Framework.” Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation.

180 Shulman

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Endnotes

1 Semistructured interviews were conducted by a team of three academic researchers between July 21 and July 24, 2003. Most of the 15 interviews were conducted on the condition of ano- nymity in accordance with Human Subjects guidelines at each of the researchers’ universities. Interviews were conducted at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), USDA, DOT, IRS, HHS, and GSA.

2 The seven agencies assessed in the Excella report were the EPA, DoT, Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), Nuclear Regulatory Commision (NRC), Federal Communica- tions Commission (FCC), FDA, and Department of Energy (DoE).

3 For more information on the computer science research on information retrieval, summarization, clustering and other techniques being brought to bear using real-world eRulemaking data, visit the NSF-funded eRulemaking project home page at http://erulemaking.ucsur.pitt.edu/.