Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change
I am reading this book that was published by the Brookings Institution. I have been meaning to read it for the last year and decided now was the time. Fountain supports her theories not only through the work of other researchers but through the classification and analysis of 50 finalists and semifinalists in the Innovations Program in American Government. When the book was written the federal government had about 25 cross-agency websites. The value of this work is not only its well-crafted theory and its documented descriptions of the practice of eGovernment at the federal level from 1993 until its publication in 2001. The book is both cause for optimism and also a warning. Fountain cautions against the theory of technological determinism...the idea that technology will lead inevitably to the transformation of pubic institutions. Fountain agrees that the growth of neworked computing, particularly the Internet has and can enable revolutionary transformation of the nation state. Nevertheless, she cautions that there are no guarantees. She further develops the framework (based on earlier work in human/computer interaction and technology diffusion) that she calls the "enactment of technology" within the structure of institutions and oganizations. She makes a strong case that political science, organizational behavior, and social science must work with computer science and engineering to study how bureacracies can permit, and in part be transformed, into productive organizational networks that can more fully participate in, and take advantage of the network computing. That's a mouth full but it is both rich and nutritious!
10:23:52 AM 
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