Designing Web Technologies for Local Governance Reform: Good Management or Good Democracy?
Juliet A. Musso University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning & Development (213) 740-0636
[email protected] Christopher Weare University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication (213) 740-7649
[email protected] Matthew C. Hale University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning & Development
[email protected] April 1999
1
ABSTRACT This paper examines the extent to which innovative applications of web technology might advance local governance reform. Synthesizing theories from communications, public policy, urban political science, and political philosophy, it develops two basic approaches to local governance reform. The entrepreneurial model envisions the city primarily as a local service provider, while the participatory model stresses the civic character of cities. We then use a systematic content analysis of 270 municipal web sites in California to examine the extent to which applications of Internet technology support each model of reform. We conclude that most municipal web sites lack a clear mission, and provide few of the features that might effect meaningful improvements to local governance. Those that do promote a particular approach appear more likely to support entrepreneurial than participatory reforms. A few exemplar sites, nevertheless, provide a rich array of information, and structure communications channels in a fashion that might improve democratic processes.
Introduction This paper examines the extent to which current uses of web technology have the potential to support reform of local governance. The rapid adoption of Internet technologies by government and political officials suggests that they may be valuable tools for governance reform. There has been particular attention, both in academia and professional practice, to local government uses of electronic technology (Varley, 1994;
Hague and
Loader, 1999; Tsagarousianou, Tambini, and Bryan, 1998). Nonetheless, the debate regarding democratic uses of new communications technologies has remained largely speculative. There has been little systematic empirical evidence regarding the quality of government services on-line and the extent to which government use of technology provides the information and interactive capabilities that can meaningfully improve governance.1 This paper analyzes the extent to which on-line innovations to government communications support entrepreneurial or participatory reforms among California cities. We draw upon theory in communications, urban policy, and political philosophy to distinguish the features of entrepreneurial and participatory reforms, and consider the manner in Internet technologies might support each approach to reform. Using a systematic content analysis of 270 municipal web sites in California, we explore the extent to which municipal uses of communications technologies appear designed to further governance reform. We conclude that the majority of municipal web sites are poorly designed, with few innovative applications of technology, and no clear mission. Those sites that do provide rich information or innovative communication capabilities appear to promote “good management” rather than “good democracy.” Their information and communications applications tend to concentrate heavily in the areas of enterprise and service provision functions, rather than facilitating communication between residents, access to policy makers, or democratic discourse generally. Only a few exemplar sites provide a rich array of information, and structure communications channels in a fashion that might improve democratic processes.
2
Politics, Technology, and the Rhetoric of Reform As the personal use of computers becomes more commonplace,2 and a myriad of transactions occur over the Internet and the World Wide Web, the potential of new technologies to improve governance remains unclear. Abramson, Arterton and Orren (1988) argued a decade ago that new technologies conceivably could influence governance through a number of processes: citizen lobbying, government mobilization for public support, communications between levels and branches of government and citizen participation. They found only limited uses of new communications technologies for governance purposes, at that time, and argued that those uses tended to reinforce pre-existing power relationships between interest groups. Other studies have found that most growth in communications has been in business settings, for commercial, not social or political purposes (Dutton, Blumler, and Kraemer; 1987; Rondfelt, 1992). As Bimber (1998) discusses, the debate regarding the democratic effects of telecommunication technologies has become no less contentious in recent years. This debate has advanced little, however, for reasons that Arterton (1987) identified over a decade ago: Discussions about the usefulness of communications technology for democratic participation generally produce confusion because the nature of the causal connection between technology and political effects is so nebulous. (p. 26) The rapid pace of concomitant change in technologies, policy institutions, and social structures might petrify even the most skilled prophet of “electronic democracy.” Anyone audacious enough to enter the “rivalry of hyperbole”3 should heed Paul Samuelson’s fabled words: “if you must predict, predict often!” This is not, however, to deny the importance of understanding the potential of new technologies to improve governance. Seemingly small changes in governmental processes can have significant effects.4 Rather, it is to suggest a somewhat more modest and empirically based approach to the issue. We approach the question from a policy perspective, with a specific interest in how technologies affect policy formulation and service delivery. We begin by developing more clearly specified models of governance reform that have a firm basis in political theory. We have chosen to focus on municipal governments because it is at the local level that citizens most directly experience service provision, and act as direct participants in the democratic process. This paper argues that the debate about the democratic effects of telecommunications technologies can be enriched by greater attention to institutional detail, including the level and scope of government using the technology, the structure of governance, and on the relationships between government, citizen, and the society at large. In often treating government as generic, the debate about electronic democracy ignores important issues relating to the very different roles that American local governments, states, and the national government play in policy formulation and service delivery (citations??). For example, given America’s enormous scale, and its extreme geographic and cultural diversity, “electronic town halls” would appear to be more practical at the local than the national level. The debate has also paid inadequate attention to cross-national differences; “cyberdemocracy” would obviously play out quite differently in the highly centralized France system than it would in the Swiss cantons. Moreover, we argue that technology reform can usefully be framed through the application of models of democracy found within the public administration and political science literatures.
As Peters (1996) discusses,
quite different assumptions regarding problem diagnosis, policy making, and the public interest frame the major models of governance reform. More market-oriented reform strategies, for example, rely on decentralized govern3
ment, privatization of services, and incentive-based policy tools. This vision of reform might call for innovations such as auction-based technologies, or other approaches that might facilitate transactions or correct information asymmetries. In contrast, more participative reforms involve flat management structures that facilitate communication between service recipient and provider, and consultative or negotiated approaches to policy making. This approach to reform might employ technology to facilitate neighborhood organization, or to break down communication barriers between citizens and political officials or administrators.
Municipal Reform Models and Technology Design The Internet and the World Wide Web offer two main capabilities that can further local governance reform (Bimber, 1998; Raab, Bellamy, Taylor, Dutton, and Peltu, 1996; Ambramson et.al., 1988). First, cities may distribute and citizens may receive up-to-date information concerning municipal affairs cheaply and conveniently. Internet-based information distribution can dramatically improve citizen and business knowledge of municipal affairs because of the ease of access, its constant availability, and the ability to present it in a visually pleasing and understandable format.
Second, through e-mail and chat rooms, the Internet facilitates communication across
distances, across time, and across disparate social groups and institutions. This communication channel can also support transactions between government and constituents. As the blossoming field of Internet commerce indicates, numerous local government functions, such as approving building permits and zoning applications, could be automated and simplified. The role of these technological capabilities will, however, differ under varying models of governmental reform. To clarify the reform debate, we focus on two primary ways of envisioning urban governance: city as service delivery system, and city as civic polity, the focal point of community and the first level of democratic access. To clarify the connection between reform models and technology design, each of the two models can be further divided into two subcategories. Entrepreneurial reform may entail enterprise development, providing services to local business to facilitate economic development, and service reform, improving the provision of local services to the citizenry. These two subcategories roughly correspond to the “development” and “allocative” functions of the city identified by Peterson (1981).5 Participatory reforms may entail pluralist reforms, facilitating the formation of interest groups described by Dahl (1961), and improving their access to the decision making process. Another frequently discussed model of participatory reform is communitarian (Etzioni, 1996), which would seek the strengthening of social networks, or “social capital” (Putnam, 1993; Coleman, 1990), and would attempt to improve political discourse regarding social issues (Yankelovich, 1991). Table 1 shows that each perspective suggests a somewhat different emphasis in the use of new telecommunications technologies. In the remainder of this section, we discuss briefly the “good management” and “good democracy” models of reform, and then elucidate what each model would imply about technology design. Promoting good management: an entrepreneurial reform model. Much of what a city does involves enterprise activities, the provision of goods and services to households and businesses, often on a fee-for-service basis (citation deleted). Peterson (1981) has argued that the need to attend to such enterprise activities, in conjunction with the migrational threat offered by business and wealthier homeowners, makes urban politics “quiet.” It is in the interest of cities, he argues, to concentrate on service provision and building the cities’ economic base.6 In contrast, 4
Table 1 Technology Design within Models of Metropolitan Reform REFORM MODEL
INTERNET CAPABILITY Information Provision
Communication Channels
Enterprise
Service
• • • • • •
Business and Tourism Information Programs Supporting Business Ordinances Related to Business Business Climate Employment and Business Opportunities Advertisements
• • •
Businesses, Tourism or Chamber of Comm Economic Development Applications and City Transactions
• • • • • •
Public Safety Culture and Leisure Parks and Recreation Transportation Calender of Events Public Library
• • • •
Public Safety Culture and Leisure Transportation Public Library
• • • • • •
Elected Officials City Manager Other Governmental Bodies Policy Making Process Local Interest Groups Election Information
• • • •
Elected Officials City Manager Links to Other Governmental Bodies Links to Local Interest Groups
• • • • •
Elected Officials Policy Making Process Neighborhood Organizations Fraternal and Social Organizations Non-governmental Organizations
• • •
Elected Officials Discussions of Local Issues Links to various Social Organizations
2. Civic Policy Interest Group
Communitarian
5
1. Entrepreneurial
Peterson argues, cities are less likely to engage in redistributive or other highly contentious policies. This vision of the city as enterprise maps closely onto a change strategy one might characterize as “entrepreneurial reform,” a customer-oriented approach to service improvement. Entrepreneurial reform would include many of the innovations described by Osborne and Gaebler (1992), such as improved information about services, and reduction in the costs of transactions between residents or businesses and city departments. The explosion in business and retail uses of the World Wide Web suggests that its potential to advance municipal entrepreneurial reform efforts is considerable. To the extent that cities concentrate services in the allocative and developmental functions, one would expect municipal web pages to emphasize these functional areas. This entrepreneurial reform model has two components, enterprise and service delivery. The enterprise component focuses on economic development activities. A municipality interested in furthering economic development could employ a web site to build the local economy in numerous ways. It could attract tourists and new businesses through the advertisement of recreational or business opportunities. To promote business development it could supply support services and ease local regulatory processes. A town may build the local business information infrastructure by providing information on economic development programs, links to economic development officials, employment listings, advertisements or links to local businesses, and links to the Chamber of Commerce or other business organizations. The cost of local regulations may be eased by posting land use and other pertinent information, providing easy access to key officials, and automating permit transactions. The second component is service delivery. Improvements to service provision entail similar types of applications but directed towards different municipal functions. Municipalities provide a rich package of services including police and fire protection, recreational facilities and programs, public libraries, transportation services, and cultural and leisure programs. A web site could inform citizens about the availability of services, and ease access to them, and as such, facilitate what Osborne and Gaebler term “customer driven government.” For example, municipalities might post information about the location of service centers, names of contact officials, or service and event schedules. Moreover, a web site could create a central point of contact through which citizens make inquiries or lodge complaints, allowing administrators to maintain close contact to those that they serve. Promoting good democracy: participatory reforms. As Peters (1996) points out, one of the limitations of market-oriented reform models is their reduction of governance to an instrument of economic interest. The entrepreneurial vision promotes quality services for residents, but it simultaneously narrows, and demeans, the role of the citizen. Moreover, urban scholars are by no means united behind Peterson’s vision of “quiet,” developmentally oriented urban governance. Many scholars, following in Dahl’s (1961) pluralist tradition, view urban policy making as a battle between interest groups. For example, Yates (1984, p. 34) characterizes local policy making as a raucous process of “street-fighting pluralism... a political ... pattern of unstructured, multilateral conflict... characterized by diversity, complexity, instability and interdependence of interests...”
As a result of the fragmented
political organization of cities, and the diversity of urban interests and divisibility of services, Yates concludes that mayors have difficulty asserting policy influence, administrators are ineffective, and “citizens find that participation in urban policy making carries high costs and elusive benefits.” (p. 7). Moreover, the political process is also inequitable, placing disportionate barriers to participation on the urban poor. This vision of a pluralist system gone seriously awry does not reveal simple solutions. As Berry et. al. (1993) discuss in their analysis of neighborhood participation, efforts to involve citizens in urban governance face formidable barriers to success. The seeming failure of the Great Society’s urban action programs led some to dismiss 6
participatory reform efforts as superficial, and others to condemn them as attempts to co-opt potential sources of political dissent (Moynihan, 1965). Nonetheless, Berry et. al. (1993) argue, these urban reform programs institutionalized citizen participation requirements, and in many cities left a legacy of active grass roots and neighborhood associations.7 There is no single approach to participatory reform. Yates’ model of “street-fighting pluralism” implies that each issue involves a different set of actors and decision agents. This “may the best group win” competitive approach to policy making might imply that reforms should level the playing field, providing information about government to residents, lowering the costs of interest group formation, and facilitating interest group access to decision makers. This, in turn, would help ensure that all interests, and viewpoints, were fairly represented in the pluralist struggle. Although this approach might amplify citizen “voice,” and help to enfranchise the poor, it is hardly likely to make local government easier to govern, and almost certain to slow policy making and increase administrative costs. This pluralist vision has been challenged by advocates of more communitarian or neighborhood-based approaches to improving democratic processes and developing civic society. Within this general framework a number of diverse theories are bound by a common thread, the need to nurture a sense of the commonwealth, rather than to fight street battles over divisible benefits. For example, Barber (1984) criticizes liberal democracy for its basis in “radical individualism” (p. 110), and its tendency to focus governance on instrumental goals such as the protection of property rights. Barber and others argue that to embed democratic participation within community requires that interest group politics be replaced with the politics of association within and among civic groups, at the neighborhood level (Etzioni, 1996, Cook, 1996; Cooper, 1991). Local association arguably helps to strengthen democracy by engendering trust and cooperative behavior between neighbors, and thereby building social capital, relationships that foster trust, credible commitment, and norms of generalized reciprocity (Coleman; 1990). Putnam (1993) argues that social capital promotes civic virtue and promotes collective action, reducing the reliance of individuals on “clientelism,” and on coercive hierarchical relations between government and individual. It can also contribute to what Barber terms “dialectical ties,” (235) the integration of residents into overlapping communities of interest. Another important aspect of the communitarian vision is the need to advance understanding of public values and tradeoffs through meaningful political discourse. Barber argues that “strong democratic talk,” taking place between neighbors, plays an important role in feeding civic education. Yankelovich (1996) discusses the importance of “working through” issues, to come to terms with the value tradeoffs inherent in most public choices. In contrast to entrepreneurial reforms, participatory reforms might employ the Internet to enhance the process of governmental decision-making rather than the production of outputs. In a pluralistic model citizens exert political influence in a variety of ways. Residents or business owners may “voice” preferences directly by voting or contacting elected or appointed officials, or they may express concerns collectively through local political organizations. In this struggle for influence, technology might enhance the fairness and inclusiveness of the process by facilitating individuals’ ability to contact and influence key decision-makers and voice their interests in decisionmaking forums. It could also lower the costs of forming groups of like-minded citizens by providing a central point of contact through which citizens may identify and contact others with similar interests. In contrast to the pluralist focus on interest group formation, a communitarian approach to reform would focus more on the development of stable grass-roots social networks, and the promotion of democratic deliberation and value clarification through horizontal communication networks. For example, use of technology to further 7
neighborhood-based governance might involve the employment of communication networks that support the communication of members of block clubs, neighborhood associations, or parent-teacher groups. One would expect the technology to support activities that encourage face-to-face communication among residents, such as neighborhood based councils and planning groups. Moreover, one would expect information and communications channels not to focus narrowly on vertical communications between citizen and politician, but to incorporate both vertical and horizontal communications, as well as links to other levels of government. It may be somewhat difficult to discern the extent to which a particular use of technology supports more pluralist or more communitarian reforms. The same functionalities that level the playing field in interest group politics may also further citizen contacts that promote communitarian ideals. Thus, while analysis of design may be suggestive, further research on the actual communication patterns supported by specific technological designs will be required to differentiate between these two models of reform. Nonetheless, it is clear that the development of meaningful neighborhood governance requires horizontal communications that build civic ties and enrich democratic deliberation.
Municipal Web Technology Use Among California Cities We now turn to an analysis of the extent to which the existing deployment of communications technology has the potential to support “good management” or “good democracy” through the urban reform models described above. To date, most empirical work has involved case study of a few innovative cities, and as such may overstate the potential of technology.8 Our study examines the entire population of cities in California, to understand the extent to which cities are using new communications technologies, and to explore the state of technology adoption and design. The project focuses specifically on municipal applications of World Wide Web technology. A municipal web site is defined as any site, either publicly or privately provided, that includes information about a municipality in California.9 The information need not be specific to city government; rather, sites that provide entertainment, business, or economic information relating to a particular municipal jurisdiction were included within the sample. Two extensive searches of the Web were conducted to identify municipal web pages, the first in the autumn of 1996, and the second in the summer of 1997. In late 1996, there was at least one web site in 112 of California’s 460 cities; by the following summer, we identified 214 cities with web site addresses.10 Sixty-one cities had two or more sites, and eleven had three or more different sites describing some aspect of the locality. In less than one year, the total number of municipal web sites in California had grown from 135 to 290, an increase of 115 percent. Table 2 contrasts the characteristics of the municipalities that adopted Web sites to non-adopters11 The two groups appear different in several ways that have implications for municipal reform. First, the municipalities that adopted Web sites are substantially larger in population, and also have significantly higher levels of governmental expenditures and revenues.12 They also appear to have residents who are more politically active, as evident in their higher levels of voter registration. Given that adopter cities tend to be larger, to have relatively high fiscal capacity, and higher levels of voter participation, they would seem to have both the resources and residential interest required to support innovative applications of web technology. Second, the residents of adopter cities tend to be slightly older on average, and to be of higher socioeconomic status, with higher median incomes and proportionately more residents with a college education and work8
Table 2 Group Means of Demographic and Political Variable Variable
Cities With Web Sites N=210
ing in managerial positions. Adopting cities have proportion-
Cities Without N=244
ately more white residents than non-adopters.13 In addition, citizens in adopting communi-
General Demographic Factors
ties are apparently more conser-
Population*
91,190
26,674
Average Age*
35.0
33.5
Percent White*
79.2
71.6
This evidence does raise the con-
Racial Dispersion
.52
.49
cern that Internet technology
Percent Urban*
81.4
49.1
may increase in the gap between
Political Factors
vative, which may simply reflect their socio-economic status.
information have’s and have-
Percent Registered*
50.7
43.4
not’s, as wealthier socially elite
Percent Democrats*
44.3
49.5
cities get on-line first.14
Percent Third Party Members
3.2
3.4
A survey of webmasters in adopter cities, shown in Figure
City Government
1, found that a number of dif-
Total Expenditure (millions)*
116.0
16.7
ferent agents have taken the lead
Total Revenue (millions)*
114.7
17.0
in designing and implementing
Per-capita Revenue**
892
761
municipal web pages.15 Almost one-half of municipal web sites
Social Status
are maintained by either a city,
Percent College Graduates*
28.8
17.1
or a partnership between a city
Percent Professionals*
32.5
22.9
and a private agency. For example, many web design firms
Wealth
have helped cities design web Median Household Income*
42,500
34,200
sites, apparently to advertise
Median House Value*
240,800
162,500
their services. Interestingly, almost 40 percent of municipal
Total Observations = 454 *T-test of difference of means significant at 5% level **T-test of difference of means significant at 10% level
web sites are maintained by Chambers of Commerce, Tourism Bureaus, or private, for-
profit firms, many of which are attempting to support the web page with advertising revenues. The high level of involvement of private enterprise in web design might lead one to expect more emphasis on this function. An important topic for future research will be to examine if these various providers systematically provide different types of content.
9
Figure 1 Source of Figure Municipal 1 Web Sites by Survey Source of Municipal Web Sites by Survey Individual 4.8%
Non-Profit 4.8%
City 35.2% Private 23.0%
Chamber of Commerce or Tourism Bureau 15.2%
Public-Private Partnership 17.0%
Figure 2 Emphasis of Municipal Web Sites 50%
48%
48% 45%
44%
45%
43%
40% 35% 30%
30% 25%
Very Important
23%
Somewhat Important
20% 15%
Unimportant
13%
10% 7% 5% 0% CITY GOVT.
ECON DEV
10
TOURISM
Content Analysis Methodology To explore the extent to which existing web sites support the four models of municipal reform, we now turn to the results of an analysis of Web page content. In Fall 1997, we conducted a structured content analysis of 270 sites in existence at that time. Three trained coders scored 125 variables regarding the types of information provided, the level of interactivity, and the general design and emphasis of each site. Inter-coder reliability was acceptable given the highly varied and often complex design of web sites. Using Krippendorf ’s (1980) alpha, questions scored on a nominal scale had an alpha of .69 and questions scored on a ordinal scale had an alpha of .76. These scores indicate that the observed level of agreement was respectively 69% and 76% above that would be achieved by pure chance.16 There is tremendous variation in the type and quality of information, and of interactive features, available on these web sites. Some sites provide large amounts of information on a wide array of civic functions and allow users to communicate electronically with elected officials or city staff. Other sites are so elementary that they resemble not much more than a type-written page electronically presented. General emphasis Each of the sites was coded on three variables measuring the extent to which it emphasized the areas of city government (e.g., information or links to political agents and officials), economic development (e.g., business climate and land use information), or tourism (shopping and recreational information or links). These were not relational codings; a site could receive a high score on all three. As Figure 2 illustrates, most sites do not place a strong emphasis on any of these areas. Only one-quarter of all municipal web sites strongly emphasized city government in their orientation. Almost one-half of all municipal web sites de-emphasized or omitted altogether information in each of the three areas. Moreover, few sites strongly emphasized more than one function. The degree of emphasis on tourism information is negatively correlated with both emphasis on city government (r = -.31) and on economic development (r = -.10).17 There is a slight positive correlation between an emphasis on city government and on economic development (r = .12), but it is not statistically significant at the 5% level. Only 25 sites (fewer than ten percent) were deemed to emphasize strongly two of the three functional areas.18 Although these three areas of emphasis do not map directly into our four models of municipal reform, the striking divergence in observed emphases strongly supports the notion that web sites can be and are employed to promote multiple goals. Consequently, an accurate understanding of their effects on democratic governance does require the application of more refined models of governance.
Good Management or Good Democracy? We now turn to an examination of the extent to which the design of municipal web page technology among California cities appears to support the reform approaches discussed above. Our analysis supports three primary conclusions. First, most municipal web pages are rather superficial with regard to substance, and do not exploit the potential of telecommunications technology. They do not provide the rich package of information and communication capabilities required to support meaningful reforms. Second, those that do promote a particular approach 11
appear more likely to support “good management” (entrepreneurial, or management, reform) than “good democracy” (participatory reform). Third, a few exemplar sites provide a rich array of information, and structure communications channels in a fashion that might improve democratic processes. Information provision Table 3 summarizes the percentage of sites providing information with regard to specific municipal functions. The best way to characterize the results is that municipal web sites are “thin” with regard to information provision, and emphasize enterprise and municipal service information somewhat more than information about political processes or community organization. A fairly substantial percentage of sites provide general information about business and tourism, culture and leisure, and municipal services such as police and transportation. In contrast, few sites provide the types of specific information that would have the potential to reduce substantially the costs of doing business in the city. For example, only 39.5% provide information about city ordinances pertaining to business, and fewer than half (49.3%) provide a calendar of current events. The results also suggest that technology is designed primarily to facilitate routine interactions between service providers and recipients (the entrepreneurial function) rather than direct citizen participation in policy making processes. Compared to information about economic development or service provision, information related to democratic participation is more likely to be wholly omitted from municipal web sites. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most common category provided was information about elected officials, with 63 percent of sites providing this information. In contrast, only 14 percent of sites provided up-to-date information about elections, and few sites provided information about community organizations such as local interest groups, fraternal and social organizations, or other non-governmental organizations. Moreover, municipal web sites do not tend to provide a rich blend of information in any of the reform areas. Only 22.2 percent of sites provide information in all six categories of municipal service provision, and only 3.3 percent provide information in all six enterprise categories. Performance with regard to richness of information related to participatory reform is particularly poor. Fewer than 1 percent of all sites provided information in all nine categories relating to the political process; and fewer than 40 percent of sites provided more than three categories of political information. Communications capabilities Table 4 summarizes the communications capabilities of web sites with regard to the three areas of local governance reform. For simplicity, we report only the communications links to the economic development department, police department and city council. The overall pattern of links to the police is representative of other city departments such as fire, parks and the public library. The economic development department closely approximates (and often contains) the links to all other enterprise functions. Similarly the links to the city council does not differ significantly from links to the mayor’s office. Links to local businesses, tourism opportunities or business organizations are quite common, existing in over two-thirds of the sites. In contrast, the data suggest that municipal web pages are not designed to improve communication with city officials. The quality of communications access, moreover, fails to exploit the new possibilities afforded by the Internet. Most sites appear to perform a telephone book function, merely repeating information already commonly available in the government pages of most directories. Very few sites function as a detailed directory, providing 12
Table 3 formation Provision by Models of Metropolitan Reform
REFORM MODEL 1. Entrepreneurial EnterpriseOriented Information
ServiceOriented Information
2. Civic Polity Interest Group & Communitarian Oriented Information
Percentage of Sites Providing Information
Type of Information
• Business and Tourism Information • Programs Supporting Business • Ordinances Related to Business • Business Climate • Employ. and Business Opportunities • Advertisements INFORMATION RICHNESS • All six categories • More than half of categories
65.6% 24.1% 47.0% 35.9% 37.0% 3.3% 30.0%
• Public Safety • Culture and Leisure • Parks and Recreation • Transportation • Calender of Events • Public Library INFORMATION RICHNESS • All six categories • More than half of categories
65.6% 80.7% 70.0% 75.2% 49.3% 50.4%
• Elected Officials • City Manager • Other Governmental Bodies • Policy Making Process • Election Information • Local Interest Groups • Neighborhood Organizations • Fraternal and Social Organizations • Non-governmental Organizations INFORMATION RICHNESS • All nine categories • Six or more categories • Five or more categories • Four or more categories
63.3% 51.5% 20.4% 58.1% 14.1% 8.5% 23.7% 19.6% 25.6%
22.2% 63.3%
0.4% 10.7% 21.5% 38.1%
13
Table 4 Communication Channels by Models of Metropolitan Reform
1. Entrepreneurial Enterprise
• •
•
Links to Businesses, Tourism or Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Dept ♦ Mail Address ♦ Telephone Number § Two or More Numbers ♦ Contact Name § Two or More Names ♦ E-mail Address § Two or More Addresses Links ♦ Applications and Transactions
67.4% 35.9% 55.9% 14.1% 33.3% 10.7% 19.6% 1.9% 36.3% 20.7%
•
Typical City Department (Police) ♦ Mail Address ♦ Telephone Number § Two or More Numbers ♦ Contact Name § Two or More Names ♦ E-mail Address § Two or More Addresses ♦ Links
31.9% 51.1% 21.1% 34.1% 14.4% 14.8% 3.3% 37.4%
•
City Council ♦ Mail Address ♦ Telephone Number § Two or More Numbers ♦ Contact Name § Two or More Names ♦ E-mail Address § Two or More Addresses ♦ Links
37.8% 48.5% 9.3% 52.6% 18.1% 21.1% 4.1% 14.1%
• • • • • •
Other Governmental Bodies Local Interest Groups Neighborhood Orgs. Fraternal and Social Orgs. Non-governmental Orgs. Chat rooms or Bulletin Boards
35.6% 5.6% 13.0% 17.0% 19.6% 10.0%
Service
2. Civic Polity
Percentage of Sites Providing Communications Channel
Communication Channels
REFORM MODEL
Interest Group & Communitarian
14
multiple contact names and telephone numbers within a functional area. Consequently, Web sites appear designed to channel communications through a central source, rather than decentralizing service delivery by providing more open channels of communication between the public and the municipality. The one possible exception is that a fairly sizable number of sites provide links to departmental web pages (37.4%), or to the web pages of individual city council members (14.1%). To the extent that web design is decentralized, which cannot be determined within our data set, links to department or representative web pages might make the city government more permeable, reduce hierarchical control, and facilitate communication between residents and departmental administrators. Finally, these web sites do not, for the most part, take advantage of the electronic communications capabilities of the Internet. Only 20.7 percent provided users with electronic forms with which to conduct city business (e.g., building permit applications, picnic area reservations).
Given that Internet-based transactions offer a major
innovation for cities in enterprise development and service provision, it is disappointing that four out of five sites make no effort to experiment with this technology. Similarly, these sites also do not commonly provide e-mail access to officials. Only 19.6% of Economic Development departments can be contacted by e-mail, 14.8% of police departments and 21.1% of city councils. More importantly, even this access is quite constrained. Less than one in twenty cities provide more than a single e-mail address to any of these offices. Thus, any effort to facilitate access to specific officials is almost completely lacking. Forty-four web sites (16.3%) do offer comment boxes that enable users to send electronic queries and comments to city officials. As most sites with comment boxes do no support e-mail, these comment boxes appear to be a lower quality substitute for direct e-mail access. For example, 84.1 percent of the sites with comment boxes do not have e-mail links to the economic development department. Thus, comment boxes extend the range of sites that offer some level of electronic communications capability. Nevertheless, comment boxes are not as effective as direct e-mail, as they do not allow citizens to contact specific officials, and they probably are less likely to receive a direct response. In sum, even taking comment boxes into account, few sites support electronic communications with the city. Beyond links into local political processes, municipal web pages may support participatory democracy through links to other decision-making bodies and the network of community organizations that Putnam (1993) argues is required to build social capital. In these areas of communication, however, the capabilities offered by municipal web sites are even thinner than those provided for vertical citizen to municipality communications. Only 35.6% of the sites provide a link to another level of government, either federal, state, county, or special districts. Apparently, designers of local municipal web sites are not aware of the value of creating a nexus of links that enable citizens to address a range of governmental problems and to understand the manner in which local governments interact. For example, special districts provide many services to California residents from water to mosquito control, and have become increasingly important policy agents since the passage of Proposition 13 (citation deleted). Given that this level of governance tends to be almost invisible to citizens (Burns, 1995), the creation of links to special districts would seem one means of improving accountability; yet, only ten percent of web pages provide links to at least one special district. Similarly, municipal web sites were not very likely to contain information about, or links to, community organizations. Only between 13% and 20% of the sites had links to either neighborhood organizations, fraternal and social organizations, like the Rotary club, or non-governmental organizations such as charities and religious 15
institutions. Even fewer had links to local interest groups. This paucity of interest group activity on the net might not be surprising given the argument by Abramson et. al. (1988) that new technologies tend to support the balance of power among existing interest groups. Another possible interpretation is that local web providers—whether chambers of commerce or municipalities—do not wish to encourage street-level battles that may complicate governance or present barriers to economic development. This idea is supported by the case of Santa Monica’s PEN system (Raab et.al., 1996, Doctor and Dutton, 1998),. Originally designed to foster two-way communication, over time there was an increase in incidents of incivility, personal attacks and the use of obscenities. This led the city to re-focus the PEN effort towards information distribution and away from two-way communication. Nor do many sites support innovative communication links that facilitate citizen-to-citizen communications. Only 10% of the sites include electronic bulletin boards or chat rooms over which citizens could contact one another concerning issues of mutual interests. Again, this is suggestive evidence, consistent with Peterson’s portrayal of the economic interests of cities, that municipal deployment of technology is more likely to benefit economic development than public service provision, and entrepreneurial rather than participatory reforms. Lessons from exemplar sites We end with a brief discussion of exemplar sites. The “good management or good democracy” model presented here leads to an obvious question: Do any of the web sites meet both criteria? Not surprisingly, very few do and even these do not fully exploit the full potential of this technology. Given the newness of the Internet and the breadth of reform goals municipalities can pursue, it may be unreasonable to expect web site designers to consider all potential applications of web technology when they first construct a site. Nevertheless, examining exemplar sites and those that come close is instructive. It demonstrates that promoting the goals of both entrepreneurial and civic reform through information technologies is politically and practically feasible. In addition, the nature of exemplar sites illuminates some tentative insights and suggests some areas worthy of further study. We define an exemplar as a site that simultaneously provides a rich mix of information and vertical and horizontal communication channels. Our operationalization of these criteria are admittedly crude but are, nevertheless, useful. Examplar sites are those that include more than half of the categories of enterprise and service information, more than four categories of civic information,
Table 5 Exemplar Municipal Web Sites
at least twelve vertical communication links to the three representative departments19, and
City
Web Address
some level of horizontal com-
Chula Vista Coronado Danville Davis La Verne Palo Alto (official Site) Palo Alto (non-official Site) San Carlos San Diego Walnut Creek
www.ci.chula-vista.ca.us www.coronado.ca.us www.ci.danville.ca.us www.city.davis.ca.us www.ci.la-verne.ca.us www.city.palo-alto.ca.us www.PaloAltoOnline.com www.ci.san-carlos.ca.us www.sannet.gov www.ci.walnut-creek.ca.us
munications (e.g., at least one link to an organization or a chat function). Only ten sites serving nine cities met these five criteria, less than 4% of the 270 sites
(See Table 5 for a list-
16
ing). These sites are promising, but there are far too few of them. An additional 25 sites meet four out of the five criteria. Interestingly, all of these near exemplars contained a rich array of information concerning city services, and only four are missing information on enterprise related activities. In contrast, seven sites failed to meet all five criteria due to a lack of government related information, and 14 failed to provide the necessary breadth of vertical or horizontal communication channels. Apparantly, even providers of higher quality municipal web sites do not pursue all vision of technology driven reform equally. Information provision is emphasized over communications, and service delivery is emphasized over civic intercourse. Within the group some interesting patterns emerge. Only seven of the 35 high quality sites contain a chat or bulletin board function, a significant indicator of an attempt to promote horizontal communication. Of these, only one, Paradise (now2000.com/paradisenow/), also provides direct communication links to several different types of community groups, thereby creating a richer network of horizontal communicatoins. It is interesting to note that Paradise is a small, relatively wealthy, homogeneous community. Thus, a question inviting further inquiry is whether networks of horizontal communications are most likely to be provided to cities with low levels of political discord. In addition, although this site promotes horizontal democratic dialogue, it does not provide any significant vertical links to city officials, reinforcing yet again the need for more refined models of the relationship between technology and governance reform. The opposite tendency is illustrated by three other exemplar sites: Davis, San Carlos, and San Diego. These sites provide provide a rich array of information and avenues for communication with government, including contact names and e-mail addresses. In addition, San Diego and Davis make extensive use of electronic forms to various city departments. All three cities, however, provide few horizontal links.20 In the cases of Davis this omission may be explained by the existence of a competing site, Davis Community Net (www.dcn.davis.ca.us). This second site has a greater emphasis on communication with and information about community groups, complementing the official Davis site. Palo Alto, which is also served by two different sites, underscores the potential advantages of multiple providers of electronic forums. Both provide a rich set of information, but they differ in the types of information and communications channels they provide. The official site (www.city.palo-alto.ca.us) provides vertical links to city departments and some links to churches and fraternal organizations. The other site provides fewer channels by which to contact city officials but provides much more information about businesses, real estate and other private sector functions in the city. Apparantly, there is a productive division of labor in which one site covers government and some community organizations and the other covers business and some community groups. Further research is needed to examine whether competition between multiple organizations, each with different goals and contraints, may jointly provide the various types of information and functionalities required to further the differing dimensions of governance reform better than a single organization can achieve on its own.
Discussion and Conclusions This analysis of the quality of services provided through municipal web sites in California provides both encouragement and grounds for concern for those interested in the potential of Internet technologies to reinvigorate local governance. The rapid growth of Internet use in general, and of municipal web pages in particular, suggest 17
that this technology has reached critical mass, making it unlikely that it will fade into obscurity as did early experiments with interactive cable systems. A wide variety of applications in theory could support entrepreneurial or participatory reforms by improving information, facilitating communication, and easing transactions between municipalities and their constituents. In practice, the implementation of such applications does not live up to the promise. A handful of exemplar municipal web sites in California support a rich mix of Internet services furthering economic development, service provision, and democratic participation all at the same time. They provide both a source of information for business and citizens alike and act as a communication hub between citizens and governmental bodies and among citizens themselves. Even these exemplar sites, however, do not fully meet the expectations of the model. The vast majority of sites do not appear designed to support any of the municipal reform approaches we identified. Most offer some information and communication services, but focus on superficial capabilities that merely mimic existing communication systems (e.g., the phone book). Few offer more detailed content that might enrich citizens’ access to their governments, such as links to less visible governmental bodies, or information regarding on city budgets.
To the extent that these sites do support reform, most are primarily oriented toward
entrepreneurial reforms, and hence are more likely to support “good management” than “good democracy.” Moreover, most sites do not provide a sufficiently rich set of communication links to act as an easy entry for citizens to their governments or as a nexus for local political deliberation. Those that do provide capabilities to support local government, economic development, or tourism are too narrowly focused, rarely providing more than one function. Given that the incremental costs of adding functions to a web site are relatively small and that the usefulness of a site increase disproportionately with the richness of services supported by it, we are surprised, and disappointed, that existing sites are not more well rounded. Municipal web sites are not alone in failing to exploit the communicative capabilities of this new media. A recent survey of the web presence of independent software vendors found similar results (Nash and Greenstein; 1997). While a few innovative sites existed, the majority were nothing more than electronic versions of sales brochures. Perhaps most users need more experience with the technology before they can fully appreciate its capabilities. As testament to the difficulty of city governance, witness the incredible array of inherently contradictory reform strategies: the professional civil service reforms of the Progressive era versus the community action programs of the 1960s; consolidation of localities into metropolitan -wide government versus attempts to decentralize through municipal incorporation or secession. One can find features of the “entrepreneurial” and “participatory” models in many of these efforts. Nonetheless, as Yates argues, urban reform strategies have tended over time to emphasize business over democracy. The design of municipal web pages does not appear to be an exception.
18
As a service delivery mechanism, good management would seem to be the main imperative of city government. But as a street-level government, that government in the American system closest to its citizens, good democratic procedure is also an imperative.... my point is that the strategies of efficient business management and professionalism have pursued the first goal at the expense of the second... (p. 174)
References Abramson, J.R. F.C. Arterton, and G.O. Orren, 1988. The Electronic Commonwealth: The Impact of New Media Technologies on Democratic Politics, (New York: Basic Books) Arterton, F. Christopher, 1987. Teledemocracy: Can Technology Protect Democracy? New York: Sage Publications. Barber, Benjamin, 1984. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. University of California Press. Berry, Jeffrey M, Kent E. Portnoy, and Ken Thomson, 1993. The Rebirth of Urban Democracy Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Bimber, Bruce, 1996, “The Internet and Political Transformation” found on the World Wide Web at http:// www.sscf.ucsb.edu/~survey1/ Burns, Nancy, 1995. The Formation of American Local Governments. Coleman, James S., 1990. Foundations of Social Theory, Harvard University Press Cook, Brian, 1996. Bureaucracy and Self Government. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Cooper, Terry L., 1991, An Ethic of Citizenship for Public Administration. Prentice-Hall. Dahl, Robert, 1961. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven: Yale University Press. Dutton, William H. 1992. “Political Science Research on Teledemocracy,” Social Science Computer Review, 10(4):505-522. Dutton, William, Jay Blumler, and Kenneth Kraemer, eds. 1987. Wired Cities: Shaping the Future of Communications, Boston: G.K. Hall and Co. Etzioni, Amatai, 1996. The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society Basic Books. Frederickson, George, 1997. The Spirit of Public Administration, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hague, B. and B. Loader, 1999. Digital Democracy: Discourse and Decision-Making in the Information Age, London: Routledge. Guthrie, K.K., and W.H. Dutton, 1992. “The Politics of Citizen Access Technology: The Development of Public Information Utilities in Four Cities,” Policy Studies Journal 20(4): 574-597. Krippendorff, Klaus, 1980. Content Analysis, Sage Publications. Laudon, K.C., 1977. Communications Technology and Democratic Participation, New York: Praeger Publishers. McGarvey, Joe, “Residential PC Penetration nears 50 Percent,” Inter@ctive Week, March 10, 1998, available at http://connect.colorado.edu/COMMUNITY/resources/harsh/access.html Moynihan, D.P. 1965. Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty. Free Press. 19
Nash, P.R., and S. Greenstein, 1997. “Lead Users and Their On-Line Communications: Independent Software Vendor Usage of the World Wide Web for Commercial Purposes.” Mimeo. Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management. Noll, R., McCubbins, and Weingast, 1994. “Regulating Regulation: The Political Economy of Administrative Procedures and Regulatory Instruments,” Law and Contemporary Problems, 57(1): 3-38. Osborne, D. and T. Gaebler, 1992. Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Ostrom, Vincent, 1994, The Meaning of American Federalism: Constituting a Self-Governing Society. San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies. Peters, B. Guy, 1996. The Future of Governing: Four Emerging Models. University Press of Kansas. Peters also discusses “flexible government” and “deregulated government.” Peterson, Paul, 1981, City Limits. University of Chicago Press. Putnam, Robert D., 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press. Raab C., Bellamy C., Taylor J., Dutton W., and Peltu M.(1996) The information polity: Electronic democracy, privacy and surveillance. In Information and communication technologies visions and realities, ed. By William Dutton. Oxford University Press. Ronfeldt, David, 1992. “Cyberocracy is Coming,” The Information Society, 8. Tsagarousianou, R.T., D. Tambini, and C. Bryan, 1998. Cyberdemocracy: Technology, Cities and Civic Networks, New York: Routledge.
20
Tocqueville, Alexis, 1956. Democracy in America, R.D. Heffner ed. Mentor Books. Yankelovich, Daniel, 1991. Coming to Public Judgment: Making Democracy Work in a Complex World. cuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press.
Syra-
Yates, Douglas, 1984. The Ungovernable City: The Politics of Urban Problems and Policy Making. Cambridge and London: MIT Press.
Footnotes 1 Dutton (1992) undertook a comprehensive review of the literature concerning communication technology and democratic governance and found only eight studies that explicitly examined impacts. Although this literature has expanded rapidly since his study, the majority of work remains purely theoretical or is based on case studies of specific applications. 2 According to a recent industry study, 45 percent of the 100 million U.S. families have at least one personal computer (McGarvey, 1998). It is not known how many of these households have modems; or how many Americans have web access from work or school. 3 Abramson, Arterton, and Orren (1988) thus characterized the state of debate regarding electronic democracy. 4 Regulatory reforms in the early 1970s, for example, opened up the rulemaking and enforcement processes to new groups such as environmental advocacy organizations, dramatically changing the course of policy making. (Noll, McCubbins, and Weingast; 1994) 5 Because cities in California do not play an important role in redistributive activites, the third main arena of municipal politics outlined by Peterson, we do not include this function in our typology. 6 In Peterson’s terms there are, “allocative” and “development” function of cities. Allocative activities are goods and services provided to households, but which do not have an overtly redistributive flavor. These would include services such as fire and police, public libraries, parks and recreation. In contrast, development functions are those that are designed specifically to advance the economic climate of the city, and position it in competitive advantage relative to other cities. Such development-type functions include land use policy, economic incentives, and investment in infrastructure. 7 Although the virtues of democratic participation appear virtually inarguable, it is important to acknowledge the complexities and costs of participatory policy making. Increased participation can create more heat than light, or lead to highly personalized and divisive politics. Direct democracy has also been criticized for inhibiting the reasoned deliberation required for good decision-making (Laudon, 1977). 8
The most rigorous of these case studies is Guthrie and Dutton (1992).
9 The web sites included in our data set were compiled from several search engines, along with three Web-based indices of municipal Web sites: City Link, City.Net, and the Association of Bay Area Governments. Consequently, what constitutes a municiple web site is best defined as those sites included in these indicies or the sites that a webuser would identify if they searched for a particular city name. 10
Not all of these sites are included in our analysis because 20 of them were not found during data collection.
11 Only 454 cities are included in this analysis. Demographic information was only available for the 456 cities incorporated before the 1990 census. In addition, two cities (Vernon and Industry) were excluded from the sample because they are fiscal and population outliers, being industrial enclaves largely devoid of residents. 12 Because virtually all of California’s largest cities have associated municipal web sites, there was the possibility that these results were skewed by outliers. In an analysis run excluding the cities in the 95th percentile for population, the results were not altered. 13 In order to measure the racial diversity of a community, which may not be adequately captured by percentage white, we calculated an index of dispersion of population among five racial categories: White, Hispanic, Black, 21
Asian, and other. An index of unity indicates a perfectly homogeneous community while an index of zero would result for a community in which its citizens were equally divided among the five racial categories. Adopters appeared slightly less racially diverse than non-adopters, although this difference was not statistically significant. 14 The gap, however, is narrowing. Later adopters tend to be drawn from less wealthy cities with a smaller proportion of social elites . Considering the rapid rate of diffusion of municipal web pages, it is not unreasonable to expect that this gap will not endure for long. In any case, the more important source of information disparities occur within cities rather than between cities in that homes with computers will have preferential access to city information and decision-makers. 15 An analysis of the origin of web sites based on domain names (e.g., .gov, .org., .com, etc) arrived at the same general conclusions. 16 The coding instrument is available from the authors upon request. 17 Only the first of these correlation coefficients is statistically significant at the 5% level. 18 Eight sites strongly emphasized both city government and economic development, six emphasized both city government and tourism, and eleven strongly emphasized economic development and tourism. 19 A site could provide twelve communication links by providing the mail address, one e-mail address, one phone number, and one contact name for the City Council, Economic Development Department, and the Police Department. Alternatively, a site could meet this criteria by providing more links for a particular department or through a particular mode and fewer elsewhere. The top 23.7% of the sites provided atleast 12 links. 20 San Diego and San Carlos provide e-mail or links to fraternal groups. Davis provides no e-mail or links to an outside organization.
22
