Donald J. Calista

Digitized Government in Worldwide Municipalities between 2003 and 2007

Observers of digitized government suggest that governments around the world are using the Internet to increase the effectiveness and transparency of administrative functions while engaging citizens and transforming the nature of democracy. The current research examines digital government by analyzing data from worldwide municipal websites reviewed in 2003 and in 2007. The findings are bifurcated. The research suggests that digital government performance of cities worldwide is increasing over time. However, the findings also demonstrate volatility in performance levels of city digital government initiatives. In other words, early adopters of digital government often find it difficult to maintain their performance between the survey years, while some late adopters experience dramatic performance improvements. The results suggest that future research needs to consider the reasons for changes in relative performance and the variation of digital government.

Linking Policy Intention and Policy Implementation: The Role of the Organization in the Integration of Human Services

This article argues that (1) the clarity of a policy intention depends upon the appropriateness of the organizational form to implement it, and (2) the assumptions held by policymakers regarding organization form, in practice, often lead to offsetting or contradictory implementations. The study examines a major recent policy reorganization-Floridas transformation of eight autonomous human services agencies into a single department. Its avowed purposes were to integrate and decentralize services. Elmores (1978) fourfold model is employed to assess those intentions. The findings indicated that implementation became troubled as policymakers adopted inappropriate organizational assumptions to support their intentions. The conclusions suggest that implementation had to accommodate opposing dimensions of organizational strategy and managerial structure.

Digitized Government Among Countries Worldwide From 2003 to 2010: Performance Discrepancies Explained by Comparing Frameworks

Public sector researchers largely portray digitized government as following a maturational movement that will ultimately sustain electronic democracy. An alternate view maintains that digitized government reflects broader public policies that drift and change over time; as a result, it embraces two discrete curvilinear processes—e-government and e-governance. This study compares these differing frameworks by employing successive evaluations published by the United Nations of member Web sites from 2003 to 2010. Partitioning appears in the findings. Countries worldwide are pushing the aggregate means higher for digitized government. Yet, disaggregate best practices among early-adopter countries exhibit significant variability, including in industrialized societies. The findings doubt the maturational view as they bear out the curvilinear construct. The conclusions demonstrate that the potential for an electronic transformation abates before the Great Recession.

Postmaterialism and Value Convergence Value Priorities of Japanese Compared with their Perceptions of American Values

This study focuses on two central issues regarding the postmaterial value transformation among Japanese youth: whether convergence with Western patterns is occurring and whether a crossover between collectivist and individualist values is taking place. To widen the perspective of the latter hypothesis, the research design compares Japanese projections of their own values with their perceptions of Americans. The Rokeach Value Survey is used in 1972 and 1976. While postmaterial expectations are generally fulfilled in both projections, neither convergence nor crossover fare well. Instead, certain belongingness values emerge as affirmations of both quality of life and egalitarian priorities; rather than leading to a special case, the Japanese evidence indicates there is a more dynamic relationship between cultural continutiy and postmaterial value change than has been previously recognized.

Digitized government best practices in country web sites from 2003 to 2008: The results are bifurcated

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine best practices of worldwide country web sites, evaluated in 2003, 2005 and 2008 by the United Nations (UN).Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs statistical analysis to determine whether the electronic innovation (digitized government) exhibits linear (unitary) or curvilinear (S‐type) processes in relation to four theories of information technology (IT) and social change.Findings – The findings are bifurcated between 2003 and 2008. In the aggregate (highest scores), worldwide countries are responding to the value‐added qualities of digitized government, defined as the transactions of e‐government and the interactions of e‐governance. Yet, the disaggregate (first adopter) best practices data reveal significant downward trends between those survey years, especially, among Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD) countries. The findings indicate that neither electronic dimension predicts the others course. They also suggest that dual curvilinea...

A Framework for Professional Action in Government: A Facts and Values Perspective

Government agencies depend on professionals to initiate action, but traditional applied theories of public administration are rather discouraging. Unproductive-and unnecessary-false dichotomies, especially involving facts and values, make it difficult for agency insiders to relate to the need to become proactive. To help professionals determine when and how to be proactive, the authors propose a framework composed of three planes-policy, operations, and evaluation-that defines a scope of action. Four pairs of widely debated claims are examined using this framework. Key findings are that (a) public agencies face broader scopes of action than occur in commercial enterprises, reducing the utility of the business paradigm to public administrators; (b) public agencies are unlike commercial entities, where smaller scopes of action are more likely to form a coherent and inclusive focus that can concentrate professional action more methodically; (c) proactive public agency professionals extend their allegiances beyond agency walls in ways that blur distinctions between traditional facts and values; (d) agency professionals limit their ability to shape policy, correct operations, and advance evaluations by adopting traditional facts-values distinctions that reinforce continuation of the outworn dichotomy between politics and administration; (e) proactive professionals can concentrate on challenging the significance of facts that inevitably must address underlying values; and (f) liabilities to proactive risktaking by professionals remain high as long as they threaten the primacy of traditional political and management stakeholders. The construct helps professionals navigate these risks more ably as it integrates facts and values tensions more fully.

The Transformational Nature of Web-Based Mediation: Constructing a Research Agenda for In-Service Public Administration Students

To assess the compatibility between Web-based instructional technology and student behavioral traits requires researchers to utilize variables consistently. Instead, inconsistency rules as researchers operationalize principal variables differently—an outcome that causes confusion and undermines development of a unified knowledge base. This situation is disturbing, as the ubiquity of Web instruction can become an appealing option for working in-service public administration and international students. To establish an empirically grounded research agenda, time the has come to accept commonality in terminology. The paper identifies and discusses three primary research variables. First, in its application to higher education, Web technology is transformational. It divides instruction into two distinct forms of mediation: Web and non-Web based. Second, two student behavioral traits—learning style orientations and teaching method preferences—serve to determine whether in-service more than pre-service students express greater attraction to Web mediation. Third, modes of delivery involve managing and organizing the scheduling of forms of mediation. To further uniformity in the terminology of Web mediation, the paper concludes by suggesting a public administration research agenda that includes propositions to explore relations among the three sets of variables.