John G. McNutt

Virtual Government–Citizen Relations: Informational, Transactional, or Collaborative?

Public administration theory and practice suggest that e-government, citizen participation, and government–citizen collaboration are contributing to a movement toward New Public Service—as opposed to Old Public Administration and New Public Management. We explore this by focusing on the relationship between the Washington, D.C., police and local residents via online discussion groups. We ask, How do police interact with citizens virtually? How are these interactions structured? and Are they informational, transactional, or collaborative? Using descriptive data and thread analysis, and drawing distinctions between districts, we conclude that the bulk of activity is informational, a fair amount of activity is transactional, and less activity is collaborative. Thus, the relationship most closely approximates Old Public Administration, rather than New Public Management or New Public Service. The evidence offers some cause for hope for the future of police–community relations in virtual space and ideas for future research.

Electronic Advocacy by Nonprofit Organizations in Social Welfare Policy

Technology is revolutionizing the practice of political advocacy, a fact that has important ramifications for the nonprofit sector. This exploratory study examines the current application of electronic advocacy techniques in the affiliates of a national social work professional association and considers what factors tend to predict the affiliates that are most successful at adopting these techniques. The study found that all of the affiliates were using some of these technology-based advocacy techniques in their advocacy practice and that the factors that predicted utilization depended on whether affiliates were planning new technology or actually using new technology.

The Rise of Cyberactivism: Implications for the Future of Advocacy in the Human Services

These are hard times for social welfare advocates. Globalization, devolution, and a conservative political climate have challenged our traditional approaches to advocacy. New advocacy methods that use technology to change public policy have been developed and provide us with new avenues to address the changed political economy of social welfare. Collectively called cyberactivism, these techniques can be used to advantage by social work advocates. This article looks at recent cyberactivist campaigns, examines barriers to cyberactivism, and suggests actions that social work advocates can take to use these new tools and ideas. We conclude that these techniques have been widely used by social activists to contribute to policy change and have excellent potential as part of the social work advocacy arsenal.

Building Evidence-Based Advocacy in Cyberspace

Abstract The conduct of advocacy is critical to the accomplishment of the mission of professional social work. Unfortunately, traditional advocacy practice is rarely based on any real evidence attesting to its effectiveness. This leaves advocates almost completely dependent on practice wisdom. As we move toward advocacy practice in virtual environments, we are faced with new opportunities to build evidence-based advocacy practice. This paper provides a discussion about how this end might be accomplished and offers suggestions about developing evidence-based practice in cyberspace. The major issues are discussed, problems are identified and strategies for overcoming those problems are developed. The paper provides a foundation for subsequent work in developing evidence-based electronic advocacy.

Social Capital, E-Government, and Fiscal Transparency in the States

Transparency is one requisite of democratic governance. Many American states have implemented online checkbooks and similar forms of fiscal e-transparency, but not universally or with uniformly high quality. This article seeks to explain why. Correlation and regression results support hypotheses that higher-quality implementation responds to lower state levels of social capital, more traditionalistic political cultures, greater perceptions of official corruption, and larger populations.

The diffusion of civic technology and open government in the United States

Civic technology is a nascent force in the relationship between governments and communities. Elements of the civic technology ecosystem include open data, related information and communications technology (ICT) innovations and the organizational boundary-spanning practices of civic technology. This paper reports the results of an exploratory study of civic technology adoption by local governments in the United States. The research compares the 113 U.S. city governments recognized for their exemplary fiscal year 2012 popular annual financial reports (PAFRs) with the 49 municipalities in the U.S. state of Delaware that operate websites. Results suggest that a long term commitment to citizen involvement in government data and the size of the community are important predictors of adoption.

Smart Cities Are Transparent Cities: The Role of Fiscal Transparency in Smart City Governance

Smart cities bring with them the promise of a new period of participatory government. An important ingredient of this political renaissance must be increased fiscal transparency. This is not possible without tools to assess the state of transparency efforts and move them to adequate performance. Excellence in assessment is the key to adequate programming. This chapter looks at the state of online fiscal transparency, assesses how it is currently measured, and offers a framework for improving the assessment of online fiscal transparency in smart cities.

Smart Cities, Transparency, Civic Technology and Reinventing Government

This chapter looks at the potential of the civic technology movement to enhance the development of smart cities and the smart city movement. Civic technology combines open civic data, technology, and a new set of collaborative civic technology practices in order to facilitate effective government. What distinguishes civic technology from traditional uses of technology to improve urban administration is its reliance on open and voluntary sharing of information, ideas, and initiatives among governments and other stakeholders. This has the potential to change the relationship between government and other sectors, and blur the boundaries between them. In the best case, this might promote creativity, education, innovation, and learning; remove barriers to participation, knowledge, and services; and build intellectual, social, and human capacities. This is a qualitatively different proposition from viewing smart cities as simply a continuation of urban politics and management as usual, but with some efficiency and effectiveness gains enabled by improved technology. In a less inspiring possibility, business and technically proficient elites might use the tools of civic technology to capture urban governance and direct it to their own purposes. While it is still too soon to tell whether smart cities will realize a civic-technology utopia, dystopia, or something in between, it is clear that the blurring of boundaries will happen in some form. Urban public management practice and education must therefore work proactively to develop informed strategies that will preserve core values of democratic administration, democracy and efficiency.

Technology in Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action

Information and communication technologies ( ICT ) are major forces shaping our current age. ICT affects many areas of human existence and influences the both human wellbeing and human evil. The nonprofit sector is already heavily involved in technology both as a way to pursue its mission and as an influential factor in the evolution of the sector. This article examines how technology affects the sector and how the sector uses technology in its work.The article begins with a discussion of how the emerging information society will change the nonprofit sector. The sector that we know is grounded on our experience in the agrarian and industrial periods in the United States and Europe. We then explore how technology evolved in the sector. This is followed by an examination of technology and nonprofit organizational behavior. Technology changes the organizations that make use of its capacities. Next is a discussion of the types of technology that nonprofit organizations use. The final three sections deal with technology and social change, technology in nonprofit settings, and issues and trends. This article provides the reader with a current appreciation of the scholarly and professional literature on ICT in the nonprofit sector.

Vampires in the Technological Mist: The Sharing Economy, Employment and the Quest for Economic Justice and Fairness in a Digital Future

ABSTRACT The gig economy, the sharing economy, or collaborative consumption; these are all synonyms for a technologically enhanced mechanisms for linking independent contractors with consumers for the purposes for exchanging goods and services. This business model has proliferated exponentially in the last decade and has been touted as offering freedom and increased autonomy for workers. However, as yet it seems to have had a vampire-like effect, sucking resources and protections out of the economic eco-system while only benefiting a very small group of technology platform developers and their shareholders. This new business model has given rise to ethical and moral dilemmas which question the role of government in providing the social safety net as well as regulation and policy in protecting employees from abusive labour practices as well as consumers from price gouging and other consumer protection issues including consumer safety. This paper uses the principles of the human rights framework to explore key constructs such as dignity, transparency, accountability and nondiscrimination to begin the process of creating an affirmative framework to guide policy and practice in the future.