*For Suraya Only*

Week 3 Readings and Notes • E-Democracy Eventually, we’ll realize that the “e” isn’t needed in this chapter. In other words, we are quickly approaching the point where governance is dependent on technology, or rather where the use of technology is expected in governance. We will not be reading about e- activisim, e -campaigning and e -legislating, but rather activism, campaigning and legislating E-Activism Today activists use the Internet to mobilize volunteers, raise funds, disseminate information, and otherwise pursue the various functions of interest groups seeking to influence public policy. Examples include: Community Computing Movement – 1980s - 90s – empowering the powerless – National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN); Berkeley’s Community Memory experiment; Santa Monica PEN. The big question everyone searches to answer involves e -Activism’s effect on public managers. And no one has a particularly good answer. The impetus given to activist movements by Internet technology is not unique to the web as technology. The Movement of Global Justice, which helped organize the anti -G8 political protest in Genoa, 2001, and the European Social Forum in Florence, 2002, is an example of an activist movement whose success hinged critically on the use of Internet technology (Porta and Mosca, 2005). More recently, tea partiers and anarchistic globalization protesters have used the Internet to provide logistical support, communications support, aid in influencing public opinion, and can be a vehicle for di rect expression of protest. E-Campaigning The use of electronic means to mobilize volunteers, raise funds, disseminate information and otherwise pursue the various functions of interest groups that seek to influence elections. The 1992 campaign of Ross Perot was an early effort in e -Campaigning… And thus, Perot begot MoveOn.org in 2000… and Moveon begot Howard Dean’s use of Meetup.com in 2004, which begot Organizing for America (aka BarakObama.com) in 2008. Alexis Rice Study on e -campaigning shows that it doesn’t always lead to political mobilization (just ask Howard Dean). Interestingly, e -campaigning by public managers is generally frowned upon in their official capacity, and there are implicit pressures to make incumbents look good via agency websit es. E-campaigning has become a central fixture of American politics. For example, in the 2004 elections, web logs (blogs) became important vehicles for promoting civic involvement. A notable example was Governor Howard Dean’s Blog for America (Kerbel and B loom, 2005; Lawson -Borders and Kirk, 2005). There is growing evidence that candidate websites are a way of increasing citizen participation in political campaigns. A 2006 survey of likely voters found that about one in four likely voters (23.7%) had visite d Internet advertising sites for a candidate or issue advocacy group. Of those who visited candidate sites, 47.3% sent an email to the candidate, 39.5 percent signed up for campaign email alerts, 17.8% percent made an online donation, and 16.8% signed up to volunteer for the campaign. Moreover, visiting websites is not limited to favored candidates. Two thirds (65.4%) of likely voters visited sites of candidates or issue advocacy groups they did not or were uncertain they would support (Government Technolo gy, 2006n). While no one doubts the pervasive impact of information technology on political campaigning in the last decade, its impact has hardly displaced traditional means. In a study of Danish and Norwegian political parties, for instance, Pederson and Saglie (2005) found ICT activities to be concentrated in middle and upper party management elites.

Although some new party members were attracted via information and communication technology means, the impact was limited, at least through the early 2000's . While e -campaigning is increasing in importance, it is not without limits. A study by Schoen and Faas (2005) of e -campaigning in the 2002 German election showed that online surveys by candidates yielded biased results and e -campaigning via the Internet reached only a tiny fraction of the electorate due to many voters not having Internet access and widespread lack of interest in political web sites among voters who did have access.

These facts suggest a merely supplementary role for e -campaigning for the foreseeable future. This is much the same conclusion as found by Bruce Bimber in his empirical studies of cyber -campaigning, reported in Information and American Democracy (Bimber, 2003). In contrast to early hopes that cyber -campaigning would increase pol itical participation and democratize politics, Bimber’s research found disappointment. In general, Bimber found that technology had reinforced traditional divisions and social inequalities, with the political outcome being further fragmentation and polariz ation (pp. 5 -7). Moreover, traditional mass media continue to eclipse the Internet in importance in campaigning, and the politically active elite continues to value social networks over electronic networks. Although the information age brings information abundance to e -campaigning, with new, easier patterns of information flow among organizations and between organizations and voters, political actors and elites continue to structure information for voters in ways that have great continuity with the past. A critical aspect of campaigning is establishing the rules of the game, and for that nothing is as important as drawing the districts within which candidates must run. Always a political process, many have argued that computer -assisted redistricting makes m atters worse, allowing the dominant party in any state to “create finely crafted redistricting plans that promote partisan and career goals, to the detriment of electoral competition, and that, ultimately, thwart voters’ ability to express their will throu gh the ballot box” (Altman, MacDonald, and McDonald, 2005: 334). A survey of state redistricting mappers by Altman, MacDonald, and McDonald (2005), however, suggests that these fears are generally not realized because redistricting software at present is not powerful enough to handle the multiple political criteria politicians need to apply and therefore is not utilized as much in drawing electoral district maps as critics may think. Cyberpolitics promotes campaign message personalization as well as groupi ng of citizens into tight web connections, all of which harks back to the highly personalized electoral campaigns of early U. S. elections (Gronbeck and Wiese, 2005). While “personalization” sounds like an unmitigated good, it brings with it critical issue s as well. In the past, traditional campaigning targeted broad messages to broad audiences. Stances a candidate might take became known to friend and foe alike. It was difficult, for instance, to appeal to religious audiences with a pro -life abortion posit ion and simultaneously to make this stance relatively unknown before a different secular audience. With new advances in technology and the amassing of large databases on personal attributes of consumers, the advent of microtargeting is now upon us. To acco mplish microtargeting, political parties merge publicly available voter information with commercially available personal/consumer information, creating databases such as the Republican Party’s “Voter Vault” and the Democratic Party’s “Demzilla” database (V een, 2006). Microtargeting also makes door to door canvassing and get out the vote efforts more effective than in the past, increasing turnout. The ability to deliver highly customized and personalized messages to different votes also allows candidates to whip up partisanship among partisans and to convey moderation to more general audiences. The issue, of course, is whether microtargeting will move election campaigns toward fuller and more relevant information for voters, or if it will effectively channel and mask information, ultimately yielding a more partisanly divided and less informed electorate. E-Voting E-voting involves using electronic means to implement voting or polling processes via the Internet or other networks, not necessarily limited to tr aditional political elections. It was promoted by the America Vote Act 2002. Theoretically, e -Voting records all votes without error, provides instantaneous reporting, and provides opportunities to vote remotely. Main concerns with e -Voting are sabotag e, lack of a paper trail, possibilities of machine malfunction, and voter fraud. In the aftermath of the U.S. elections in 2000, where problems with paper ballots created a near -Constitutional crisis and made American voting the laughing stock of the world , strong forces existed to force a switch to electronic voting. Ironically, however, this switch faced a severe obstacle: the public put greater trust in paper ballots that could be held and counted (and re -counted) than in “black box” electronic voting ma chines which might be subject to hacking and electronic fraud. In the rush to meet the new market for such machines, matters were not helped when the leading manufacturer, Diebold, marketed voting systems which left no auditable paper trail and which were found by computer scientists to have insecure code. (Diebold claims improvements since then). This, in turn, led voting rights activists to call for reform. E-voting has sometimes led to notable voting miscounts. In a 2003 election in Boone County, IA, e-voting equipment reported 140,000 votes in spite of the jurisdiction having only 25,000 eligible voters. In Fairfax County, VA, a 2003 voting machine error caused subtraction of 100 votes for a particular candidate. In the 2000 presidential elections, e - voting equipment gave Democratic candidate Al Gore a count of minus 16,022 votes.

Zetter (2005) has reported that some e -voting systems can have as much as a 5% error rate. As error is usually random, this may not affect elections as much as might be thoug ht but any error undermines the credibility of elections based on e -voting. A further complication is that the type of e -voting machine which is easiest to use - touch -screen voting - is also the more error -prone of existing e -voting methods. In North Carol ina, after 4,000 electronic votes had been lost in 2004 elections, voting rights activists sued the State Board of Elections to enforce a 2005 state law requiring voting machine manufacturers to reveal their source code to the state, so that it could be ev aluated independently for security and auditability. Diebold, in turn, sued the State Board of Elections, claiming enforcement would amount to improper appropriation of corporate property. Though a state judge ruled in favor of the activists, the State Bo ard of Elections certified Diebold as a vendor anyway. They brought the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a national electronic rights organization, to the support of the activists and the Board was sued once again to enforce state law (Duncan, 2005). In th e face of legal entanglements, Diebold decided to withdraw from attempts to market its machines in North Carolina, leaving the state with a single certified vendor (Election Systems & Software Inc.

of Omaha, Neb., which markets two voting machine types, ea ch with a paper trail). In October 2005, the General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report critical of the state of the art voting machines. The report cited problems in many dimensions: design flaws, poor security management, incorrect configuration, in adequate version controls, security flaws that encouraged hackers, ballots and audit logs that could be modified, and lack of widespread government certification. The GAO called on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to define security policies and sta ndards for a national certification program in support of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requirement that e -voting machines be installed in all polling stations for elections in and after 2006 (Songini, 2005b). Surveys of the literature on e -voting machi nes suggests that while they perform well in general, they also are characterized by shortcomings which alarm those who wish new electronic systems to count votes with full accuracy, guard against abuse, and generate auditable results (Herrnson et. Al., 20 05). A study of e -voting machines by the Brennan Center of Justice faced over 120 security threats, leading the Center to state that such machines “pose a real danger to the integrity of national, state, and local elections” (Stone, 2006: 14A). Likewise, a 2006 report from IDC Research Inc., titled “Improving Voting System Investment, Credibility and Transparency,” found that in spite of $3.8 billion in state and local government investment since 2002, e -voting systems still had “a long way to go before t hey will generate an accurate, timely and secure voting process” (Butterfield, 2006a). The study called on state and local governments to adopt adequate voting system standards, transparency throughout the system certification process, and to require the capability to perform audits. In addition to hardware/software issues with e -voting machines themselves, there is the overarching problem of establishing the public trust needed to move the nation to e -voting. The public is deeply suspicious of Internet vo ting, with some polls showing as much as 50% opposition (Kenski, 2005). Models of e -voting suggest that a central role must be played by trust, which at present cannot be assumed (Oostveen and van den Besselaar, 2005; Xenakis and Macintosh, 2005). Princeto n’s Department of Computer Science released a report in September on one of the leading electronic voting machines, the Diebold AccuVote TS. The report stated, “Many computer scientists doubt that paperless DREs can be made reliable and secure, and they ex pect that any failures of such systems would likely go undetected” (Jackson, 2006b). The authors noted that only a minute of physical access to the machine could enable implantation of malicious code which then could be spread among voting machines in norm al election activity. Diebold responded saying that updates of its software and following recommended security practices would prevent such abuse. The September, 2006, Maryland primaries used Diebold AccuVote TS direct -recording electronic voting machines statewide for the first time. The outcome was delays and late openings due to voting machines freezing up and outright computer failure. Other problems arose from the late delivery of machines with voting roles by Diebold, leading to lack of time to train officials. Yet other failures were based on human error, such election administrators lacking cards needed to activate voting machines. Some of the worst failures were in counties which had used the machines since 2002 (Jackson, 2006b).

However, there wer e no reports of introduction of malicious code. On the other hand, greater awareness of the security and practical problems of e -voting led some states such as Georgia and New Mexico in 2006, to meet HAVA (Help America Vote Act of 2002) requirement not o nly to provide and protect a "single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive, computerized statewide voter registration list" and to adopt the new security technology and software. An example was the Trusted Network Technologies, Inc. (TNT) software w hich guarded against external hackers and unauthorized officials by monitoring all network access to voting machines and voting systems. Also, at the federal level, the National Institute of Standards and Technology updated its initial HAVA standards once, and was scheduled to issue even more stringent security standards in 2007, prior to the 2008 presidential elections. E-Voting’s effect on public managers has been limited so far (unless they are directly involved with administering elections). However, e ffective public managers have used similar technologies for conducting surveys and gathering citizen feedback. E-Legislating Legislators are using the Internet to facilitate the public policy process, and agenda -setting tools by both state legislatures a nd the federal government. In 1995, the Library of Congress established its website, and it has been the main online presence for the U.S.

Congress since. E-Legislating provides a primary communication means for public comment and distribution of propos ed policy information. It also provides a means for oversight of bureaucracy and it increases transparency. Unlike e -voting, e -legislating has a major effect on public managers as it involves bidirectional interactions, monitoring and allows for increase d communications between citizen and their government. Mahler and Regan (2005) studied whether the increased content of agency web pages had an effect on congressional oversight, by looking at strong Internet -presence agencies like the FDA and USDA, as w ell as weak Internet presence agencies like the Department of Commerce and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They found that staff members in the four agencies studied could not cite a single instance where an agency website was the original, un ique source of an oversight topic. However, increased web information was cited as useful to congressional staffers, speeding information -gathering tasks and improving communication with agency staff and congressional constituents.

Greater information was perceived to be of particular benefit to interest groups and minority staff who might otherwise have more difficulty than majority -party congressional committee members in obtaining agency information. Overall, stronger Internet presence was perceived by c ongressional staffers to lead to more focused hearings and more informed debate. Technology increases legislative participation. There is evidence that email and Internet technologies increase political participation in terms of interactions with state le gislators. Based on an email survey of state legislators in New York and Vermont, Antoinette Pole (2005) found not only was email and Internet use up, but state legislators perceived increased political participation as a result. E-Civics E-civics invol ves using the Internet to provide citizens access to agency information. In 1996, the Electronic Freedom of Information Act was expanded from information provision to include transaction processing and online service provision. There are also implication s for lowering the cost of government services and processes online led by the New Public Management movement. By now, most are familiar with the extensive development of federal websites and take the provision of civic information for granted. In 2005, a committee of Federal Chief Information Officers found there were an astonishing 368 million web pages under the federal .gov domain alone (Jackson, 2006a). MeGAP, the Municipality E -Government Assessment Project, is a major effort to study 75 specific per formance dimensions of city websites. Between its Wave I in 2000 -2001 and its Wave III in 2004, a MeGAP report found “the increase in the availability, interactivity, and quality of web -based municipal services is stunning” (Kaylor, 2005: 20). For instance , by 2004, over three quarters of cities over 300,000 population offered online submission of service requests and/or complaints on such matters as potholes and streetlights. Online payments, interactive mapping features, and other interactive features wer e reported to be becoming standard in the websites of the largest American cities. In addition, trust in government and satisfaction, specifically with e -government, are statistically linked with e - civics (Welch, Hinnant, and Moon, 2005). E-Meetings Age ncies and municipalities are increasingly promoting civic involvement by making information about their meetings available in digital form. While one -way communication and thus not e -participation, technologies such as streaming video of council meetings o r even notice of meetings on electronic bulletin boards are means to lay the groundwork for two -way e -participation. A Public Sphere Information Group study of streaming video in large American cities found that by 2004, some 42% employed this technology c ompared to only 8% in 2001, suggesting that it is on the way to being a normal e -civics function of government (Kaylor, 2005). There is some argument that information access not only through e -government, but also through the media, interest groups, and th e non -profit sector is creating a more informed citizenry. For instance, the Internet provided more diversity to those who opposed Bush Administration policy toward Iraq, did and were more likely to seek out foreign news sources, which were more critical ( Best, Chmielewski, and Krueger, 2005). E-participation E-participation uses the Internet to encourage public participation in governmental decision -making or agency rule -making. In 1946, the Administrative Procedures Act mandated public participation i n the rule making process, and it has become a priority online with its inclusion in the 2002 E -government Act. A Queens University survey of users of government e -consultation services in Ireland found that government and public perceptions of e-participation differed. Government officials often looked at e -consultation as a means of gathering citizen views, whereas, users perceived it as a vehicle for influencing decision -making. Further, users expected feedback on their input, but over half (57%) of central and local government agencies in the survey lacked any structure for feedback. This, in turn, led to user dissatisfaction with and eventual disuse of online consultation services (Fagan, Newman, McCusker, and Murray, 2006). Shulman (200 5) studied Regulations.gov, an initiative to enable citizen feedback on all new proposed government regulations, but admits little is presently known about the impact of such reforms and whether they will, in fact, lead to more inclusive or more deliberati ve rule -making in the federal government. A study by Reddick (2005b) of local governments in the Ontario, Canada area showed that citizen participation increased when online opportunities increased and when the agencies or departments had separate informat ion technology departments. That is, separate IT departments were associated with developing dedicated e -government budgets, leading to more online services and more citizen participation. In another similar study by Reddick (2004), but of U. S. local gove rnments, Reddick found that jurisdictions in the higher of two e-government levels (transactional vs. merely informational) tended to be located in the Western portion of the U.S., have council -manager forms of government, had separate IT departments, and were cities with populations over 250,000. Summary There are six offered dimensions for e -democracy: e-activism, e -campaigning, e -voting, e - legislating, e-civics, e -participation. There is much debate about the meaningfulness and future of e -democracy and the speed of the future changes. What we do know is that while information systems tend to reinforce existing bureaucratic structures, e-democracy doesn’t necessarily have the same effect. Finally, the e -democracy perspective is often dominated by the reinforcement theory perspective, and there is little evidence that IT is revolutionary with respect to existing power structures at any level. Information Equality and the Digital Divide Proponents of the digital divide argue that certain segments of the population are left behind by digital technology – haves and have -nots. A study, Falling through the Net, concluded that digital inclusion is rapidly increasing. By 2000 more than half of households had computers, by 2001 more than half of households were using the Internet. This research suggests that the divide had diminished markedly for rural residents, blacks, Hispanics and other “have -not” groups. Despite progress toward bridging the digital divide, others argue that the gap between the haves and have -nots is increasing. Today most Americans use the Internet. Some 86 % were online in 2013 for an average of 20.4 hours per week. 83% of Americans were using the Internet at home for an average of 14.1 hours per week. (Center for the Digital Future , 2013). Although both computer ownership and Internet access are permeating American society, this does not mean that the digital divide has disappeared in the United States, let alone internationally. On the one hand the growth of Internet use provide s new possibilities of reaching consumers of public services, but on the other hand there have been many obstacles to realizing this potential. The Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System (CHESS), for example, still faces underutilization by the di sadvantaged, even after almost two decades of use. Yet e -services such as CHESS do present opportunities for serving the underserved not available to traditional, non -Internet methods. The Digital Divide by Gender Cooper and Weaver (2003) found that male s enjoy using the computer more than females, have less anxiety, high sense of competency, enroll in more classes, and select more IT careers. Current studies indicate that as computing has become more universal, the gap may lessen and disappear. Howeve r, this position has its critics and there is a persisting gender gap in the IT professions. Implications for public managers are that by increasing reliance on the Internet for communication, they may introduce gender bias. However, the gender gap in IT professions has actually worsened in spite of computer science recruitment of female students. According to the IT industry consulting firm Gartner Group, the number of women in the IT profession is declining. Gartner predicted that by 2012, 40 percent of women presently in the IT workforce would have left for better opportunities in alternative careers in business, research, and entrepreneurship where organizational culture appeared more facilitative for women (Government Technology, 2006t). In the are a of e -participation in politics, there seems to be a pronounced gender gap. Men are significantly more likely than women to have visited a candidate's Internet site 46.5% versus 34.5%. Men are significantly more likely than women to say they have visit ed an issue advocacy group's website as well, 43.2% versus 28.2% for women (Government Technology, 2006n). This gender gap favors the Republican Party, since in recent U.S.

elections, women voters have leaned Democratic. The Digital Divide by Race Early research linked race and ethnicity to holding less favorable attitudes toward and having less experience with computing. Sharp racial and income disparities were noted as technology was introduced to schools in the 1980s. These disparities began to dimin ish by the 1990s. In 2000, Jupiter Communications surveyed 30,000 households and showed 60% more white households were online than African -American. Data reported by Fairlie (2004) documents continuing racial differences in computer ownership and Interne t access in the United States: 70.4 % of whites, 41.3 % of blacks, and 38.8 % of Latinos have computers in their homes. Likewise, 50.3 % of whites but only 29.3 % of blacks and 23.7 % of Latinos have Internet access. Racial divisions in Internet use by race persist. Data from summer 2005, showed that while 70% of non -Hispanic whites and English -speaking Hispanics used the Internet, only 57% of blacks did so (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2005). The Digital Divide by Income The 2000 Jupiter Co mmunication survey found that income was the most significant digital divide factor, due to the cost of providing and maintaining a computer and having Internet access in the home. In 2002, the Consumer Federation of America found that of the 1/3 of Ameri can households having incomes below $25,000 per year, only 25% have Internet access. Additionally, of the 1/3 of American households that have incomes over $50,000, 75% have Internet access. Implications for public managers are that the digital divide is real for low income populations, and that the online communication and service delivery will not impact them. Household income is also a persistent differentiator of Internet use. Pew survey data showed that in summer 2005, some 93% of those with incomes over $75,000/year used the Internet, compared to only 49% of those with incomes of $30,000 or less. Some 73% of lower -middle income bracket ($30 -$50K) households and 87% of upper -middle bracket ($50 -$75K) households used the Internet. This paralleled tren ds by education, which is highly correlated with income: 29% of those with less than high school used the Internet, 61% of those with high school, 79% of those with some college, and 89% of those with a college degree used the Internet (Pew Internet and A merican Life Project, 2005). Income may also be behind urban -rural differences. Pew data also show 72% of urban and 70% of suburban households use the Internet, but only 59% of rural households (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2005). Dimitrova and Chen (2006: 184) in a national U.S. sample likewise found that income was positively related to use of online government services. Can the poor just ‘go to the library’? Given the digital divide even within the United States and given the desire of gover nment agencies to provide services online, there has been an increasing tendency for agencies to refer clients and citizens lacking Internet access to public libraries, which usually can provide access. However, a Florida State University Study in 2006 rep orted that this unfunded mandate on libraries had become a significant burden. The report noted, “To control their own costs, federal and state agencies are shifting the burden of e -government to public libraries with little regard for the impact on these front line service providers" (Government Technology, 2006i). There is strong evidence that the rise of online media favors Republicans, who as a group are more affluent, a factor in the digital divide. In 2006, Nielsen/NetRatings noted that of U.S. adults online, over 36% were Republicans compared to 30.8% being Democrats and 17.3% being Independents Government Technology (2006v). A further striking finding of the Nielsen/NetRatings survey was that both Republican and Democratic identifiers tend to flock to news and blogging sites which reinforce their own views. This represents a contrast to the pre -Internet era when most news was obtained from the same sources by identifiers of both parties. That is, the online media age is well -constructed to mobilize and consolidate opposing political camps, giving each their own separate news worlds, though somewhat more so for Republicans than for Democrats. The Digital Divide and Senior Americans In spite of the potential benefits of the Internet for senior Americans in terms of personal and community support, not to mention health information, only 59% of those 65 and older used the Internet (a 6% increase in just over a year); however, there is a decrease in use with each group and drops to 47% for those 75 and older (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2014). Dimitrova and Chen (2006: 184) likewise found that age was negatively related to use of online government services. These data suggest that senior Americans may be reaping disproportionately fewer of the benefits of the information age. Nonetheless, it is far from clear that as the population ages and presently Internet -savvy younger cohorts become the senior Americans of the future, that age -related problems of Internet access will go away. A 2005 MITRE Corporation study for USA Services (an arm of the General Services Administration), found that “Today, the 18 -to-29 -year -old population prefers the telephone over the Internet, while the 30 -to-45 and the 46 -to-65 - year -old groups prefer the Internet over the telephone (MITRE, 2005). That is, the premiere access technology preferred by younger Americans may be the cell phone/telephone, not the Internet alone. In its recommendations to USA Services, MITRE recommended that agencies take a multi -channel a pproach, not relying just on print or even just on Internet portals. Implications for public managers are that the digital divide is very pronounced for the aged and that sole reliance on the Internet for providing information and services would be biased and might be considered a form of age discrimination. The Digital Divide and Rural/Small Town Americans While every U.S. state and nearly all large cities and counties have an official website, in 2006 this was far from true for smaller jurisdictions. Wh en the National Policy Research Council (NPRC) undertook to rank all known official U.S. state and local government websites in 2006, it found that of 39,037 state and local jurisdictions, only 11,227 (29%) had an official online website. In terms of popul ation, while only 8% of county residents were without a county website, 8% of city residents were without a city website, but about 40% of township residents did not have a town website in 2006 (Government Technology, 2006aa). The digital divide in rural and small town America would be even more pronounced if access to broadband rather than just dial -up connections were taken into account. The American Digital Divide: Summary IT has a great potential for public managers, but that potential is limited by bias and inequity introduced when it is the sole means used to provide information and services. Certain populations are not yet reached in sufficient numbers to claim that bias and the digital divide is a thing of the past. Continuing education efforts in public schools will lessen the divide, but public managers must still cope with discrimination issues associated with the digital divide. The International Digital Divide in Information Access There is a pronounced digital divide between the develope d and the developing worlds. A North American is more than 10 times likely to have Internet access than a citizen of China. Africa is worst in terms of access. The international digital divide is seen by some as perpetuating poverty. However, simply pro viding resources will not remedy the problem. Many underdeveloped countries lack sociopolitical conditions for the infrastructure needed by the information society. Numerous authors have asserted that the international digital divide is likely to grow, no t recede, in the future (Salman, 2004; Brody, 2005; Gasco, 2005). While developing countries often have some minimal web presence, with exceptions, frequently the sites are lacking in regular content updates and are poorly designed as well as lacking in ne twork security or any form of certification authority for transactions (Bhatnagar, 2004). A fall 2006 United Nations press release estimated that the digital divide remained a “chasm,” with only 7% of the population in developing countries having Internet access, compared to 54% in the developed world, based on 2004 data (Government Technology, 2006h). Because information and communications technology (ICT) is novel and “outside the box” in terms of local cultures, it has the potential sometimes to be able to promote social change that would have otherwise faced resistance. Kanungo (2004), for instance, has described the emancipatory role of rural information systems, successfully leveraging social support needed to sustain the viability of ICT initiatives in rural villages in India. Public Policies to Remediate Information Inequality Recently there have been several policies that attempt to remedy information inequality. The E -Rate program, which was part of Telecommunications Act of 1996, collects funds from customers of telephone and telecommunication services for use to provide Internet infrastructure to schools and libraries. The success of this program in providing infrastructure to schools and libraries led the Bush administration in 2003 to decla re that the digital divide had been largely eliminated. In addition, the United Nations (UN) has developed some programs to address the international digital divide and the UN sponsors world summits on the information society.

Another example is the Europ ean Union technical assistance program for China, which adopted a 15 -million -euro “information society” initiative covering the 2005 -2009 period. The initiative set up five demonstration projects focusing on integrated service delivery, including uniting police and health services in an emergency response team, using smartcards for welfare services, and computerizing state pension funds. Additionally, the initiative included projects to establish the legal framework required for support of electronic trans actions, and training civil servants in e -government strategies. A 2005 United Nations report had already documented rapid e -government progress in China, but EU foreign aid is expected to accelerate these trends. Efforts of international organizations. In March 2005, the United Nations launched the Digital Solidarity Fund to finance projects aimed at addressing the global digital divide (The Economist, 2005). UNESCO, in conjunction with the Caribbean Centre for the Development Administration (CARICAD) and the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), has funded various e -government development activities in Caribbean., including conferences, courses, handbooks, and studies. In fall 2006, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan announced the formation of the U.N. Global Alliance for ICT and Development, chaired by Intel board chairman Craig Barrett and composed of world leaders from business, finance, governmental sectors for the purpose of enhancing worldwide access to digital technology (Government Technology, 2006h). Emphasizing the policy areas of health, education, and poverty reduction, the initiative was designed to increase citizen participation in government and to aid in the development of new businesses. Its method was to estab lish “Communities of Expertise” in each area to provide networks to support such projects as supporting African efforts to construct digital infrastructure. A volunteer “cyber development corps” was also established, along with initiation of efforts to pro mote disability access. In a second 2006 development, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a nonprofit group launched by MIT’s Media Lab and working with various international organizations, develops and promotes use of a $100 laptop computer running open source Linux software. The worldwide program was announced at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005. In October, 2006, the nation of Libya became the first country to sign a memorandum of understanding that in return for technical and mat erial cooperation that it would set as a national goal the deployment of an OLPC laptop to every school child and would contribute additional laptops to poor African nation (Government Technology, 2006q). Summary Public managers must be concerned with issues of information equality and the digital divide in order to ensure equitable access, which is a Constitutional obligation. Managers who ignore the concept of the divide risk making the situation worse. Digital citizenship requires developing comput er skills. Technology is a source of informational power. The “haves” are relatively complacent about access by the “have -nots.” The international divide between developed and underdeveloped nations is pronounced.