- Introduction
This paper is entitled Digital Government and Citizen Participation in the United States. It is co-authored by Marc Holzer, Lung-Teng Hu, and Seok-Hwi Song. All of the three authors are from Rutgers University-Campus at Newark, USA. The overarching theme presented in this paper is that digital governance has been adopted both within and without the United States. Despite its success in enhancing democratic accountability with governments and citizen participation in democratic processes, the fact remains that digital governments are structured in such a way that they benefit the immediate interests of government public sectors, but the general public. This paper explains that many public sector websites for example have limited information that can directly benefit members of the public (Holzer et al., 2004).
- Summary
Holzer et al (2004) are of the view that digital government has been able to enhance the continued learning of the general public regarding how different organizations in the public sector operate. Digital governances allow members of the general public to give feedback about what they think about the public services. Through customer feedback governments can be in a position to reengineer public sectors so that they are congruent to the needs the general public. In addition, digital governance has created a platform for political agenda. Through customer involvement for example in the social media, democracy and accountability in the appropriation of state resources and machinery can be monitored by the general public.
- Review & Evaluation
This paper demonstrates expertise in the part of the authors. The authors make use of qualitative research in informing the inferences that they make in this paper. The evidence used by the authors is accurate and the arguments are logical, coherent and easy to follow. However, one of the weak points about this research is that it does not make use of quantitative research. There is no data that is used to inform the arguments that are raised in this research. This means that this research is not value-free and is therefore susceptible to opinion and biases.
- Conclusion
I agree with the arguments made by the author. This is because the world has in recent years realized technological and communication advancements. Many people have access to computers and other technological gadgets. This has made it possible for the thriving of digital government and the digital participation of the citizenry in both the socio-economic and political welfare of their states.
References
Holzer, M., Hu, L., & Song, S. (2004). Digital government and citizen participation in the United States. ACM Digital Library. Retrieved August 1, 2013, from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=973581
