Open Government and E-Government: Democratic Challenges from

Center for Technology in Government U/Albany Page 1 of 9

Open Government and E-Government: Democratic

Challenges from a Public Value Perspective

Teresa M. Harrison

Dept. of Communication &

Center for Technology in Government

University at Albany, SUNY

Albany, NY 12222

1-518-442-4883

harrison@albany.edu

Santiago Guerrero

Dept. of Public Administration

University at Albany, SUNY

Albany, NY 12222

1-315-664-0849

sangue20@yahoo.com

G. Brian Burke, Meghan Cook,

Anthony Cresswell, Natalie

Helbig, Jana Hrdinová, &

Theresa Pardo

Center for Technology in Government

University at Albany

17 Wolf Road, Suite 301

Albany, NY 12205

1-518-442-3892

bburke@ctg.albany.edu

ABSTRACT

We consider open government (OG) within the context of e-

government and its broader implications for the future of public

administration. We argue that the current US Administration’s

Open Government Initiative blurs traditional distinctions between

e-democracy and e-government by incorporating historically

democratic practices, now enabled by emerging technology,

within administrative agencies. We consider how transparency,

participation, and collaboration function as democratic practices

in administrative agencies, suggesting that these processes are

instrumental attributes of administrative action and decision

making, rather than the objective of administrative action, as they

appear to be currently treated. We propose alternatively that

planning and assessing OG be addressed within a “public value”

framework. The creation of public value is the goal of public

organizations; through public value, public organizations meet

the needs and wishes of the public with respect to substantive

benefits as well as the intrinsic value of better government. We

extend this view to OG by using the framework as a way to

describe the value produced when interaction between

government and citizens becomes more transparent, participative,

and collaborative, i.e., more democratic.

Categories and Subject Descriptors

J.4. [Computer Applications]: Social and Behavioral Sciences –

Communication. C.4 [Performance of Systems]: Design studies;

Measurement techniques; Performance attributes

General Terms

Design, Theory, Experimentation, Human Factors, Management,

Measurement, Performance

Keywords

E-government, e-governance, e-democracy, open government,

collaboration, participation, transparency, democracy, public

value, social media.

by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The

definitive version was published in The Proceedings of the 12

Annual

International Digital Government Research Conference, June 12–15,

8/11/06…$10.00.

1. INTRODUCTION

Barack Obama's use of the Internet and social media technologies

in his 2008 presidential bid is widely credited with

revolutionizing the contemporary art of political campaigning

[52]. Having engineered a campaign organization that capitalized

on the strategic contributions of volunteers and that engaged

voters with wide ranging opportunities for contact with the

candidate, victory had scarcely been declared before predictions

circulated that Obama would seek to translate features of this

experience into the day to day administration of the executive

branch [53]. Dubbed the first “Internet Presidency” [55], the

President-Elect and his transition team quickly made good on

these predictions. In one of his first executive actions on January

21, 2009, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum on

Transparency and Open Government [41] instructing the Office of

Management and Budget to promulgate an Open Government

Directive within 120 days. The memorandum established

transparency, participation, and collaboration as the hallmarks of

open government.

The Open Government Directive ultimately issued on December

8, 2009 foregrounded the principles of transparency, participation,

and collaboration as “the cornerstone of an open government”

[43]. The Directive instructed federal agencies “to implement

these principles” by broadening access to government information

(including the reduction of Freedom of Information request

backlogs), improving the quality of government information, and

creating and institutionalizing a “culture of open government” that

would focus on involving people with “insight and expertise” and

forming “high impact collaborations with researchers, the private

sector, and civil society” [43:5]. Emerging technologies, which

have the potential to “open new forms of communication between

a government and the people” [43:5], are viewed as key to this

enterprise. The Directive also instructed relevant Federal agencies

to identify and propose revisions to any existing policies that

might pose impediments to using new technologies to promote

open government goals. Agencies complying with the Directive

have subsequently made ample use of the Internet and the Web,

as well as new capabilities offered by social media, in the Open

Government plans they have produced (see

http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/flagship-initiatives

for an overview). Thus, in one breathtaking move, the Obama

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Administration substantially redefined the focus of e-government

practice at the federal level for at least the next 3 years.

The novelty of the Open Government (OG) Initiative may best be

appreciated by comparing it with those of prior administrations.

In the 90s, the Clinton Administration's National Performance

Review and subsequent Partnership for Reinventing Government

focused on using technology in the back office to effect business

process improvement, and using the emerging World Wide Web

to make accessible to citizens information about government

services and programs through the creation of agency web sites.

The goals were to improve agency performance, and ultimately

reduce the size of federal bureaucracy [15,23]. The Presidential

Management Agenda introduced by the Bush Administration

focused on developing cross-agency projects and platforms to

make it easier to access relevant services and programs; reducing

the business costs of providing information to government;

improving information sharing between federal, state, local, and

tribal governments; and improving federal government efficiency

[23].

In contrast, the goal of the OG Initiative is to make information

and decision making processes in federal agencies accessible to

citizen examination and input, and in so doing create democratic

structures that “facilitate citizens' social and political judgment”

[26:107] about the outcomes of government work. Broader access

to government data and other documentation, the ability to

contribute information and perspectives to decision making

processes within government agencies, and the possibility of

responsible engagement with agency leadership in such decision

making processes are incrementally more democratic actions that

lie at the heart of the open government vision. Thus, it appears

that a substantially new and expansive approach to democratic

governance may be unfolding at the federal level, supported by

new technologies that may now significantly alter the relationship

between citizens and government agency leaders.

What is not yet clear is how to assess the impact of the programs

and policies created in pursuit of transparency, participation, and

collaboration. While these key terms resonate in familiar and

positive ways, it is not obvious how to determine what actions and

programs count as transparent, participative, or collaborative, and

from whose perspective such judgments should be evaluated. For

example, Sifry [50] reports that “[l]literally hundreds of thousands

of data streams are coming online at Data.gov and in the process a

whole new kind of public engagement with public information is

being enabled” [50:119]. But even if one assumes that the data is

both usable and of high quality, which cannot be taken for granted

[2,16], does the act of making greater amounts of government data

available to the public by itself count as “transparency” and what

kinds of metrics present a clear basis for making this case? Will

involving citizens in agency decision making increase the extent

to which that agency is viewed as “participative,” and whose

perceptions count in arriving at such a conclusion? These are

difficult issues that have not yet been directly confronted.

In this paper, we consider OG within the context of the academic

field of e-government and its broader implications for the future

of public administration; we further propose a conceptual

framework to guide policy makers in planning and assessing their

open government programs. We begin by situating OG within two

traditions of thought addressing the relationship between

technology, democracy, and government – e-democracy and e-

government – suggesting that the OG Initiative blurs these

distinctions by incorporating historically democratic practices,

now enabled by emerging technology, within administrative

agencies. We then consider how transparency, participation, and

collaboration function as democratic practices in administrative

agencies. Our analysis suggests that these values are instrumental

in producing an environment characterized by democratic

practices. Transparency, participation, and collaboration are

potential attributes of administrative action and decision making,

but not in themselves the end or objective of administrative

action. Instead, they are means to greater ends, although what

those ends might be is not completely evident.

We propose alternatively that planning and assessing OG related

programs and projects be addressed within a “public value”

framework. The concept of public value is borrowed from

existing work that draws upon the larger, ultimately political,

character of public administration. The creation of public value,

represented in information, programs, and benefits, is the goal of

public organizations; through public value, public organizations

meet the needs and wishes of the public. We extend this view to

OG by using the framework as a way to describe the value

produced when interaction between government and citizens

becomes more transparent, participative, and collaborative, i.e.,

more democratic. We conclude that OG efforts may ultimately

have the effect of stimulating deeper changes in the structure and

organization of the federal bureaucracy by exposing the ways in

which more transparent, participative, and collaborative

administrative mechanisms produce concrete outcomes that are

valued by government agencies and their stakeholders.

2. TECHNOLOGY, DEMOCRACY AND

GOVERNMENT

The idea of using new technologies to support, enhance, expand,

or re-invigorate democratic practices is not novel. The history of

century media has demonstrated that the introduction of new

communication technologies routinely gives rise to intense

speculation about their impact on the processes and practices of

democracy [29]. In the case of computer-mediated communication

and information technologies, that speculation has been

particularly intense, and has been applied to broad processes of

democratic decision making and e-democracy as well as to more

targeted forms of government action as e-government.

Studies of e-democracy generally focus on the ways that the

Internet and its associated technologies may work to “amplify the

political voice of ordinary citizens” [32:6] in broad political

processes. This happens by increasing the availability of

information required for the development of policy preferences;

by dislocating entrenched monopolies on information distribution

by media elites in favor of other information providers; by

encouraging political participation in campaigning, referenda and

voting; interacting with elected representatives; and by engaging

in deliberation over policy in the public venues.

In contrast, the field of e-government has focused more squarely

on the use of technology within the routine activities undertaken

by public organizations [15]: the provision of public services, the

quality and cost-effectiveness of basic government operations,

citizen engagement and consultation, the statutes and legislative

mandates required to effect these processes, and the administrative

and institutional reforms undertaken in pursuit of innovation.

Indeed, as Chadwick and May [7] have demonstrated through

their examination of e-government initiatives in the United States,

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Great Britain, and the European Union, a “managerial” mode of

interaction through information and communication technologies

(ICT) between citizens and the federal agencies has been

historically privileged at the expense of more consultative or

participatory modes of interaction. This is not to say that

participation and engagement have not figured at all within the e-

government field. Riley [46] and Cullen [13] have differentiated

between e-government and e-governance, with the latter defined

as programs that invite “citizens to engage in the policy processes

of oversight through a range of technologies from e-mail, to social

networking applications, and online conferencing. Electronic

consultation includes more formal systems of e-engagement,

initiatives such as the US E-rulemaking process, and e-

participation initiatives” [13:58]. However, e-governance

activities have not been the focus of previous presidential

administrations, nor have they been evident at most state or local

government levels.

This may be because administrative agencies have not

traditionally been viewed as sites for political decision making.

The decisions made by administrators have been assumed to be

largely technical, taken principally to implement legislative

mandates, and best made by agency employees who are assumed

to possess requisite expertise. Thus, participation with the public

is not needed. More recently, this perspective has been sharply

critiqued. Some doubt the assumption that administrators

invariably possess the expertise required for wise decision making

[40]. But it is also increasingly recognized that agencies “make

decisions that they believe are technical that in fact are not”

[10:14]. Administrators exercise discretion in selecting among

options for designing and implementing policy; in doing so, they

make value judgments at all stages of the policy process [47:5].

These value judgments are implicit in competing visions in

society of what is “good” and bureaucrats confront trade-offs

between the different values to be pursued [10]. In this sense, the

decisions taken by administrative agencies are far from value-

neutral; on the contrary, they are political and very much wrapped

up in the dynamics of democratic politics.

It is increasingly recognized that administrative agencies must be

responsive to public will [33], which can be accomplished

indirectly through action by elected representatives. Directly,

legislation such as the Administrative Procedures Act of 1946 has

compelled administrators to consult the public about proposed

rulemaking activities across various agencies. The Federal

Advisory Committee Act, which implicitly recognizes that

expertise can lie outside the agency, recognizes the merits of

seeking advice from citizens. But these solutions are only partial.

The OG Initiative extends responsiveness more radically by

acknowledging that citizens must have information to hold

agencies accountable and the desirability of direct input in the

decision making-processes taken by administrative agencies.

Thus, although e-democracy in political and e-government in

administrative realms have historically been largely separated, it

now appears OG brings these two spheres of activity together.

But regardless of whether federal agency attempts to implement

open government are best viewed as e-democracy or e-

governance, it seems clear that these efforts take place in contexts

that lack the conceptual frameworks and the performance

benchmarks for evaluating their success (see, e.g., [37]).

3. TRANSPARENCY, PARTICIPATION,

AND COLLABORATION

The idea of “open government” is animated by optimism over

what can be accomplished politically through the use of new

technology; the term draws in part on the philosophy and

methods of the “open source” programming movement. “Just as

open source software allows users to change and contribute to the

source code of their software,” according to Lathrop and Ruma,

“open government now means government where citizens not

only have access to information, documents, and proceedings, but

can also become participants in a meaningful way” [36:xix]. The

open source movement is characterized by its advocates as

transparent, participative, and collaborative, but these terms also

represent political values with a substantial history in democratic

theory, directly relevant to broad processes of citizen action

related to voting and public policy choices, now also applied in

the context of routine administrative actions within government

bureaucracy. In our discussion below, we show how

transparency, participation, and collaboration, which relate

directly to democratic theory, have become increasingly relevant

to administrative contexts.

3.1 Transparency

The relationships between information, transparency, and

democracy are fundamental and basic. Information is essential to

the formation of such basic democratic competencies as

formulating preferences and opinions, testing choices, and

participating in decision making [19,54]. Without such

competencies, a citizen cannot negotiate the marketplace of ideas

and is denied effective voice and the exercise of First Amendment

rights to free speech [6]. Thus, “good” information, in sufficient

quantity, quality, and accessibility, is a prerequisite for “good”

democracy [17].

Without information it is similarly impossible for citizens to hold

the governments they elect accountable to their collective will.

According to De Ferranti [21], transparency refers to “the

availability and increased flow to the public of timely,

comprehensive, relevant, high quality and reliable information

concerning government activities” [21:7]. In a representative

democracy in which citizens delegate authority for decision

making, such information is essential to providing a continuing

basis for consent. Transparency thus describes the extent to which

government actors make available the data and documents the

public needs in order to assess government action and exercise

voice in decision making [22]. The Freedom of Information Act

(FOIA) enables federal agencies to negotiate between the right to

know and justified needs for secrecy, giving citizens a mechanism

for requesting information that has otherwise not been released.

The voluntary and routine disclosure of budgets, audits, policies,

and executive actions provides a basis for citizens to assess the

efficacy of administrative action and make demands about the

kinds of public services that are provided by government; these

acts coincidentally also generate pressure for improved

performance.

But it is worth noting, as has Fung [26], that transparency is not

an unalloyed good. Maximizing the transparency of government

processes, for example, may bring into sharp focus the ways in

which government decision making is problematic, without due

regard for the goods and benefits that are produced along with

these problems. He calls for “public accounting systems” that

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would enable citizens to provide ongoing feedback and broader

evaluations of government services.

Beyond its potential for fostering accountability and generating

improved government performance, transparency has also been

discussed as an instrumental solution to legitimacy problems. As

Curtin and Meijer [14] point out, transparency may enhance the

public's willingness to accept institutional structures in a variety

of ways: by clarifying the way that an authority structure has been

constituted, by demonstrating the concrete benefits of

institutional actions, and by cultivating the belief that citizens

have a fair chance to influence institutional decisions and evaluate

results, to name a few. These are empirical questions, of course;

the extent to which transparency is related to its many

hypothesized objectives has yet to be fully established (see [30]).

3.2 Participation

Based on the model of the Athenian polis, the earliest form of

democratic governance is participatory democracy, which does

not distinguish between those who govern and citizens [31].

Through face-to-face discussion and, sometimes, deliberation,

citizens engage directly in decision making about their civic

affairs. Since such processes have become impractical for all but

small communities, the emergence of new technologies excited

many with the possibility of including more individual voices in

political discourse and reinvigorating civic life and political

participation [5, 28].

In contrast to representative government, participatory democracy

requires individuals to become more knowledgeable about the

perspectives of others and the interests that underlie those

perspectives [48] so they may deliberate more effectively.

Opinion exchange takes place in a variety of venues. For

Habermas [27], the link between the public and democratic

government is forged through discourse in the “public sphere”

that is, through the social intercourse that takes place between

citizens discussing issues of common concern in a variety of

public places—coffee houses, salons, and journals of opinion. For

communitarian democracy [1,20] and its contemporary analogues

or extensions (e.g., “strong democracy,” [4]), this interaction

takes place in neutral gathering places or “great good places” [42]

where citizens meet as community members to discuss issues that

sustain community life and build civic commitment. Regardless

of venue, the assumption is that all citizens have equal influence

over decisions ultimately taken, and that they exert their influence

under conditions of individual autonomy.

When applying this model to administrative agencies, public

participation is the “process by which public concerns, needs, and

values are incorporated into governmental and corporate decision

making” [10:7], a process that is democratically justified when it

is acknowledged that decisions taken by administrative agencies

have a political character.

Public participation has the potential to include diverse citizens'

voices in the public policy process [18]; when traditionally

excluded voices are included, policies may be designed that can

help them overcome disadvantageous positions. Social equity is

recognized as a core objective of public administration [24] and

public participation is instrumental to achieving this objective.

Public participation can serve as a means for “redistribution of

power that enables the have-not citizens, presently excluded from

the political and economic processes, to be deliberately included

in the future” [3:216], thus yielding decisions that are

characterized by social justice.

Public participation in agency decision making is also thought to

yield concrete benefits for the decision making at issue. Public

participation processes present different perspectives that can help

decision makers make more informed decisions; citizens may

know as well as bureaucrats, or perhaps even better because they

deal with such problems more frequently, what options constitute

desirable policy [35:72].

Finally, like transparency, public participation has the potential to

be instrumental in helping contemporary governments address the

problem of legitimacy [25]. Government action is considered

legitimate if the public has good reasons to support it. Public

participation in government decision making can increase

legitimacy by incorporating the public interests in the decision

making process; support comes from the recognition that the

government is responsive to the interest of the public, rather than

organized interest groups [25].

Although public participation in administrative decision making is

acknowledged to hold considerable potential, there is also

considerable evidence to suggest it is not always successful [34].

It is not the case that more participation is always better; a

contingency approach recognizes different levels of participation

are more or less desirable depending on the characteristics of the

policy process and the goals pursued. The extent and kind of

public participation should depend on the potential contribution

to be made and the potential adverse consequences that may ensue

[9:533]. According to this approach, participation varies in three

different dimensions: (1) who participates, (2) how participants

exchange information and make decisions, (3) the link between

public participation and decision making [25]. Public

participation initiatives vary on these three dimensions depending

on the desired outcomes.

3.3 Collaboration

Unlike transparency and participation, collaboration has not

traditionally been directly associated with democratic political

theory. Instead, Noveck [40] argues that collaboration is “a form

of democratic participation” [40:19] that differs in important ways

from traditional participative and deliberative practices, which

often take place in circumstances disconnected from decision

making. Deliberation often turns into an opportunity for the

exchange of views, rather than the context for determining a

specific course of action. While there are benefits to ensuring that

diverse viewpoints are incorporated into government action (as we

have seen above), she argues that collaboration as a

contemporary form of participative democracy brings individuals

with expertise together with government decision makers to create

solutions that will be implemented.

This approach to collaboration finds its foundation in recent

public administration theory as collaborative public management,

the “process of facilitating and operating in multiorganizational

arrangements in order to remedy problems that cannot be solved-

or solved easily- by single organizations” [38:33] and in

analogous models such as “new governance” [49:8].

Collaboration helps governments address public problems

described as “wicked” because they have no easy solutions.

Addressing “wicked issues requires a new style of governing. It

Center for Technology in Government U/Albany Page 5 of 9

involves a capacity to work across organizational boundaries, to

think holistically and to involve the public” [8].

Just like participation, collaboration can potentially enhance the

effectiveness of governments, but it does so by recognizing that

impartiality, expertise, resources, discipline and time to make

public decisions are resources that are distributed in society and

by incorporating them into policy processes. Collaboration calls

for different sectors of society to work together, recognizing that

citizens possess complementary information that can be used to

solve public problems [49] and that collaboration can potentially

build social capital needed for citizens to play “value adding”

roles [51]. The potential of collaborative approaches is greatly

enhanced by new technologies that give rise to permeable

“networked” structures allowing people to connect across

organizational boundaries [38].

However, collaboration has also been criticized in the public

administration literature. For instance, the reliance of

governments on third party actors has generated the image of the

hollow state to describe governments that become distanced from

the services they deliver to citizens [45]. Additionally,

accountability issues may arise for holding these new participants

responsible for their actions [44]. There is limited understanding

of the impact of collaboration on program outcomes and a

generalized assumption that more collaboration is always desired

[38]. But collaboration is desirable to the extent that it can meet

its potentials and lead to more effective problem solving.

These perspectives reflect the same quality of instrumentality that

characterizes transparency and participation. As Noveck [40]

points out “Collaboration is a means to an end. Hence the

emphasis is not on participation for its own sake but on inviting

experts, loosely defined as those with expertise about a problem,

to engage in information gathering, information evaluation and

measurement, and the development of specific solutions for

implementation.” [40:39]

4. THE PUBLIC VALUE FRAMEWORK

It should be clear from the prior discussion that transparency,

participation, and collaboration are best viewed as instrumental to

the accomplishment of democracy in that they enable citizens to

enact their various roles as citizens. That is, transparency is not an

end citizens pursue for its own sake. Citizens may desire their

government to be transparent, but that is largely because

something else is at stake: Information and actions must be

transparent so that citizens can scrutinize and assess the concrete

outcomes of government action. Similarly, participation for the

mere sake of participating is an empty and alienating exercise;

instead, citizens participate in order to produce government action

that responds to and reflects their input in meaningful ways.

Collaboration only makes sense where participants can contribute

useful expertise, and substantive decisions are under

consideration. It's important to note that, although these

instrumental values may not be ends in themselves, when

implemented, they must be genuinely enacted. Citizens must be

assured and trust that these values have not been co-opted in the

service of other politicized agendas. At the same time, as we have

pointed out, it is also not the case that more transparency,

participation, or collaboration is necessarily beneficial. Instead,

care must be taken to determine the ways and the occasions in

which these processes are undertaken. Thus, metrics that merely

quantify how many datasets are available or how frequently

opportunities to participate or collaborate are available cannot be

taken as unequivocal indicators that open government has been

successful.

We suggest that when transparency, participation and

collaboration are meaningful, it is because they enable groups of

people to pursue their objectives. If that is true, what are these

objectives? In the section below, we propose that the “public

value” framework enables us to understand how to determine the

value of government activities and to do so from multiple

stakeholder perspectives, not just a “citizen” viewpoint.

4.1 Public Value in Public Administration

The public value perspective, introduced by Moore [39], assumes

that administrative organizations make decisions that are

inevitably political, and argues that managers must therefore

determine how best to make such decisions. Just as privately

owned economic organizations create “private value” for their

owners, Moore proposes that public organizations create “public

value” for citizens and a wide range of other stakeholders. Private

value is created when goods and services are bought and these

transactions produce a profit; it is reasonably easy to discern and

measure. Public value, on the other hand, is the product of

governmentally-produced benefits, which are undertaken when

market mechanisms are unable to guarantee their equitable

production. Part of public value is derived from the direct

usefulness of such benefits; another part is derived from the

fairness and equitability of their production and distribution, and

meets citizens' requirements for “properly ordered and productive

public institutions” [39:53].

This perspective makes clear that efficiency and effectiveness

measures are not necessarily the only or even the principal way

that government programs or services might be assessed. As

Moore puts it [39:38] “In the end none of the concepts of

'politically neutral competence,' 'policy analysis' and 'program

evaluation,' or 'customer satisfaction' can finally banish politics

from its preeminent place in defining what is valuable to produce

in the public sector. Politics remains the final arbiter of public

value just as private consumption decisions remain the final

arbiter of private value.” Citizens each have individual

perspectives on the relative worth of governmental activities, but

ultimately whether a government action creates public value is a

collective judgment. The extent of value perceived is likely to

vary based upon interest group perspectives and location in the

hierarchy, and may also change over time. Since the desirability of

government action is not derived from legislative mandate, public

managers must attend actively to perceptions of public value

produced by agency programs and services. Moore offers

considerable advice about how best to engage in these managerial

processes.

However, he does not offer a systematic method for analyzing

public value. Since financial metrics such as efficiency, profit, and

productivity cannot be wholly transported to this context, we must

find analogous methods for analyzing public value. To address

this problem, Cresswell and his colleagues [11, 12] have designed

a set of strategies for linking the concrete interests of multiple

stakeholders to specific government activities, and particularly

those related to ICT investments designed to achieve open

government principals.

Center for Technology in Government U/Albany Page 6 of 9

4.2 Public Value Impacts

Public value, in the most general sense, focuses our attention on

the collective and societal interests that are served by particular

institutional forms and actions of government. We can speak in

broad terms about those interests, but to be most useful the

analysis of public value must center on particular stakeholder

groups and their interests. The distribution of value across

multiple stakeholders will vary according to their particular

interests and expectations for government. They will also vary in

the benefits they receive from the same government action; some

stakeholders may also suffer from an action. Because of this

distribution, considering public value as an absolute indicator of

government outcomes misses the variety of interests and possible

benefits across many stakeholders. Past literature and government

declarations link open government initiatives to the broad all-

inclusive category of “citizens.” By treating such a diverse

population as one group and analyzing it as one group, the

analysis falls woefully short of understanding the value of the

government action. Instead we treat each government action as

potentially presenting value to multiple and diverse stakeholders

from both inside and outside the organization. But this outcome

represents a set of complex, iterative interactions between

multiple stakeholders and the operations of a government agency

or program.

The cornerstone of the public value rationale lies within the link

between government action and the multiple types of public value

that can accrue. Public value types distinguish between the

intrinsic value of government as a societal asset and the

substantive value of government actions and policies that deliver

specific benefits directly to individuals, groups, or organizations.

Public value can be described in terms of six general types that

capture the range of possible results of government in the ways of

interest here.

• Financial – impacts on current or future

income, asset values, liabilities, entitlements,

or other aspects of wealth or risks to any of

the above.

• Political – impacts on a person’s or group’s

influence on government actions or policy, on

their role in political affairs, influence in

political parties or prospects for public office.

• Social – impacts on family or community

relationships, social mobility, status, and

identity.

• Strategic – impacts on person’s or group's

economic or political advantage or

opportunities, goals, and resources for

innovation or planning.

• Ideological – impacts on beliefs, moral or

ethical commitments, alignment of

government actions or policies or social

outcomes with beliefs, or moral or ethical

positions.

• Stewardship – impacts on the public’s view

of government officials as faithful stewards or

guardians of the value of the government in

terms of public trust, integrity, and legitimacy.

Of these, the first four types are impacts related to the substantive

private interests of individuals or groups. The remaining two types

are related to intrinsic or societal and democratic outcomes. The

public value of stewardship results from greater integrity,

responsiveness, and legitimacy of government leading to increased

trust and satisfaction with the government overall. Ideological

public value aligns government action with moral and ethical

preferences or beliefs.

From identifying these six basic types of value impacts, we can

move to considering issues related to how value is created. Value

is produced by value generating mechanisms; identifying these

mechanisms allows us to specify the means by which a

government action is related to the production of one or more

public values. The value generating mechanisms reveal the

instrumental pathways by which a given government action is

related to the creation of a value. According to our framework,

actions to effect transparency, participation, and collaboration

belong within this group of value generators. Taken as a whole,

the set of value generators consists of:

• efficiency – obtaining increased outputs or

goal attainment with the same resources, or

obtaining the same outputs or goals with

lower resource consumption.

• effectiveness – increasing the quality of the

desired outcome.

• intrinsic enhancements – changing the

environment or circumstances of a stakeholder

in ways that are valued for their own sake.

• transparency – access to information about

the actions of government officials or

operation of government programs that

enhances accountability or influence on

government.

• participation – frequency and intensity of

direct involvement in decision making about

or operation of government programs or in

selection of or actions of officials.

• collaboration – frequency or duration of

activities in which more than one set of

stakeholders share responsibility or authority

for decisions about operation, policies, or

actions of government.

Connecting a value type with a value generating mechanism

makes clear how a government program results in one or more

public values. For example, an IT investment in putting license

application and renewals online may increase efficiency or

effectiveness and yield strategic or financial public value for

stakeholders that use such licenses.

Transparent, participative, or collaborative actions taken by

government may have the effect of enabling a citizen to derive

substantive financial, social, political or strategic values and/or

intrinsic value related to government itself. For example, when

provided with environmental information (with transparency as

the enabling value generating mechanism) a citizen may derive a

couple of types of value. In this case, a citizen who acquires

information about a toxic chemical release in his neighborhood

may derive social benefits for his/her family and the community,

but may also gain greater trust in the stewardship of a government

agency that provides such information. But conversely, it is also

possible that some stakeholders will derive negative public value

from this release of information. The same citizen who learns of a

toxic chemical release may sue the business allegedly responsible,

resulting in negative public value for that business stakeholder. It

Center for Technology in Government U/Albany Page 7 of 9

is also possible that a group of internal governmental stakeholders

may accrue positive political and strategic value by releasing the

information because it meets an open government requirement;

while another set of internal stakeholders may see that as negative

political impact. Therefore, determining the value of any

government action requires the systematic analysis of multiple

stakeholder perspectives so that both positive and negative

impacts are identified and understood. It is with the information

generated through this careful analysis that more informed

decisions can be made about open government initiatives.

4.3 Applying the public value framework

We are currently developing this approach to provide a

foundation for more systematic and detailed analyses, but a

number of implications may be highlighted at this point. First, a

public value analysis requires a relatively complete inventory of

stakeholders for a government agency or unit. Agencies do not

serve “the public” at large; instead, they serve particular groups of

people with particular needs and desires, and need to be able to

connect their initiatives to the stakeholders they are committed to

serving.

Second, a public value analysis requires that an agency link its

open government initiatives to its mission and priorities. The open

government principles of transparency, participation, and

collaboration are best viewed as strategies that government takes

to accomplish organizational objectives (which should already be

rooted in public values), that provide the opportunity to achieve

greater or additional value through incorporating these democratic

practices. More information, participation or collaborative actions

may enable better decisions that provide stakeholders with

financial, social or strategic values while also enabling them to

achieve the stewardship value of increased trust in the

responsiveness of government.

Third, government leaders may benefit from this approach by

using it to plan, design, and assess open government initiatives.

The selection and design of open government initiatives can be

enhanced by a clear understanding of who is served by a

particular initiative, by specifying what values an initiative seeks

to create, and by understanding the value generating actions that

are required to achieve benefit. This is a recipe for clear-minded

planning and design that we trust will improve the progress of

open government planning. Planners can conduct their analyses

by initiative, asking what stakeholders and values are targeted by

initiatives in their portfolios, thus insuring that initiatives each

have a discernible audience and anticipated outcomes. They can

also analyze their portfolios by stakeholder, asking what

initiatives serve each stakeholder group and in what ways they

will derive value, thus insuring that the agency is addressing the

needs of those segments of the public they are mandated to serve.

Conversely, government leaders may also benefit from using this

approach to evaluate their open government initiatives. Our

approach suggests that initiative stakeholders, rather than the

public at large, will be best situated to evaluate a specific

initiative. Further, rather than metrics focused on numbers of

datasets available, numbers of downloads, participation

opportunities, numbers of discussion posts, etc., agencies will

need to assess the validity of the pathways from an initiative to

one or more stakeholders, through value generating mechanisms

and finally to one or more values derived.

Open government will have achieved its goals when stakeholders

derive substantive or intrinsic value from government actions

that are at least in part characterized by transparency,

participation, and/or collaboration. We predict that agency

stakeholders who derive one or more public values from

initiatives that are transparent, participative, and/or

collaboratively conducted will perceive that government agency to

be more responsive, accessible, engaged, and thus more open.

5. CONCLUSION

Our public value approach to open government, and to the

democratic aspirations at the heart of this effort, is still under

construction and requires empirical testing. However, as e-

government researchers, we believe that this effort is vitally

important. As our analysis has shown, our field's

conceptualizations of e-government have roughly mirrored those

advanced by elected leaders, rather than serving as inspiration to

those who seek to lead. While we have included democratic

enhancements in our e-government typologies, they have received

little development in our field. It is remarkable to see the e-

government aspirations of the Obama Administration following

the lead of the open software movement, rather than the field of e-

government. As researchers, we must be pro-active in helping

federal government leaders implement, develop, and assess the

open government vision.

This is all the more important given the nature of transparency,

participation, and collaboration, as instrumental concepts

themselves, since they are so easily misunderstood. The open

government principles can be relatively easily operationalized.

However, doing so without reference to value carries the risk that

such actions will be empty scaffolding. Transparency, for

example, will not be achieved through the mere downloading of

data sets. The data sets must consist of reliable and valid data, the

data must be useful, and, most crucially, they must enable citizens

to do something they find valuable and important. If not,

transparency is just another empty promise, and will contribute to

growing cynicism within the electorate. Similarly, participation

and collaboration must be meaningful, must be directed toward

goals that are carefully defined, must be acknowledged by ample

government feedback, and the citizen input they generate must be

represented in outcomes that are visible to stakeholders in the

decisions and the value produced.

At the same time, open government reconciles the divergent paths

of e-democracy and e-government. While transparency,

participation, and collaboration may initially take more time and

resources, they bear the promise of ultimately improving policy

performance – the historic focus of e-government – by creating

shared understandings of current performance and generating

pressure to improve, increasing the pool of applicable ideas,

tapping into new sources of expertise, and building civic capacity.

All these may ultimately turn out to be the key to concrete

improvements in policy outcomes and the quality of public

services.

But achieving such outcomes will inevitably require changes in

the structure and organization of government. Fountain (2005) has

observed that such structural changes rarely materialize through e-

government initiatives. Instead, technology enactment all too

often reproduces existing rules, routines, norms, and power

relations, despite the new and innovative capabilities that new

technologies introduce. The promise of open government is to

Center for Technology in Government U/Albany Page 8 of 9

provide a source of pressure that counteracts these tendencies, a

promise that may be fulfilled provided that open government

changes the nature of relationships between stakeholders and

government, producing innovative forms of organizing that

enable groups to link across organizational boundaries and

functions. The creation of public value may be the best possible

argument for stimulating and justifying such structural changes.

6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This material is based upon work partially supported by the US

National Science Foundation under Grant No.

0956356.

Any

opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations

expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not

necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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