Jane Fountain will discuss the contribution of eGovernment to growth and jobs in the second plenary session, scheduled for Thursday 20 September. In this article she compares eGovernment practices of Americans and Europeans. The topic is in the agenda for the debate in which she is expected to take part in Lisbon.
“Europeans pay more attention to digital inclusion and public consultation; Americans have technocratic fascination with efficiency”
Are there, in your view, any substantial differences and/or similarities between the eGovernment practices implemented by the American and European public administrations?
Europeans, on average, have always been more concerned with the societal implications of ICT than Americans. During the 1990s, while the U.S. was seriously engaged in building e-government, often without adequate and deep reflection regarding societal priorities, debate continued in Europe regarding the information society and its implications. This type of difference in culture is reflected in eGovernment practices. European public administration has paid far more attention to digital inclusion and public consultation than their counterparts in the U.S. Throughout its history, the U.S. has had a strong business orientation and a technocratic fascination with efficiency. This dominant cultural proclivity plays itself out in e-government priorities.
Turning to economic and industry-based differences, the U.S. e-government efforts benefit from the presence of a robust and variegated IT industry including several large firms as well as hundreds of small firms. The presence of such competition in the IT industry in the U.S. affects the cost and success rate of e-government projects.
What are, according to you, the main technology-based cross-agency innovations accomplished by the U.S. federal government? Is the European landscape very different from that of the U.S.?
In terms of structural and institutional possibilities for networked forms, countries do not differ greatly. By that I mean central questions of organization are driven structurally by coordination, control and communication imperatives. The structure should be driven by the strategy. Yet we know that history, culture and politics matter greatly and these differ significantly from one country to another. Specifically, federalism in the U.S. differs greatly from federalism in Europe in terms of the articulation of sovereign countries to the European Union. Yet the achievement of the European Union is stunning and impressive. It inspires confidence in the ingenuity and skill of Europeans at building networked arrangements in governance.
The European landscape also differs from the U.S. in a decided emphasis on public consultation and e-democracy and e-inclusion. In terms of e-government, the U.S. federal government was an early adopter beginning serious and widespread efforts with the Reinventing Government bureaucratic reforms of the Clinton Administration and continuing strongly into the present. So the U.S. has built a base of experience and a culture within the civil service that has been important for current projects.
In the U.S. several cross-agency innovations were developed during the 1990s in efforts to integrate information, services, and professional practices across ministries. Several of the most promising cross-agency initiatives were gathered together and became a central element of the President’s Management Agenda in 2001.
Could you name some key initiatives undertaken by governments and/or industries at an American/pan-European level in order to make public services "better" and make sure that "better" public services contribute to a more dynamic, competitive and healthy socio-economic environment?
One example includes the North American services that make the free trade zone in the North American Free Trade Agreement possible. An article in the treaty among Mexico, Canada and the United States requires standardization for shared data and shared processes across North America. This standardization, a requirement for online processing, is being extended to a number of South American countries as well. EU trade and financial networks operate similarly. These provide a basis for projects in other policy domains related to growth and employment.
The overall emphasis in such efforts is to develop interoperability to the extent possible under existing laws or to modernize laws to make interoperability and sharing across boundaries possible. These challenges include the flow of labour, services, intellectual property, as well as goods. Interoperability depends upon standardization or open standards as well as legal and procedural agreements. In all cases, communities of practice, involving business and government experts are in the strongest position to work out the complex details of such arrangements. Small businesses can be strengthened by specific inclusion of the small business needs in planning and implementation of such large-scale networked initiatives.
Jane Fountain is also Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in Massachusetts (USA).
Jane Fountain will participate in the live debate "The contribution of eGovernment to growth and jobs" of the Ministerial Conference of Lisbon, scheduled for 20 September.
Brussels, 18 September 2007
