Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Technologies And Time Tempers: How Things Mediate A State’S (Cyber Vulnerability) Disclosure Practices, Clare Stevens

Secrecy and Society

State secrecy and disclosure practices are often treated as processes of intentional and strategic human agency, and as forms of political time management (Bok 1982; Horn 2011). Through a critical analysis of the United States government’s disclosure practices in the context of their discourse around the cybersecurity “Vulnerabilities Equities Process” (VEP), this paper will present a two-fold argument against these conventional treatments of secrecy and disclosure. While government secrecy and disclosure can certainly be understood as a form of (agential) timing, orientation and control (Hom 2018), this paper will also show how government secrecy practices are emergent at the point …

Introduction To The Special Issue On Secrecy And Technologies, Clare Stevens, Sam Forsythe

Secrecy and Society

Many scholars have treated the inscrutability of technologies, secrecy, and other unknowns as moral and ethical challenges that can be resolved through transparency and openness. This paper, and the special issue it introduces, instead wants to explore how we can understand the productive, strategic but also emancipatory potential of secrecy and ignorance in the development of security and technologies. This paper argues that rather than just being mediums or passive substrates, technologies are making a difference to how secrecy, disclosure, and transparency work. This special issue will show how technologies and time mediate secrecy and disclosure, and vice versa. This …

Diabolus Ex Machina? A Comparative Case Study To Test Whether Automatic Weapons Can Disproportionately Benefit Irregular Forces, Harrison Durland

Honors Theses

Researchers in the field of irregular conflict have observed that irregular forces such as insurgents and guerrillas have been victorious or forced draws in a greater percentage of conflicts over the past century compared with the century prior. More generally, researchers and practitioners have sought to better understand why seemingly weaker, irregular forces are able to win some wars against enemies who have significant material and other conventional advantages. This thesis engages with some of the literature in this field and focuses on what appears to be a particularly understudied issue: the potential role of shifts/innovations in military technology. Specifically, …

Every Data Point Counts: Political Elections In The Age Of Digital Analytics, Julian Kehle, Samir Naimi

Honors Thesis

Synthesizing the investigative research and cautionary messages from experts in the fields of technology, political science, and behavioral science, this project explores the ways in which digital analytics has begun to influence the American political arena. Historically, political parties have constructed systems to target voters and win elections. However, rapid changes in the field of technology (such as big data, artificial intelligence, and the prevalence of social media) threaten to undermine the integrity of elections themselves. Future political campaigns will utilize profiling to micro-target individuals in order to manipulate and persuade them with hyper-personalized political content. Most dangerously, the average …

Information Sharing, Transparency, And E-Governance Among County Government Offices In Southeastern Michigan, Lawrence Bosek

All NMU Master's Theses

The Internet has given rise to the availability of information at our fingertips. While the public, particularly consumers, are more commonly described as being the leading users and beneficiaries of electronic information services, businesses and governments are also players in the arena for sharing official information. Information can be easily stored on Internet websites for the public, businesses, and other governmental offices to search and peruse when needed. This study examined the ease of locating county governmental information, such as contact information for public officials and financial reports, and surveyed elected county officials for purposes of identifying how information is …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Is Necessity The Mother Of Innovation? The Adoption And Use Of Web Technologies Among Congressional Offices, Kevin Esterling, David Lazer, Michael Neblo

David Lazer

From first paragraph: Communication between legislator and constituents is fundamental to effective democratic representation, and devising the institutional means for citizen/legislator communication stands as one of the core and persistent problems in the practice of democracy. A legislator needs information about the preferences, ideals, norms, and beliefs of her constituents in order to do her job well. Similarly, citizens need information about the actions and decisions of their representative in order to maintain appropriate accountability. But as national problems become more complex, and as the political process grows more and more dominated by experts and organized groups, it is becoming …

The Office For Harmonization In The Internal Market: Creating A 21st Century Public Agency, Jane Fountain, Raquel Galindo-Dorado, Jeffrey Rothschild

National Center for Digital Government

(first paragraph) President Wubbo de Boer and his department directors, his top management team, prepared for critical meetings of the Administrative Board and the Budget Committee in the winter of 2010. The European Union’s trademark and design registration agency in Alicante, Spain, grandly named the Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market (Trade Mark and Design) (OHIM), had exceeded all expectations for the establishment of the Community trade mark (CTM) and the Registered Community design (RCD). The new agency also could be proud of impressive achievements in productivity and transparency since it began registering trademarks in 1996. Through productivity gains, …

The Institutional Dimension Of E-Government Promotion: A Comparative Study On Making ‘Business Reference Model (Brm)’ In The U.S. And Korea, Seok-Jin Eom

National Center for Digital Government

Why do e-government initiatives which are commonly implemented to achieve similar policy goals produce different outcomes in different nations? To answer this question, this paper examines e-government policy structure, which has been regarded as one of the most important institutional arrangements for e-government promotion (European Commission, 2007; Park, 2006; OECD, 2005; Eifert and Puschel, 2004). Specifically, the legal framework, the managerial tools for coordination and control, and the organizational arrangements of the e-government policy structures of the Bush administration in the U.S. and of Roh administration in Korea are compared. Based on such a comparative analysis, this study demonstrates how …

Oficina De Armonización Del Mercado Interior: La Creación De Un Organismo Público Para El Siglo Xxi, Jane Fountain, Raquel Galindo-Dorado, Jeffrey Rothschild

National Center for Digital Government

(primer párrafo) En el invierno de 2010, el presidente Wubbo de Boer, en compañía de sus directores de departamento y de su equipo de alta dirección, preparaba las cruciales reuniones del Consejo de Administración y del Comité Presupuestario. La oficina de registro de marcas, dibujos y modelos de la Unión Europea, con sede en Alicante, España, pomposamente denominada Oficina de Armonización del Mercado Interior (Marcas, Dibujos y Modelos) (OAMI), había superado todas las expectativas generadas por la creación de la marca comunitaria (MC) y los dibujos o modelos comunitarios registrados (DMCR). El nuevo organismo también podía jactarse de los impresionantes …

Successful And Abandoned Sourceforge.Net Projects In The Initiation Stage, Charles Schweik

National Center for Digital Government

[first paragraph] Chapter 6 provided an open source project success and abandonment dependent variable. Chapter 7 described data available in the Sourceforge.net repository and linked these data to various independent variable concepts and hypotheses presented in the theoretical part of this book. Chapter 7 also described the Classification Tree and Random Forest statistical approaches we use in this and the following chapter. This chapter presents the results of the Classification Tree analysis for successful and abandoned projects in the Initiation Stage, which in Chapter 3 (Figure 3.2), we defined as the period before and up to the time when a …

The Dependent Variable: Defining Open Source "Success" And "Abandonment" Using Sourceforge.Net Data, Charles Schweik

National Center for Digital Government

[first paragraph] From the very beginning of this research project, we understood that we needed to define what success meant in open source so that we could use that definition to create a dependent variable for our empirical studies. Does success mean a project has developed high quality software, or does it mean that the software is widely used? How might extremely valuable software that is used by only a few people, such as software for charting parts of the human genome, fit into this definition? In this chapter, we establish a robust success and abandonment measure that satisfies these …

Web 2.0 In The Process Of E-Participation: The Case Of Organizing For America And The Obama Administration, Aysu Kes-Erkul, R. Erdem Erkul

National Center for Digital Government

The presidential campaign of Barack Obama during the 2008 elections sparked new discussion about the public engagement issue in the political processes. The campaign used Web 2.0 tools intensively to reach the general public and seek support and collect feedback from voters. In this paper, we analyze the major website of this project, “Organizing for America” (OFA) from the perspective of e-participation, which is a concept that include all the processes of public involvement via information and communication technologies.

Information & Communication Technologies And Digital Government: The Turkish Case, Turhan Mentes

National Center for Digital Government

The technological innovations of the last decades have opened the doors to a new and different world for businesses and governments. As access to the Internet penetrates more populations each day, ICTs continue to shape societies all over the world. This presentation will explore the development of ICTs and e-government in Turkey. It will include significant figures and statistics about e-government in Turkey and discuss the social consequences of such developments.

The Open Source Software Ecosystem, Charles M. Schweik

National Center for Digital Government

[first paragraph] Open source research in the late 1990s and early 2000's described open source development projects as all-volunteer endeavors without the existence of monetary incentives (Chakravarty, Haruvy and Wu, 2007), and relatively recent empirical studies (Ghosh, 2005; Wolf {{243}}) confirm that a sizable percentage of open source developers are indeed volunteers.1 Open source development projects involving more than one developer were seen to follow a “hacker ethic” (Himanen, 2000; von Hippel and von Krogh, 2003) where individuals freely give away and exchange software they had written so that it could be modified and built upon, with an expectation of …

E-Government And Inter-Organizational Collaboration In Mexico: Survey Results, Luis F. Luna-Reyes, J. Ramon Gil-Garcia

National Center for Digital Government

From executive summary: This document summarizes the responses to questionnaires completed by participants from inter-organizational information technology (IT) projects in the Mexican federal government. The questionnaire was undertaken as part of a research project on e-government and inter-organizational collaboration funded by the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) and conducted jointly by researchers from the Business School of the Universidad de las Américas in Puebla, México, the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas in Mexico City, and the National Center for Digital Government at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. The responses reflect the opinions of 282 government officials …

Open Source Software Collaboration: Foundational Concepts And An Empirical Analysis, Charles M. Schweik, Robert English, Sandra Haire

National Center for Digital Government

This paper has three primary goals. First, we provide an overview on some foundational concepts – “peer-production,” “user-centric innovation,” “crowdsourcing,” “task granularity,” and yes, open source and open content – for they are key elements of Internet-based collaboration we see today. Second, through this discussion on foundational concepts, we hope to make it clear why people interested in collaborative public management and administration should care about open source and open source-like collaboration. After this argument is made, we provide a very condensed summary of where we are to date on open source collaboration research. The goal of that research is …

The New Middle-Class, Technology And Modernity In Seelampur, Sreela Sarkar

National Center for Digital Government

From introduction: My paper studies a globally acclaimed experiment in computer literacy and cultural capital in Seelampur, located on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh state border. In late 2003, Datamation, a prominent private, Delhi based Information Technology firm, with partial funding from UNESCO and the Delhi state government, established computer literacy and e-commerce development projects in Zaffarabad in Seelampur. Seelampur is a diverse community but like the rest of the area, Zaffarabad is largely a settlement of informal working class Muslims. State violence and dominant middle-class interests have historically colluded to create Seelampur. During the National Emergency years in 1975-1977, residents of …

Brooks' Versus Linus' Law: An Empirical Test Of Open Source Projects, Charles M. Schweik, Robert English

National Center for Digital Government

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects are Internet-based collaborations consisting of volunteers and paid professionals who come together to create computer software...

Reflections Of An Online Geographic Information Systems Course Based On Open Source Software, Charles M. Schweik, Maria Fernandez, Michael P. Hamel, Prakash Kashwan, Quentin Lewis, Alexander Stepanov

National Center for Digital Government

This SSCORE report summarizes our experience offering an online introductory course on Geographic Information Systems that utilizes available free/libre and open source software (FOSS). Two primary objectives were to (1) reach students in developing countries, and (2) to help move forward the development of an “open content” GIS curriculum as part of the “Open Source Geospatial Foundation” (OSGeo.org) educational effort. Course design, key software (QGIS, GRASS, PostGresql/PostGIS) and online delivery methods are described. Results and factors leading to a low course completion rate and discussed. Contributing factors include: (1) a for-credit versus no-credit decision; and (2) technical issues. Recommendations for …

Better Public Services For Growth And Jobs, Jane E. Fountain

National Center for Digital Government

No abstract provided.

Increasing Social Capital For Disaster Response Through Social Networking Services (Sns) In Japanese Local Governments, Alexander Schellong

National Center for Digital Government

Researchers have argued that social networks within a community have positive effects on people’s behavior in the four stages of disaster. The Japanese government is testing Social Networking Service (SNS) at the municipal level with the intention to improve community building, democratic processes and disaster management. This paper presents results from two case studies of local SNS in Yatsushiro city, Kumamoto prefecture and Nagaoka city, Niigata prefecture. While the Yatsushiro’s solution seems to be sustainable, Nagaoka’s SNS is in decline. Both have to compete with popular SNS like Mixi and lack critical mass. Based on the reviewed literature I discuss …

Tragedy Of The Foss Commons? Investigating The Institutional Designs Of Free/Libre And Open Source Software Projects, Charles M. Schweik, Robert English

National Center for Digital Government

Free/Libre and Open Source Software projects (FOSS) are a form of Internetbased commons. Since 1968, when Garrett Hardin published his famous article “Tragedy of the Commons” in the journal Science, there has been significant interest in understanding how to manage commons appropriately, particularly in environmental fields. An important distinction between natural resource commons and FOSS commons is that the “tragedy” to be avoided in natural resources is overharvesting and the potential destruction of the resource. In FOSS commons the “tragedy” to be avoided is project abandonment and a “dead” project. Institutions – defined as informal norms, more formalized rules, and …

Identifying Success And Tragedy Of Floss Commons: A Preliminary Classification Of Sourceforge.Net Projects, Robert English, Charles M. Schweik

National Center for Digital Government

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects are a form of commons where individuals work collectively to produce software that is a public, rather than a private, good. The famous phrase “Tragedy of the Commons” describes a situation where a natural resource commons, such as a pasture, or a water supply, gets depleted because of overuse. The tragedy in FLOSS commons is distinctly different -- it occurs when collective action ceases before a software product is produced or reaches its full potential. This paper builds on previous work about defining success in FLOSS projects by taking a collective action perspective. …

The Digital Divide Metaphor: Understanding Paths To It Literacy, Enrico Ferro, Natalie C. Helbig, J. Ramon Gil-Garci

National Center for Digital Government

Not having access or having a disadvantaged access to information, in an information-based society may be considered as a handicap (Compaine, 2001). In the last two decades scholars have gradually refined the conceptualization of digital divide, moving from a dichotomous model mainly based on access to a multidimensional model accounting for differences in usage levels and perspectives. While models became more complex, research continued to mainly focus on deepening the understanding of demographic and socioeconomic differences between adopters and non-adopters. In doing so, the process of basic IT skills acquisition has been largely overlooked. This paper presents a metaphorical interpretation …

Enacting Technology In Networked Governance: Developmental Processes Of Cross-Agency Arrangements, Jane E. Fountain

National Center for Digital Government

This paper discusses the technology enactment framework, an analytical framework to guide exploration and examination of information-based change in governments.1 The original technology enactment framework is extended in this paper to delineate the distinctive roles played by key actors in technology enactment. I then examine institutional change in government by drawing from current initiatives in the U.S. federal government to build cross-agency relationships and systems. The U.S. government is one of the first central states to undertake not only back office integration within the government but also integration of systems and processes across agencies. For this reason its experience during …

Icts And Political Accountability: An Assessment Of The Impact Of Digitization In Government On Political Accountability In Connecticut, Massachusetts And New York State, Albert Meijer

National Center for Digital Government

This report presents a first analysis of the results of empirical research into the impact of digitization on political accountability in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York State. The report focuses on presenting the empirical findings and these data still require further analysis.

Challenges To Organizational Change: Multi-Level Integrated Information Structures (Miis), Jane E. Fountain

National Center for Digital Government

From introduction: Governments are extraordinary information creators, users, and disseminators. I-government focuses attention on the flow and structuring of information within government (Mayer-Schoenberger and Lazer, this volume). Government actors engage in knowledge work, specifically, in the creation, sharing, and communication of information. They design and redesign processes by which information flows according to legislative mandate, organizational practice and public need. Recently, they have sought to rethink information flows in order to leverage benefits from information and communication technologies. When public sector actors seek to change these information flows at any appreciable level of complexity, they inevitably engage in complex organizational …

Exploring E-Government Evolution: The Influence Of Systems Of Rules On Organizational Action, J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, Ignacio J. Martinez-Moyano

National Center for Digital Government

In general terms, e-government can be defined as the use of information and communication technologies in government settings. However, it is neither a homogeneous nor a static phenomenon. In recent years, empirical studies have identified two interesting dynamics in e-government evolution. First, e-government has evolved from its initial presence on the Internet to a more transactional and integrated approach. Second, at the aggregate level and as a general trend, national governments have started adding technological sophistication and have been followed by state and local governments. This paper attempts to explain these two dynamics in the evolution of e-government as a …

Telecommunications Technology And Sovereignty: Effects On States As Information Transfer Increased From The Speed Of Oxcart To The Speed Of Light, James H. Radford

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Sovereignty---the absolute and unlimited power of the state---provides independence of action. Information about actions or intentions of competitors, enemies, or even friends, arriving after extended periods of time, resulted in responses to fait accompli. When information travels nearly instantaneously, states must consider potentially rapid international reactions before the fact. This suggests that since a state's freedom of action has been abridged, the nature of their sovereignty has altered.

This study pursues the research question: In what ways does telecommunications technology affect state sovereignty? The evolution of sovereignty is compared to development of telecommunications technology over four distinct eras, each …