RUNNING HEAD: Article Summary

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Article summary

E-government is the use information and communication technology to offer government

services to its electorate. The Social responsibility of E-government is a theory through which

the government can deliver its mandate to its electorate through electronic means. This ensures

high ethical standards among the individuals working in the government. E-government ensures

that no underhand deals take place. It reduces e possibility of corruption taking place in exchange

of government services. It thus promotes integrity

BIASES OF THE AUTHOR

1. POPULATION

The author notes that cities with high population leads in E-government innovation and

adoption. He cites (Ho, 2002; moon 2002) which suggests that the municipal sizes plays a major

role in predicting the level of technology adoption. The author believes that large cities have

greater needs and resources to adopt and implement it strategies. He also suggests that the budget

of a city influences the level of technology adoption. He goes ahead to note that the number of

skilled staff and the availability of resources makes favors the rate of e-government adoption.

The writer notes that the economies of scale due to the high population favors the adoption as

cited from Brudney and Selden, 1995.

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Figure 1: information features according to the cities in the US

Moon (2002) and Ahn (2011) finds the relationship between population and technology

adoption as very positive. The author also cites Reddick and Norris (2013) and finds the

municipal size is significantly and positively related to the adoption of information and services,

transactions and technologies. Manoharan (2013) is also cited by the author to suggest that

counties with official websites are larger and more densely populated than counties with no

official websites.

Figure 2: website accessibility according to city sizes

This is bias from the author as some densely populated cities may have a slower e-government

adoption rate than those cities with less population. Resource availability may not necessarily

mean than a city will adopt the e-government system

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2. FORMS OF GOVERNMENT

There are only two forms of government in the US. These are the council-manager and the

mayor-council. The author states that the form of government indicates the general balance

between the political influence and the professional influence. The author states that whether the

elected executive or a professional manager leads a city is a very important determiner of the rate

of adoption e- government the states that city managers are professionals who share similar

training and have network that result in shared beliefs about the type of ICTSs acceptable for

adoption. He states that professional nature of council-manager governments compared to

mayor- council forms of government tends to value innovation more, resulting in greater, broader

adoption of ICTs. He states that council- managers also values technical expertise, efficiency and

effectiveness, which goes hand in hand with vales of participation and transparency.

The author also states that council- managers are very innovative hence able to adopt early e-

government technology and web technologies.

The author’s conclusion that council-governments are early adopters of modern e-government

technology and web technology may not be true in some instances. This is because some mayor

governments may be led by individuals who had initially been trained and who have better

networks than the council governors.

3. TECHNICAL CAPACITY

The author states that many governments lack the staff resources to enhance the adoption,

development and management of e-transactions. He states that some cities are too small and may

not be able to keep the keep IT professionals on payroll. The author cites Jun and Weare (2011)
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to suggest that cities with more technical capacity are able to adopt to the e-government and e-

transaction systems faster than those with less technical capacity.

In this situation, the author seems biased to conclude that technical capacity affects the pace at

which a city can adopt to e-government system despite citing Reddick and Norris (2013) who

states that there is little or no significant relationship between the technical capacity and the e-

government adoption rate.

BIASES ON DATA USED

1. The author states that they did a random sampling to select 316 small cities and 184

larger cities with population of 100000 through 250000. By this, the author could have

selected the cities that could have favored the results of their research.
2. The writers states that they were interested with the functions and operations that were

easily accessible. This could mean that the writers cold have made certain assumptions in

their research to in the favor of their study

3. The writer states that in their research, 2014 they removed two items that had low scores

and had insufficient inter-coded reliability from the final data set
4. The motives of various governments could have been different as cited in (Li and Feeney,

2014). The writers did not consider this.

References

Ahn, M. J. (2011). Adoption of e-communication applications in U.S. municipalities: The role of

political environment, bureaucratic structure, and the nature of applications. The

American Review of Public Administration, 41(4), 428–452.

Brudney, J. L., & Selden, S. C. (1995). The adoption of innovation by smaller local government.

The case of computer technology. The American Review of Public Administration,

25(1), 71–86.
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Feeney, M. K., & Brown, A. (2017). Are small cities online? Content, ranking, and variation of

US municipal websites. Government Information Quarterly, 34(1), 62-74.

Jun, K. N., & Weare, C. (2011). Institutional motivations in the adoption of innovations:The case

of e-government. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 21(3), 495

519.

Manoharan, A. (2013). A study of the determinants of county e-government in the United States.

The American Review of Public Administration, 43(2), 159–178.

Moon, J.M., & Bretschneider, S. (2002). Does the perception of red tape constrain IT

innovativeness in organizations? Unexpected results from a simultaneous equation model

and implications. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 12(2), 273–292.

Reddick, C. G., & Norris, D. F. (2013). Social media adoption at the American grass roots:

Web 2.0 or 1.5? Government Information Quarterly, 30(4), 498–507.