Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change [Paperback]

Jane E. Fountain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 13, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0815700776 | ISBN-13: 978-0815700777

The benefits of using technology to remake government seem almost infinite. The promise of such programs as user-friendly " virtual agencies" and portals where citizens can access all sections of government from a single website has excited international attention. The potential of a digital state cannot be realized, however, unless the rigid structures of the contemporary bureaucratic state change along with the times. Building the Virtual State explains how the American public sector must evolve and adapt to exploit the possibilities of digital governance fully and fairly. The book finds that many issues involved in integrating technology and government have not been adequately debated or even recognized. Drawing from a rich collection of case studies, the book argues that the real challenges lie not in achieving the technical capability of creating a government on the web, but rather in overcoming the entrenched organizational and political divisions within the state. Questions such as who pays for new government websites, which agencies will maintain the sites, and who will ensure that the privacy of citizens is respected reveal the extraordinary obstacles that confront efforts to create a virtual state. These political and structural battles will influence not only how the American state will be remade in the Information Age, but also who will be the winners and losers in a digital society.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jane E. Fountain is associate professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is a research member of the Internet Policy Institute and director of Women in the Information Age Project.

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press (August 13, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815700776
• ISBN-13: 978-0815700777
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #935,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A useful text for an MPA Information Technology course, January 22, 2002

By 

Charlie Schweik (Amherst, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change (Paperback)

I whole-heartedly agree with the other reviews and add one additional comment. I used this book in my Information Technology course to Masters of Public Administration Students. The response to the book was terrific. It helped me make the point that a significant part of information technology in organizations is the people element, and led to terrific discussions on the role of social capital in organizations, among other things. In short, it is a very useful text for an MPA Information Technology course. Fountain's book is a major contribution to the literature on information technology in the public sector and is raising important points about the challenges ahead for e-government.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jane Fountain's Building the Virtual State, July 25, 2003

By 

Jeffrey Hart "IPE guy" (Bloomington, IN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change (Paperback)

Jane Fountain wants to understand the implications of information technology - particularly the Internet - for institutional change in government. The research reported in this book deals with three experiments in applying information technology in the U.S. government in the 1990s: the establishment of an International Trade Data Base (ITDB) for administering the North American Free Trade Agreement, the development of a one-stop shopping informational web site for small businesses called the U.S. Business Advisor, and efforts to modernize the use of information technology within the Ninth Infantry Division of the U.S. Army. On the basis of these three cases, Fountain concludes that the introduction of information technology "disrupts complex ecologies of institutionalized power relationships" (p. 205) inside governments and institutional actors, as a result, attempt to reconstruct those disrupted relationships in unanticipated and sometimes regrettable ways. Sometimes the disruption is so great that the resistance to the introduction of new technology prevails and "many potential connections remain unforged, and numerous opportunities to gain stunning efficiencies, cost savings, integrated services and joint problem solving in complex policy areas lie fallow." (p. 201)

In Chapter 1, the author distinguishes between "objective" and "enacted" technology. Enacted technology is the result of the introduction of objective technology in a set of social relationships where resistance to introduction is possible. This distinction reflects the author's concern for possible gap between the potential of objective technology and the actuality of enacted technology.

Chapter 2 focuses on the National Policy Review (NPR), an initiative of the first term of the Clinton administration that was led by Vice President Al Gore. The NPR was supposed to come up with recommendations on how to "reengineer" government in a manner analogous to the contemporaneous reengineering of business - that is, via the introduction of information technologies to reduce the costs of sharing information within organizations. It was hoped that this would reduce hierarchy, make possible huge cost savings, and empower citizens. The NPR provoked a lot of discussion and debate within the government about how to accomplish these aims and the three experiments studied by Fountain were all influenced by it. Nevertheless, each of these experiments had its own impetus and logic that went considerably beyond the NPR.

The first experiment, the establishment of ITDB, followed mainly from the signing and ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA required important changes in the handling of trade-related traffic across the U.S.-Canadian and U.S.-Mexican borders. The previous growth in international trade had already forced the U.S. Customs Bureau (a sub-agency of the Treasury Department) to automate its processing of trade clearances. The ITDB proposed to go much further by integrating a variety of trade and non-trade functions at the borders to deal with trade in both legal and illegal goods, legal and illegal immigration, while simultaneously upgrading the ability of the government to collect and analyze trade data. Unfortunately, worries about the potential delayed deliveries of goods due to overly ambitious government monitoring of trade on the part of businesses gave them a good reason to support efforts of the Customs Bureau to maintain primary authority over the processing of trade documents. The Customs Bureau felt threatened by ITDB and resisted efforts by other agencies to invade its turf. A series of bureaucratic battles ensued with the results well described by Fountain in Chapter 7.

In Chapter 8, Fountain considers the efforts of an interagency task force to establish a web site to provide a single portal for information about government regulations for small business owners. The U.S. Business Advisor was developed and deployed successfully and it won awards for utility and user-friendliness. However, the incentive structure within the U.S. government was not very good at encouraging the sort of continuous interagency coordination and cooperation needed to maintain the site, so it soon developed broken links that were not repaired and needed upgrades did not occur.

In Chapter 9, Fountain describes the efforts of the Ninth Infantry Division to modernize its information systems by creating a Divisional intranet. The first problem, that of overcoming the resistance of field commanders, to substituting paper-and-pencil-based systems with electronic ones, was dealt with by giving too much power to mid-level officers to design the system. The superior officers had difficulty specifying what particular information they needed because of the complexity of the tasks they performed, so they ended up being swamped with a lot of unnecessary information. The soldiers who previously were trained to submit written forms to the mid-level officers moved to electronic submission without sufficient training and without complete knowledge of how this information would be used at higher levels. They became "de-skilled." The mid-level officers suggested intranet designs that enabled them to do their jobs more efficiently but did not enhance the quality of information that went to their superior officers.

The best feature of this book, therefore, is the honest description of what actually happens -- as opposed to what is supposed to happen - when new information technology is introduced into government agencies. In order to get to this part of the book, however, the reader is made to plow through six chapters on theory, all quite well done, that do not necessarily have to be there given the empirical focus of the research. Students of bureaucracy and technology will certainly benefit from the reading of these chapters. But other readers may be excused for getting impatient when the first empirical material is introduced on page 107. Nevertheless, Jane Fountain's book is a serious and well-written effort to understand the challenges associated with modernizing the U.S. government by introducing new information technologies.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars IT in the government: it's not as easy as it looks, October 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change (Paperback)

This impressive book examines the integration of information technology into government agencies. Its major contribution is to examine the role of the organizational milieu in the process of adoption of information technologies in government organizations. Information technology offers the possibility of revolutionizing government-first, by promoting greater integration of information and action among government actors, and, second, by fundamentally changing the relationship between government bureaucracies and citizens. However, it turns out, as Fountain illustrates dramatically through a series of case analyses, that what is technology possible is not always institutionally possible. This book helps the reader understand this gap, further it helps the reader understand how technology is shaped by the institution that it goes into-what comes out is not always what you expect. One needs to understand institutional interests (e.g., technologically-induced transparency is often not in the interest of an organization); as well as organizational culture (e.g., new technologies sometimes embody values that are anathema to those inculcated by an organization).

This book therefore should appeal to three audiences: first, to academics who are interested in organizational behavior, because the Virtual State is a significant addition to a growing literature on the autonomy and importance of institutions in society; second, to sophisticated lay readers, who would like to read a serious but readable treatment about how government "really" works, and, in particular, why, what often seem like easy fixes are, in fact, not so easy; and, third, to thoughtful public managers, who wish to improve organizational performance through the use of information technology.