In dramatic numbers, U.S. public organizations are embracing modern networked communications such as the World Wide Web. In the process, they create the foundations for governance in an information age. The U.S. public and its political leaders expect that these expensive changes will produce more open and more effective government. Under some organizational configurations, these values may conflict however, and agencies may be forced inadvertently to emphasize one over the other, or to fail at both. Currently little is known about the real operational effects of these new technologies in specifically public organizations, which may develop undesirable and difficult to change path-dependent directions. U.S. policy makers and public managers need more comparative knowledge about the relationship between values, structures and environments in public organizations with networked, computer-mediated operations. In particular, it is important to address two questions. First, under what conditions of use are networked computer-mediated operations (CMOs) strongly correlated with some structures and values and not others? Second, what structural and procedural alternatives exist for public managers to assure acceptable levels of both effectiveness and open government while implementing networked operations? Using a modified organizational configuration approach enriched by focused policy analysis, this research will investigate an emerging natural experiment, the diffusion of networked CMOs across a wide set of public agencies. Using the World Wide Web and field research, the project will develop a broad database which charts the diffusion and variations of structures, value hierarchies, and environments in network technologies across a wide set of public agencies in the westernized nations. The project will also develop in-depth analyses of four to five exemplar agencies in appropriately selected countries, as they implement these networked computer-mediated operations. Results will be presented in scholarly articles as well as in presentations to agency officials. During and beyond the life of the project, the database will be continuously available on the Web for policy makers, public managers, and scholars pursuing these and other questions. The work provides a foundation for near and long term public management research on the transformation and consequences of the information age for public governance.
