ABSTRACT

Citizens are using ICTs to demand more accountability for their tax dollars and greater value for services they receive from public agencies. Current and potential users are frustrated: they are asking why governments cannot or will not provide the same level of direct or virtual service as private forprofit service companies. Previous chapters have shown how the two sectors differ and why citizens now expect greater efficiency and political responsiveness as well as lower taxes (or at least better value), especially from fee-based and tax-supported public institutions. Elected political leaders and appointed managers must become more actively engaged in the details of managing information technology to change organizational processes, essential for the conversion to networked digital governance. Specific guidelines for managers and politicians to empower employees and respond to citizens as customers are presented below and referred to as “point-of-contact” accountability on page 130.) Different motivators can and should be used to encourage public managers, particularly state and local officials, to reorient existing bureaucratic hierarchies to become more flexible and customer-focused within networked management systems. Many bureaucrats and their bureaucracies are still locked into Information Age or even Industrial Age systems which fail to meet 21 st century requirements for governance (see Table 5.1 ).