Governing from the Centre? Comparing the Nodality of Digital Governments

32 Pages Posted: 1 Aug 2011

See all articles by Helen Zerlina Margetts

Helen Zerlina Margetts

Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Tobias Escher

University of Oxford - Oxford Internet Institute

Date Written: August 31, 2006

Abstract

What difference does e-government make to the capacity of governments to interact with citizens? This paper investigates how widespread use of the Internet by citizens and governments affects government’s place in social and informational networks - the ‘nodality’ of contemporary government - and how citizens experience government on-line. It uses methods from computer science (particularly webmetrics) and political science (a ‘tools of government’ approach) to go further than previous work in developing a methodology to quantitatively analyse the structure of 'government on the web', building on Petricek et al (2006). It applies structural metrics (via webcrawling) and user metrics (via user experiments) to the web sites of comparable ministries concerned with foreign affairs in three countries (Australia, the US and the UK). The results are used to assess the on-line presence of the three foreign offices along five dimensions: visibility, accessibility, extroversion, navigability and competitiveness. These dimensions might be developed further as indicators for use by both researchers (to assess e-government initiatives) and by governments (to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their on-line presence). Governments which are successful in developing their web sites in this way are likely to have greater visibility to citizens, businesses and other governments, strengthening nodality as a policy tool.

Keywords: e-government, tools of government, government, Internet, webmetrics

Suggested Citation

Margetts, Helen Zerlina and Escher, Tobias, Governing from the Centre? Comparing the Nodality of Digital Governments (August 31, 2006). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1755762 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1755762

Helen Zerlina Margetts (Contact Author)

Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford ( email )

1 St Giles
Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3JS
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk

Tobias Escher

University of Oxford - Oxford Internet Institute ( email )

1 St. Giles
University of Oxford
Oxford OX1 3PG Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire OX1 3JS
United Kingdom

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