does e-government promote accountability? a comparative

Does E-Government Promote Accountability A Comparative Analysis of Website Openness and Government Accountability

WILSON WONG and ERIC WELCH

Under the global pressure of information technology the adoption of web-based technologies in public administration has created a new government-and-citizen interface However whether e-government will unambiguouslylead to a more transparent interactive open and hence accountable gov-ernment remains a central question Applying a framework of global pres-sure effects on bureaucratic change this paper conducts an empirical studyon website openness and accountability in fourteen countries Even whenoverall accountability levels rise the accountability gap between differentnational bureaucracies often remains intact as web-based technologies typ-ically maintain or reinforce the existing practices The question of whethere-government promotes accountability depends on what kind of bureau-cracy one is referring to in the first place In the current debate about globalconvergence and national divergence on the effect of globalization on publicbureaucracies the spread of e-government provides a case of convergencein practice rather than in results

INTRODUCTION

E-government the adoption of web-based technologies to deliver andconduct government services has become a global trend in public admin-istration1 In 2000 there were 168 national governments that had theirown websites2 E-government often comes with a promise to improvepublic administration in terms of efficiency one of the primary values inpublic administration (Lee and Perry Heintze and Bretschneider Rosen-bloom) However e-government has the potential to alter the traditionalrelationship between government and citizens by creating a new virtualgovernment-and-citizen interface With the popularity of e-governmentand the increasing interaction between government and citizens throughthe internet a major question comes To what extent does e-governmentpromote public accountability

Although accountability can be an elusive word in public administra-tion it often refers to the answerability of government to the public on

Governance An International Journal of Policy Administration and Institutions Vol 17 No 2April 2004 (pp 275ndash297) copy 2004 Blackwell Publishing 350 Main St Malden MA 02148USA and 9600 Garsington Road Oxford OX4 2DQ UK ISSN 0952-1895

The Chinese University of Hong KongUniversity of Illinois at Chicago

its performance (Cunningham and Harris Johnston and RomzekRomzek and Dubnick) E-government is often viewed and promoted asa positive channel for enhancing government accountability and empow-ering citizens (La Porte de Jong and Demchak Demchak Friis and LaPorte 2000) More information delivered in a more timely fashion to citi-zens is expected to increase transparency of government empowering cit-izens to more closely monitor government performance Enhancedinteractivity of the technology is also expected to improve governmentaccountability as it makes government more responsive to the needs anddemands of individual citizens

However there are arguments against this positive vision of e-government accountability Information technology in public organiza-tions often simply improves their technical efficiency without leading tosignificant organizational changes (Heintze and Bretschneider) Insteadof changing the nature of organizations the role played by informationtechnology is often no more than reinforcing ldquoexisting tendenciesrdquo oforganizations (Kraemer and Dedrick)

The empirical research has indicated that computing per se is neither a cen-tralizing or decentralizing influence The context in which computing is usedis a much stronger influence on whether organizations centralize or decentral-ize than is the technology which can support either type of arrangement Ingeneral computing tends to reinforce existing tendencies and by itself is notlikely to affect organizational structure in significant ways (Kraemer andDedrick 101)

Applying this logic to the impact of e-government the new technologymay simply exacerbate the domestic trajectory enhancing or reducingaccountability levels based on domestic traditions institutions and cir-cumstances In fact prior research seems to show that governments withan authoritarian or paternalistic nature use web-based technologies tocontrol access to information for the purpose of monitoring citizen behav-ior to tighten political control of the regime (Welch and Wong 1998) Fromthis perspective the relationship between e-government and publicaccountability is a conditional one where change in accountability levelsdepends on the context and characteristics of the public organization

These two very different perspectives on the effect of e-government onaccountability are linked to a fundamental question on the effect of globalpressures on bureaucratic change In the study of globalization there is aheated debate on whether the global pressures including the global pres-sure of information technology will bring to a convergence or a diver-gence for the organization systems of different nations (Osborne PollittDoremus et al Hallerberg and Basinger Kettl) If there is a direct andpositive relationship between e-government and accountability as sug-gested by the first paradigm the convergence theory of globalization willbe supported With the establishment of more websites by more govern-ments around the globe these governments will converge to a global stan-dard of accountability In contrast if the second paradigm is correct that

276 WILSON WONG AND ERIC WELCH

e-government accountability is contingent the spread of e-governmentwill instead lead to a divergence of accountability among countries andagencies of different contexts and characteristics

To address the question of e-governmentrsquos effect on accountability andto shed more light on the impact of globalization this article conducts anempirical study of the effect of e-government on accountability in four-teen countries It compares the openness of the websites of e-governmentsof these countries and tests the impact of the contextual and organiza-tional factors on their openness This study attempts to answer the fol-lowing questions To what extent does e-government affect accountabilityof public bureaucracies Will e-government lead to a global convergencein accountability or an accountability divergence among nations andbureaucracies If there is any accountability divergence what nationaland organizational characteristics may explain the differences The paperis divided into the following sections a theoretical framework for analy-sis of the effects of e-government on accountability hypotheses predict-ing the effect of contextual and organizational factors on accountabilitycountries data and method findings and discussion

A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF GLOBAL PRESSURE AND E-GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

This study takes advantage of a theoretical framework of global pressureand bureaucratic change to analyze the effect of e-government on changesin accountability (Welch and Wong 1998 2001b) Globalization creates anew set of complex and interactive stimuli demands and opportunitiesin the external environment of national public bureaucracies whoseorigin is not traceable to any particular nation These stimuli demandsand opportunities can be called ldquoglobal pressuresrdquo as they are forces of aglobal scope that are putting public bureaucracies worldwide under pres-sure for change Examples of global pressures include the global institu-tion of multinational agreements the information technology revolutionsecurity against terrorism prevention of corruption empowerment ofnongovernmental organizations and the public management reform ini-tiatives As public organizations are open systems affecting and effectedby their environments these set of global pressures may cause changesin structure behavior and other important organizational characteristicsof public bureaucracies including accountability (Selznick ThompsonAldrich Rainey Scott)

With the revolution of web-based technologies the e-governmentmovement can be taken as part of the global pressure of information tech-nology However even though there is an identifiable set of global pres-sures the response from each public bureaucracy is not necessarilyhomogenous Both comparative public administration and globalizationresearch suggest that despite similar demands placed on national publicbureaucracies by global pressures patterns of adoption of technology and

DOES E-GOVERNMENT PROMOTE ACCOUNTABILITY 277

organizational change are discernable and the domestic context sur-rounding public bureaucracy often acts as significant intervening factor(Farazmand Heady 1996b Aberbach Putnam and Rockman RiggsWelch and Wong 2001a 2001b) In elaborating their framework of globalpressure and bureaucratic change Welch and Wong (2001a) wrote

The framework shows that global pressures affect public organizations directlyand indirectly through domestic contexts Despite significant variation in thestructures and processes of public organizations worldwide global pressurescreate common exigencies upon bureaucracies that result in predictable reac-tions or changes by public organizations Moreover the model suggests thatelements of the domestic context filter the effects of global pressures in pre-dictable ways As a result the domestic context either offsets or reinforces thechange induced by the global pressure on public bureaucracy (Welch and Wong2001a 511)

How will e-government affect accountability In the framework thereare two major sources of change for accountability First the global pres-sure of information technology has a direct impact on accountabilitySecond there is an indirect impact of change brought by the domesticcontext In filtering the global pressure of e-government the domesticcontext can either reinforce or offset the influence of e-government onaccountability It is possible that even if e-government leads to an increasein the mean accountability level of all nations the accountability level ofa particular government may still recede because its domestic contextoffsets the direct and positive impact of e-government on accountability

Studies on the effects of global pressures on nations also have a poten-tial to contribute to the debate on convergence theory institutions in dif-ferent countries including public bureaucracy tend to converge to acommon pattern (Osborne Pollitt and Bouckaert Doremus et al Hallerberg and Basinger Kettl OECD 1993 1995) The interesting andimportant questions are not only about convergence or divergence butalso about the contextual factors that influence national level administra-tive change toward or away from the global trends (Pollitt Scharpf Welchand Wong 2001a) In this study to specify the domestic context we focuson two set of variables the context of the national civil service system andthe characteristics of the public agencies The former has a more nationaland institutional focus and the latter has a more agency-specific and orga-nizational focus

Website and web-based technologies often form a core and indis-pensable part of any e-government It is also the focus and contact pointof the new electronic government-and-citizen interface created under e-government We would therefore focus on the attributes of websites in operationalizing e-government accountability in the study Differentdegrees of openness in websites can also expose public organization tendencies toward accountability (Welch and Wong 1998 2001a) Changein the level of website openness represents the revealed level of changein accountability of the public agency


The challenge for accountability in public administration is that manyof the expectations for performance from multiple legitimate sources areoften changing and contradictory (Cunningham and Harris Johnston andRomzek Romzek and Dubnick) However citizens would not be able tohold their government accountable if they do not know what it is doingand have no channel for interacting with it As long as public organiza-tions are ultimately accountable to the citizenry transparency and inter-activity would be two critical elements for the accountability function ofgovernment

The Cyberspace Policy Research Group (CyPRG) develops the con-nection between website openness and e-government accountability in itscomparative research of websites with a focus on these two key elementsof accountability3 CyPRG defines government websites openness to be afunction of transparency and interactivity In the CyPRG study trans-parency refers to the extent to which an organization reveals work anddecision processes and procedures Website transparency is equivalent toldquoa laymanrsquos basic map of the organization as depicted in the informationon the site [and] reveals the depth of access it allows the depths of knowl-edge about processes it is willing to reveal and the level of attention tocitizen response it providesrdquo (La Porte de Jong and Demchak) Interac-tivity refers to the quality of communication between agency and citizenldquo[It] is a measure of the level of convenience or degree of immediate feed-back [provided]rdquo (La Porte de Jong and Demchak)

CyPRG hypothesizes that greater openness is associated with greateraccountability (Demchak Friis and La Porte 1998 2000 La Porte de Jongand Demchak) A more transparent government allows citizens tomonitor the performance of public organizations more easily through theincrease in the availability of information (Reichard) A more interactivepublic organization enhances accountability by being more responsive tothe preferences of the citizenry As our theoretical understanding ofaccountability is similar to the CyPRG constructs this paper adoptsCyPRG definitions and measures of website openness in measuring e-government accountability and uses publicly available data from CyPRG

HYPOTHESES OF E-GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

In general there are two different approaches of measuring the impact ofdomestic context on e-government accountability They are the directmeasure approach and the indirect measure or interaction approach (LaPorte de Jong and Demchak Welch and Wong 2001a) The directmeasure approach refers to the use of direct measurement of the domes-tic context such as using the type of political regime and GDP per capitato capture the influence of political and economic dimensions of thedomestic context respectively However the use of the direct measureapproach often leads to some major statistical problems in empiricalstudies4 Prior research using many of the direct measures often resulted


in weak findings that explained little of the variations in website open-ness (La Porte de Jong and Demchak)5

The interaction approach refers to using measurements that capture theinteraction of the different segments of the domestic context (politicaleconomic social) for empirical analysis There has been some success inexperimenting the interaction approach to build empirical models toexplain the impact of global pressure on bureaucratic change (Welch andWong 2001a) The interaction approach is also attractive because it focuseson the interaction among the political economic and social dimensionsof the domestic context This approach makes it able to capture richerinformation and allow the analysis to get closer to the in-depth and pro-found meanings of the theoretical concepts applied in the study It alsoallows researchers to benefit from the major concepts from well-groundedtheories developed on the study of the public bureaucracy such as thenational civil service system Because of the above reasons this studyadopts the interaction approach as its primary approach6

For hypotheses building Heady (1996a) provides useful classificationsof national civil service systems Four major dimensions of Headyrsquosframework are adopted in the paper relation to political regime qualifi-cation requirements role of state and sense of mission7 Overall thesedimensions serve as an index of the power or role of the civil servicesystem in relation to other elite and power groups in either the majorfunctions of the civil service system or the core domains of society

The ldquorelation to the political regimerdquo construct concerns the power ofthe civil service It ranges from minimal independent power ldquorulerresponsiverdquo to maximal power under a ldquomilitary responsiverdquo regimeldquoQualification requirementsrdquo captures bureaucrat involvement in civilservice qualification decisions At one end ldquopatrimonialrdquo political rulersdetermine civil service qualifications at the other ldquobureaucratic determi-nationrdquo civil servants are in charge Because these two dimensions arethought to be measuring the same underlying construct they are com-bined into a new variable ldquopolitical autonomyrdquo in our empirical analysis

ldquoRole of staterdquo represents the degree of state intervention and pene-tration in decision making in the polity This dimension can also beviewed as a measure of the degree of involvement or intervention by the civil service in society It ranges from ldquotraditionalrdquo in which civil ser-vants play a limited role to ldquocentrally plannedrdquo where their role is thegreatest

The fourth dimension ldquosense of missionrdquo captures civil service valuesAt one end of this scale ldquocompliancerdquo requires strict conformity bybureaucrats to political directives while at the other ldquoguidancerdquo systemsportray systems in which civil servants consider themselves to be mostable to intervene lead and direct In systems in which guidance is thesense of mission civil servants would express a tendency to dominate inpublic governance as they would view themselves as the ldquomost legitimate


and best-equipped group for setting and achieving goalsrdquo (Heady 1996a220)

Because the adoption of information technology often occurs within a domestic context hypotheses relate the dimensions of national civilservice systems and organizational characteristics to concepts of e-government accountability Two competing views provide two series ofalternate hypotheses9 On the one hand a positive view can be taken onthe accountability orientation of the civil service Bureaucrats will have thenatural tendency to respect accountability and the professional responsi-bility to attain it Therefore high political control and constraints imposedon the public bureaucracy can cause e-government accountability to bediminished Following this thinking we can assume that there should bea linear and positive relationship between the civil service dimensions ande-government accountability E-government accountability should risewith the independence and power of the civil service in society

While public bureaucrats are taken as professional and responsiblemanagers in the positive approach under the public-choice approachthere are alternative and negative views on the nature of the civil serviceLike the power-seeking politicians bureaucrats are self-interest-maximizing individuals (Niskanen Downs) Once they are in controlthey will do exactly what the politicians do to protect their power baseeven at the expense of the interest of other political participants and thegeneral public Therefore they must be monitored and constrained to acertain extent before accountable behavior can be expected from them

In a global context national polities may seek to stem the flow of powerfrom the nation state to global institutions through national policies thatprotect their power and authority (Farazmand Cleveland) As informa-tion is an important source of power nations would tend to limit infor-mation disclosure and openness as one means of maintaining nationalpolitical control under globalization (Kraemer and Dedrick Cleveland)Similarly bureaucrats who view themselves as legitimate leaders andenjoy a high level of independence may limit the ability of external enti-ties to review decisions or contact responsible parties (Reichard) Highconcentration of power in the hands of the bureaucracy causes central-ization and control of information by the bureaucracy in order to secureits own power

With the two different and opposing views two sets of competinghypotheses are set Under the positive view a linear and positive rela-tionship is expected Under the negative view a nonlinear U-shaped rela-tionship is expected This means that only when the civil service is beingsituated in a competitive environment with proper checks and balancesfrom other political and social actors will it take the virtue of account-ability in e-government seriously

These two sets of competing hypotheses are stated as below


Linear relationship

H1 The greater the level of political autonomy of the civil service thehigher the e-government accountability of the public bureaucracy

H2 The greater the role of state (civil service) in society the higher thee-government accountability of the public bureaucracy

H3 The greater the sense of mission of the civil service the higher thee-government accountability of the public bureaucracy

Nonlinear relationship

H4 High and low levels of political autonomy of the civil service leadto reductions in e-government accountability while a moderatelevel of political autonomy leads to increases in e-governmentaccountability (U-shaped curve)

H5 High and low levels of the role of state (civil service) in society leadto reductions in e-government accountability while moderate levelsof state role lead to increases in e-government accountability (U-shaped curve)

H6 High and low levels of sense of mission of the civil service leads tolower levels of e-government accountability while moderate levelsof sense of mission of the civil service leads to higher levels of e-government accountability (U-shaped curve)

In setting up the hypotheses for organizational characteristics we dis-tinguish between internally focused (justice education and labor sectors)and externally focused agencies (defense finance and immigration)10

Internally focused agencies have missions primarily associated withnational issues while externally focused agencies have missions associ-ated with a substantial international component Externally focusedagencies usually have a stronger need to use the internet to interact withparties outside the national border Disclosure or availability of informa-tion is also a symbol of trust modernity and global citizenship that maybe necessary for competitive vitality and political legitimacy of a nation(Strang and Meyer DiMaggio and Powell) Therefore it is hypothesizedthat

H7 Bureaucracies of externally focused sectors have higher e-government accountability than those of internally focused sectors

Finally as the open economy is often believed to be a major driving force for e-government (Welch and Wong 2001b) it is hypothesized that


H8 The more open the economy public bureaucracies face the highertheir e-accountability

THE COUNTRIES DATA AND METHODS

Fourteen countries covering five continents are included in the studyAustralia Canada China Egypt France Germany Indonesia JapanKorea the Netherlands New Zealand Singapore the United Kingdomand the United States These countries are chosen primarily because theyrepresent a wide variation in the policy variables we are interested in forthe study Thus both developed and developing countries are includedAlthough they are not a random sample of all the e-government coun-tries they should still serve as useful reference points for similar coun-tries in their respective regions

The study uses two primary data sources the CyPRG database on thetransparency and interactivity of national agency websites and FerrelHeadyrsquos framework for distinguishing among civil service systemsCoding for the Heady constructs was based primarily on Headyrsquos ownwork11 According to Headyrsquos work each dimension is measured on acontinuum from low to high For example the ldquorelations to politicalregimerdquo measures independent power of the civic service in a regimewhere nations classified as ldquoruler responsiverdquo are coded between 1 and25 nations coded as ldquosingle party responsiverdquo are coded between 26 and50 and so on The maximum score for each dimension is 10

CyPRG has collected data on website transparency and interactivitysince the inception of the project in 1995 Transparency and interactivityare two elements of openness which is considered to be a reasonableproxy measure of accountability As mentioned above transparency measures the amount of data available on agency websites and interac-tivity measures the ease with which users are able to access data or people(Demchak Friis and La Porte 2000 CyPRG 1 CyPRG 2) Both measuresrepresent tallies of predetermined qualities of the agency website The transparency measure represents tallies of website qualities in fiveareas (ownership contacts issue or organizational information citizenconsequences and timeliness of data) and interactivity measures the presence or absence of qualities in four areas (ownership reachabilityissue or organizational information and citizen consequences) Each ofthe substantive areas contains within it a set of measurable criteria whichare scored 0 or 1 according to their presence or absence Scores aresummed across areas to provide an overall measure of transparency or interactivity Openness is a linear sum of transparency and interactivity12

As we are primarily interested in bureaucratic change we calculate thedependent variable as the score of 2000 minus the 1997 score13 Changescore has been found to be a better measure for accountability as it cap-tures the dynamics of change and policy choice in e-government better


(La Porte de Jong and Demchak Welch and Wong 2001a)14 Correlationsbetween transparency and interactivity are high for 1997 (r = 061) and2000 (062) data Combining transparency and interactivity into one vari-able to represent openness has some merit as the Chronbach Alpha correlation coefficients is 075 and 077 for 1997 and 2000 respectivelyNational agencies from the fourteen countries that have a website data in1997 and 2000 form the data for our study a total of 267 agencies

To measure national economic openness we use a combined measureof 1997 exports as a percentage of GDP and 1997 imports as a percentageof GDP15 Figures were taken from World Bank statistics (World Bank)For the externalinternal focus variable externally focused agencies werecoded 1 and all others were coded 0 We also divided agencies into threegroups external political economic and industrial and domestic publicservice The external political group included defense executive financeand foreign agencies The economic and industrial category includedscience and technology communications industry and trade and trans-portation and infrastructure categories The domestic public servicegroup included culture education health social services and library-related agencies As a final alternative we coded a number of sectors asdummy variables and included them in the regression analysis The threedifferent coding techniques for agency-specific characteristics requiredthree separate models

Descriptive statistics for all variables are shown in Table 1 We conductOrdinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis in which dependentvariables of openness transparency and interactivity are regressed onmeasures of the civil service systems variables the organizational char-acteristic variables and the economic openness variable For each regres-sion we recoded ldquopolitical autonomyrdquo ldquorole of staterdquo and ldquomissionrdquo intothree-level dummy variables to test for nonlinear effects The ldquomissionrdquovariablemdashthe shared and self-perceived values of the bureaucrats on itsrole in societymdashis a critical variable that tests directly our two competingperspectives of the accountability orientation of bureaucrats Thereforeto better test the two competing hypotheses two sets of regression arerun for the variable one for the linear relationship and one for the non-linear relationship

FINDINGS

Figure 1 indicates that all the attributes of accountability (transparencyinteractivity and openness) generally increased across all countriesbetween 1997 and 2000 with a substantial jump in both measures in 1999and 2000 Aggregate findings indicate some support for the convergencetheory that the general level of accountability of the countries hasincreased across time However this ignores that there are considerablevariations among countries not only in terms of the level of accountabil-ity but also in terms of the slope and direction of change (see Appendices


1 and 2 for individual trends of all fourteen countries)16 These differencesare probably due to the elements of national and organization differencesthe primary subjects of the study

Findings from regression analysis are arranged into three tables (Tables2 3 and 4)17 Results from the regression analysis indicate relativelystrong and consistent support for the set of nonlinear hypotheses18 First


TABLE 1Descriptive Statistics of Independent and Dependent Variables in the Study(n = 267)

Variable Mean Standard Minimum MaximumDeviation

Mission 672 153 4 10Political regime 768 092 5 10Qualification requirements 811 079 4 10Role of state 545 128 4 8Personnel management 796 075 675 10Political autonomy 789 078 45 10External sector 047 050 0 1External political sector 022 042 0 1Industry amp trade sector 009 028 0 1Domestic service provision 017 037 0 1

sectorExports as a percent of GDP 3534 3417 10 187Imports as a percent of GDP 3327 3040 9 170Transparency change 621 434 -150 173

1997ndash2000Interactivity change 1997ndash2000 561 434 -170 278Openness change 1997ndash2000 1183 762 -320 318

0

5

10

15

20

25

1997 1998 1999 2000

Transparency Interactivity Openness

FIGURE 1Website Data Trends (All Countries)

findings in all three tables show generally consistent nonlinear effects ofldquorole of staterdquo on transparency interactivity and openness Low and highldquorole of staterdquo are very often found to be significantly negatively associ-ated with transparency interactivity and openness These findings


TABLE 2Regression Results (Standardized Coefficients) with External and InternalSector Variable

Transparency Interactivity Openness Change Change Change

Intercept (medium reference) 711 (112) 735 (120) 1445 (204)Mission 032 (016) -031 (017) 001Socioeconomic context

Low -536 (066) -005 (070) -542 (120)High -134 (101) -218 (109) -352 (184)

Political autonomyLow -183 (096) -373 (104) -555 (176)High -156 (097) -251 (104) -407 (176)

Economic openness -008 (004) 007 (004) -001 (007)External sector 037 (046) 103 (049) 140 (083)

n 267 267 267Adjusted R-square 030 018 023Model significance

p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010

TABLE 3Regression Results (Standardized Coefficients) with Sector Variables ofExternal Political Economic amp Industrial and Internal Public Service


Intercept (medium reference) 769 (109) 790 (119) 1559 (200)Mission 031 (015) -032 (016) -001 (027)Socioeconomic context

Low -510 (064) 018 (070) -492 (117)High -111 (098) -190 (107) -300 (179)


Economic openness -007 (004) 008 (004) 001 (007)Sectors

External political -116 (060) 010 (066) -106 (110)Economic amp industrial 016 038 (062) 053 (104)Internal public service -249 (065) -239 (070) -488 (117)


p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010

support hypothesis H5 Websites in nations in which the role of the civilservice is high and low tend to be less open than in nations with mixedcompetitive systems

We also find consistent nonlinear relationship between ldquopoliticalautonomyrdquo and transparency interactivity and openness for most regres-sion runs Excepting the transparency model in Table 3 all other resultsshow that low and high political autonomy are negatively related whilemedium level of political autonomy is positively associated with trans-parency interactivity and openness This suggests that in nations whereeither politicians or bureaucrats hold a high degree of independentpower website openness and hence accountability are lower than innations where competitive mechanisms are more prevalent

Tables 2 and 3 show the testing of the linear relationship of the missionvariable It is found to be positively associated with transparency but negatively associated with interactivity The effects cancel each other outwhen mission is regressed on openness This contradicts our expectation


TABLE 4Regression Results (Estimates and Standard Errors) Testing the NonlinearRelationship of the Mission Variable

Transparency Change Interactivity Change

Intercept (reference) 823 (095) 783 (105)Mission

Low 162 (172) -397 (191)High 225 (086) -260 (095)

Socioeconomic contextLow -505 (068) -154 (075)High -327 (158) 152 (175)

Political autonomyLow -230 (090) -303 (100)High -168 (092) -394 (102)

Economic openness -003 (005) -003 (005)Sector

Finance 029 (073) 233 (081)Industry amp trade 156 (075) 060 (083)Executive -347 (123) -248 (137)Foreign 044 (092) 004 (102)Culture -539 (095) -567 (105)Government operations 279 (138) 227 (153)Justice 264 (073) 092 (081)Health 078 (115) -073 (127)

n 267 267Adjusted R-square 044 030Model significance

p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010

that the direction of association between independent variables and trans-parency and interactivity would be the same

Partly due to the problematic findings and partly due to our specialinterest in the mission variable it is tested for nonlinear relationships inTable 4 Results show a positive linear relationship between mission andquantity of data (transparency) significant for high levels of mission ori-entation (H3 is partially supported) However findings also show a non-linear relationship with interactivity in which low and high mission levelsare negatively associated but moderate levels are positively associated(H6 is also partially supported) All other results are similar with themodels in Tables 2 and 3 The new findings appear to suggest that inter-activity and transparency are measures of different phenomena There-fore we did not combine the two variables into the openness variable forthis final set of regression We interpret that these findings on the missionvariable indicate two mechanisms of technology use by the bureaucracyor rulers in general Different technology uses can have different impli-cations on governance The new findings imply that in countries wherebureaucrats hold a stronger sense of mission websites increasinglyprovide more data and information but provide increasingly restrictedaccess to the agency

Findings also show consistent evidence that agency-specific organiza-tional characteristics matter for accountability In Table 2 external sectoris significantly positively associated with openness H6 is supported In Table 3 recoding of the externalinternal sector variable into three categories finds a negative relationship between public service sectoragencies (health education etc) and all three dependent variables Exter-nal political sector agencies (finance trade foreign) are also negativelyassociated with transparency Many significant findings are also found forthe sector variables in Table 4 The adjusted R-square is the largest for theregression model with dummy variables for the sectors Therefore interms of explanatory power using sector-based dummy variables tomodel interactivity transparency and openness is more appropriate andprovides richer information While the independent variables that repre-sent Headyrsquos civil service dimensions show how the bureaucratic envi-ronment effects openness agency-specific indicators show thatorganizational characteristics also determine how technology shapesaccountability

Finally it is surprising to find that economic openness is not signifi-cant for website openness in all regression models19 H7 is not supportedIt is possible that when information technology becomes a common globalpressure for nations and its technology is increasingly available andaffordable the normative and policy pressure to have an enhanced and sophisticated website may be more relevant than economic concernsand necessity Accountability may have become more policy driven thaneconomically and technically driven


DISCUSSION

Consistent with existing research on information technology and organi-zation change this study finds that e-government often only exacerbatesthe existing nature and attributes of public bureaucracies (Bovens andZouridis Welch and Wong 2001b Kraemer and Dedrick KraemerDedrick and King) Information technology does not act out of contextin affecting public organizations E-government accountability is moreabout nations and bureaucracies than simply about technology per se

The effect of e-government on accountability of public organization isaffected both by the civil service system within which it is embedded andby its agency-specific organizational characteristics The nonlinear and U-shaped bureaucratic response to e-government accountability suggeststhat bureaucrats think and behave as rulers to control information to con-solidate power in their adoption and management of e-government Apure administrative state governed by bureaucrats without the checkingof elected politicians and the civil society may lead to a less accountableand open government (Aberbach Putnam and Rockman) A strong polit-ical regime with a weak civil service will also lead to similar drop inaccountability This implies that competition or proper share of powerbetween the political elite and the civil service will be an important factor in determining whether e-government enhances or reducesaccountability

Adding on previous studies but following the same line of logic ourstudy shows that not only the general characteristics of the civil serviceaffect accountability the specific characteristics of agency also matterAlthough there is no clear-cut generalization about the impact of theagency variables yet it can be deducted from the findings that agenciesoften determine their website openness with a strategic mind-set onwhom they see as their target user groups

The set of interest groups relevant to government agencies can be clas-sified into clients those who receive the services and constituents whodemand the service (Viteritti) If the website of the agencies is used toserve the clients but the clients do not happen to be the constituents who provide political support for the agencies there may be a tendencyfor the agencies to provide less interactive and transparent servicesthrough their websites This may explain why the executive politicalagencies have a negative relationship with transparency Executive political agencies usually depend less on the website to communicate andcultivate their constituencies Furthermore a higher level of secrecy andisolation from the public can sometimes serve them well to preventunnecessary exposure of information which can be politically dangerousto the agencies

Departing from previous studies however our study poses the question that interactivity and transparency can each represent a differ-


ent dimension of the accountability relationship between citizenry and government under e-government Findings show that the two attrib-utes sometimes elicit different responses to the same domestic contextThis means that transparency and interactivity can serve different and separated political and strategic functions for the bureaucracyBureaucrats can therefore use the web as a tool for information dissemi-nation on the one hand while trying to use it to limit interaction on theother hand

For example in a civil service system of a high mission level bureau-cracies show greater transparency but place greater interactivity restric-tions in their websites More transparency may help the mission-orientedagency to ldquosocializerdquo the public with the ideologies and visions of theagency Governments can place what they want people to know or whatthey believe they have a duty or desire to share in the public domain yetprefer to limit direct interaction There is a danger that the new govern-ment-and-citizen interface created by e-government may simply be usedas additional channel for more political propaganda and political controlrather than real accountability enhancement Considering the possibilityof this website establishment should not be taken automatically as anaccountability enhancement without a careful evaluation of the websiteattributes

To sum up all the findings of the civil service system variables andagency-specific variables point to the same direction Technology is oftennot adopted for the sake of acquisition alone it is adopted and thenadapted to meet institutional and organizational needs as defined by keydecision makers When the agency-specific organizational variables givethe empirical model larger explanatory power more contextual informa-tion of the public organizations are usually needed for more in-depthinterpretation Therefore linking each major organizational variable withaccountability of e-government more directly pinpointing the relevancyof these variables and further elaborating on the different dimensions ofpublic accountability under e-government should be some of the majorfuture directions of research in e-government

Equally important the study sheds some new light on the globaliza-tion debate of global convergence and national divergence on e-government In some ways convergence perspectives are upheld by ourfindings With e-government public accountability in general is increas-ing over time under the global information technology pressure Never-theless important domestic factors result in divergence in e-governmentaccountability at both the national and organizational levels Althoughthe direct effect of the global pressure of information technology that isthe adoption of e-government will lead to a general and overall rise inaccountability the indirect effect of the domestic context will lead to adivergence in accountability among the countries and agencies

As a result the general level of accountability rises in a global sensebut the accountability gap the actual and absolute difference between


countries and agencies in accountability will probably be maintained oreven widened In other words the difference in accountability amongnations and agencies cannot be narrowed simply by the introduction andspread of web-based e-government technology This is similar to the effectof the internet in the business world As internet is available for all firmsit ceases to be an advantage for enhancing a firmrsquos competitiveness overother firms (Porter)20 Similarly as e-government technology is availablefor and adopted by most governments it ceases to be the technology thatmakes a decisive difference in narrowing the accountability gap amonggovernments of different nations

As web-based technologies become widely available and affordable e-government will become more policy driven than technology and economic driven It will be the normative pressure of the global com-munity and the domestic context that drive the growth and change of e-government (DiMaggio and Powell La Porte de Jong and Demchak)Public accountability expressed by e-government will therefore becomemore and more a conscious policy choice that reflects both national andorganizational characteristics

Pollitt provides a very useful classification in summing up the con-vergence issues in globalization and public management He carefullyelaborates the concept of convergence and classifies four different stagesof convergence discursive convergence decisional convergence practiceconvergence and results convergence A significant contribution of hiswork is pointing out that convergence at one stage does not necessarilyimply convergence at the next stage and the convergence process can bediscontinued at any stage

The significance of this for our analysis is that it supports our earlier sugges-tion that convergence could be taking place at one or more stages without necessarily doing so at all four In other words there may be a considerable convergence of discourse andor of decisions without anything like the same degree of convergence of practice (and still less of results) (Pollitt 487)

In e-government it only converges up to the stage of practice in thesense that e-government has been widely adopted by nations around theglobe The adoption of the technology itself is a global convergenceHowever the convergence of results in e-government in terms of account-ability has not happened so far Differences in national and organizationalfactors have led more toward national divergence rather than global con-vergence in public accountability under e-government

Introducing e-government without the corresponding institutionalreform of the civil service system and organizational reform of the agen-cies may only lead to limited success in enhancing accountability Theeffect of technology on organizational change should therefore never beoverstated It is simply a myth that e-government will automatically anddramatically change the accountability nature of public organizationsThe question of ldquowhether e-government promotes accountabilityrdquo cannot


be answered completely without knowing what kind of bureaucracy oneis referring to in the first place

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This research project is jointly funded by the visiting fellowship awardedto the first author by the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies Brook-ings Institution and a research grant from the Research Grant Council ofHong Kong (RGC ref no CUHK 422302H) The authors would also liketo thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments

NOTES

1 According to the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) e-government is defined as ldquothe pragmatic use of the most innovative infor-mation and communication technologies like the internet to deliverefficient and cost effective services information and knowledge It is anunequivocal commitment by decision-makers to strengthening the partner-ship between the private citizen and the public sectorrdquo (definition takenfrom httpwwwapsanetorg) Broadly speaking e-government may alsoinclude the use of communication technologies other than the internet forservice production and delivery Because of the research purpose of thestudy we will mainly focus on the use of internet and other web-based tech-nologies in our study of e-government

2 This statistics is taken from the government website data of the CyberspacePolicy Research Group (CyPRG) available online at httpwwwcyprgarizonaedu

3 CyPRG is a research group funded by the National Science Foundation andis based at the University of Arizona Tucson and George Mason Univer-sity It has collected data on the openness of websites of national govern-ments in the world since 1996

4 Because of the high correlation among the direct measures multicollinear-ity is one of the major statistical problems encountered by the approach

5 For example in an empirical study conducted by La Porte and his col-leagues (La Porte de Jong and Demchak) among all the direct measuresof the domestic context they use website openness is found to be relatedwith national income and similar wealth measures All the direct social andpolitical measures are found to be insignificant

6 Partly due to the data nature and limitation the direct approach will alsobe applied in operating some of the variables in the study such as economicopenness and some of the agency-specific organizational characteristics

7 One of the dimensions of Heady the focus for personnel management isnot adopted in the study To a certain extent this dimension is slightly dif-ferent in nature from other dimensions Instead of capturing the relativepower of the civil service in different domains of society it tends to capturemore about the locus and operational arrangement of the personnel func-tion Second prior work has found high correlation between the two vari-ables ldquorole of state in societyrdquo and ldquofocus for personnel managementrdquo(Welch and Wong 2001a) A similar result was found in this data set (r =047) however the Chronbach Alpha was not high enough (r = 058) to merita combination of these variables Problems of multicollinearity preclude the


inclusion of both variables in the regression model As a result ldquofocus for personnel managementrdquo was dropped from the model This variablealso has the lowest intercoder correlation and the least variation amongnations

8 ldquoRelation to political regimerdquo and ldquoqualification requirementsrdquo capture thepolitical autonomy of the civil service in relation to the political regime ininternal and external affairs respectively There are also statistical reasonsto back up such combination Preliminary analysis found high correlation(r = 071) between two coded categories from the Heady framework TheChronbach Alpha coefficient was 082 validating a linear combination of the standardized variables into a new variable that we call ldquopoliticalautonomyrdquo

9 The competing views relate to traditional views on the accountability ori-entation of bureaucracies This debate can actually be dated back to thedebate between Finer and Friedrich

10 These sector distinctions were developed and coded by CyPRG11 The coding of seven countries (Egypt France Indonesia Japan Korea the

United Kingdom and the United States) are done by Heady in his ownwork (1996a) The other eight countries are coded by the researchers independently according to the Heady characteristics Readers can refer toWelch and Wong (2001a) for more explanation of the coding method andsamples of the coding results The coding results are then averaged to obtainone measure of each dimension for each country Intercoder reliability mea-sured as the correlation between the two sets of researcher-coded dataranged between 089 and 094

12 CyPRG data and the detailed definition of each criterion are available onlineat httpwwwcyprgarizonaedu Although the titles of some interactivityand transparency areas are identical the measurement qualities are not Wedo not reprint the criteria here due to space considerations

13 Because relatively few websites were assessed in the first two years of theCyPRG study we rely on the most recent four years of CyPRG data from1997 through to 2000

14 A weakness of average score of accountability is that it is only a measure ofa single point It often reflects ldquomomentary lags in technology applicationfamiliarity with new processes or other transitory phenomenardquo instead ofpolicy choices of government The change score measures the change in thelevel of e-government accountability of a government across time in com-parison with its own accountability in previous years As a comparison andchange measure it can measure the degree of willingness of public officialsand managers to make their organizations more accountable through e-government when the technology knowledge and experience of allowingthem to do so are already available

15 The alpha correlation coefficient between these two variables was highenough (r = 098) to validate a linear combination of the standardized variables

16 For example the interactivity gap between the US and France has been significantly narrowed in 2000 At the same period the interactivity gap between France and the Netherlands has been significantly widened

17 All models are statistically significant and statistical tests show that nor-mality assumptions were not violated and that there were no problems ofmulticollinearity

18 Subsequent runs of this model alternatively replacing low and highdummy variables with the medium dummy variable showed similar evi-dence of a strongly significant nonlinear relationship


19 In Table 2 economic openness is not significant for interactivity Althoughit is significant for transparency in both Table 2 and Table 3 it has the wrongsign and very small coefficients

20 According to Porter the adoption of internet in the business world will notgive the firm a sustainable competitive advantage As the internet technol-ogy becomes widely available to all firms it will mean that no firm willhave a competitive edge by the use of the internet Therefore what inter-net does is raising the competitiveness of all firms instead of the relativecompetitiveness of any specific firm It changes the competition landscapeat the market level but will not give any individual firm a competitive edgein competing in the new landscape

REFERENCES

Aberbach Joel Robert Putnam and Bert Rockman 1981 Bureaucrats and Politi-cians in Western Democracies Cambridge MA Harvard University Press

Aldrich Howard 1979 Organizations and Environments Englewood Cliffs NJPrentice-Hall

Bovens Mark and Stavros Zouridis 2002 From Street-Level to System-LevelBureaucracies How Information and Communication Technology is Trans-forming Administrative Discretion and Constitutional Control Public Admin-istration Review 62174ndash184

Cleveland Harlan 1993 Birth of a New World An Open Moment for InternationalLeadership San Francisco Jossey-Bass

Cunningham Gary and Jean Harris 2001 A Heuristic Framework for Account-ability of Government Subunits Public Management Review 3145ndash165

Cyberspace Policy Research Group (CyPRG) 1 Available online at httpwwwcyprgarizonaeduhypo_contenthtm

Cyberspace Policy Research Group (CyPRG) 2 Available online athttpcyprgarizonaeducqms_contenthtm

Demchak Chris C Christian Friis and Todd M La Porte 1998 ConfiguringPublic Agencies in Cyberspace A Conceptual Investigation In I T M Snellenand W B H J van de Donk eds Public Administration in an Information AgeA Handbook pp 179ndash196 Amsterdam IOS Press

mdashmdashmdash 2000 Webbing Governance National Differences in Constructing the Faceof Public Organizations In G David Garson ed Handbook of Public Informa-tion Systems New York Marcel Dekker

DiMaggio Paul J and Walter Powell 1983 The Iron Cage Revisited InstitutionalIsomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields AmericanSociological Review 48147ndash160

Doremus Paul N William W Keller Louis W Pauly and Simon Reich 1998 The Myth of the Global Corporation Princeton NJ Princeton University Press

Downs Anthony 1967 Inside Bureaucracy Boston Little BrownFarazmand Ali 1999 Globalization and Public Administration Public Adminis-

tration Review 59509ndash522Finer Herman 1941 Administrative Responsibility and Democratic Government

Public Administration Review 1335ndash350Friedrich Carl 1940 Public Policy and the Nature of Administrative Responsi-

bility In C Friedrich and E Mason eds Public Policy Cambridge MAHarvard University Press

Hallerberg Mark and Scott Basinger 1998 Internationalization and Changes in Tax Policy in OECD Countries The Importance of Domestic Veto PowersComparative Political Studies 31321ndash352


Heady Ferrel 1996a Configurations of Civil Service Systems In Hans BekkeJames Perry and Theo Toonen eds Civil Service Systems in Comparative Per-spective Bloomington Indiana University Press

mdashmdashmdash 1996b Public Administration in Comparative Perspective 5th ed New YorkMarcel Dekker

Heintze Theresa and Stuart Bretschneider 2000 Information Technology and Restructuring in Public Organizations Does Adoption of InformationTechnology Affect Organizational Structures Communications and Decision-Making Journal of Public Administration Theory and Research 10801ndash830

Johnston Jocelyn and Barbara Romzek 1999 Contacting and Accountability inState Medicaid Reform Rhetoric Theories and Reality Public AdministrationReview 59383ndash399

Kettl Donald 1997 The Global Revolution in Public Management Driving Themes Missing Links Journal of Policy Analysis and Management16446ndash462

Kraemer Kenneth and Jason Dedrick 1997 Computing and Public Organiza-tions Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 789ndash112

Kraemer Kenneth L Jason Dedrick and John Leslie King 1995 The Impact ofInformation Technology on City Government in the United States CRITO WorkingPaper Irvine Center for Research on Information Technology and Organiza-tions University of California

La Porte Todd M Martin de Jong and Chris Demchak 2002 Democracy andBureaucracy in the Age of the Web Administration and Society 34411ndash426

Lee Geungjoo and James Perry 2002 Are Computers Boosting Productivity ATest of the Paradox in State Governments Journal of Public AdministrationTheory and Research 1277ndash102

Niskanen William 1971 Bureaucracy and Representative Government ChicagoAldine Atherton

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 1993 PublicManagement OECD Country Profiles Paris Public Management Service(PUMA) OECD

mdashmdashmdash 1995 Public Management Developments Update 1995 Paris Public Manage-ment Service (PUMA) OECD

Osborne Stephen 2001 Public Management Reform A Case for National Divergence or Global Convergence Public Management Review 3451

Pollitt Christopher 2001 Clarifying Convergence Striking Similarities andDurable Differences in Public Management Reform Public Management Review3471ndash492

Pollitt Christopher and Geert Bouckaert 2000 Public Management Reform AComparative Analysis Oxford Oxford University Press

Porter E Michael 2001 Strategy and the Internet Harvard Business ReviewMarch63ndash78

Rainey Hal G 1998 Understanding and Managing Public Organizations San Francisco Jossey-Bass

Reichard Christoph 1998 The Impact of Performance Management on Trans-parency and Accountability in the Public Sector In Annie Hondeghem edEthics and Accountability in a Context of Governance and New Public ManagementAmsterdam IOS Press

Riggs Fred W 1994 Global Forces and the Discipline of Public AdministrationIn Jean-Claude Garcia-Zamor and Renu Khator eds Public Administration inthe Global Village Westport CT Praeger

Romzek Barbara and Melvin Dubnick 1987 Accountability in the Public Sector Lessons from the Challenger Tragedy Public Administration Review47227ndash238



Rosenbloom David 1992 Public Administrative Theory and the Separation ofPowers In Jay Shafritz and Albert Hyde eds Classics of Public Administration3rd ed Pacific Grove CA BooksCole

Scharpf Fritz W 1997 Introduction The Problem-Solving Capacity of Multi-LevelGovernance Journal of European Public Policy 4520ndash538

Scott W Richard 1998 Organizations Rational Natural and Open Systems 4th edEnglewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall

Selznick Philip 1966 TVA and the Grass Roots New York HarperCollinsStrang David and John W Meyer 1993 Institutional Conditions for Diffusion

Theory and Society 22487ndash511Thompson James 1967 Organization in Action New York McGraw-HillViteritti Joseph 1990 Public Organization Environments Constituents Clients

and Urban Governance Administration and Society 21425ndash457Welch Eric and Wilson Wong 1998 Public Administration in a Global Context

Bridging the Gaps of Theory and Practice between Western and Non-WesternNations Public Administration Review 5840ndash49

mdashmdashmdash 2001a Global Information Technology Pressure and GovernmentAccountability The Mediating Effect of the Domestic Context on WebsiteOpenness Journal of Public Administration Theory and Research 11509ndash538

mdashmdashmdash 2001b Effects of Global Pressures on Public Bureaucracy Modeling a NewTheoretical Framework Administration amp Society 32371ndash402

World Bank 1998 World Development Indicators Washington DC The World Bank

APPENDIX 1Website Transparency Trends

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

1997 1998 1999 2000

All Countries Australia Canada ChinaEgypt France Germany IndonesiaJapan Korea Netherlands New ZealandSingapore United Kingdom United States


APPENDIX 2Website Interactivity Trends

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000

All Countries Australia Canada China

Egypt France Germany Indonesia

Japan Korea Netherlands New Zealand

Singapore United Kingdom United States

its performance (Cunningham and Harris Johnston and RomzekRomzek and Dubnick) E-government is often viewed and promoted asa positive channel for enhancing government accountability and empow-ering citizens (La Porte de Jong and Demchak Demchak Friis and LaPorte 2000) More information delivered in a more timely fashion to citi-zens is expected to increase transparency of government empowering cit-izens to more closely monitor government performance Enhancedinteractivity of the technology is also expected to improve governmentaccountability as it makes government more responsive to the needs anddemands of individual citizens

However there are arguments against this positive vision of e-government accountability Information technology in public organiza-tions often simply improves their technical efficiency without leading tosignificant organizational changes (Heintze and Bretschneider) Insteadof changing the nature of organizations the role played by informationtechnology is often no more than reinforcing ldquoexisting tendenciesrdquo oforganizations (Kraemer and Dedrick)

The empirical research has indicated that computing per se is neither a cen-tralizing or decentralizing influence The context in which computing is usedis a much stronger influence on whether organizations centralize or decentral-ize than is the technology which can support either type of arrangement Ingeneral computing tends to reinforce existing tendencies and by itself is notlikely to affect organizational structure in significant ways (Kraemer andDedrick 101)

Applying this logic to the impact of e-government the new technologymay simply exacerbate the domestic trajectory enhancing or reducingaccountability levels based on domestic traditions institutions and cir-cumstances In fact prior research seems to show that governments withan authoritarian or paternalistic nature use web-based technologies tocontrol access to information for the purpose of monitoring citizen behav-ior to tighten political control of the regime (Welch and Wong 1998) Fromthis perspective the relationship between e-government and publicaccountability is a conditional one where change in accountability levelsdepends on the context and characteristics of the public organization

These two very different perspectives on the effect of e-government onaccountability are linked to a fundamental question on the effect of globalpressures on bureaucratic change In the study of globalization there is aheated debate on whether the global pressures including the global pres-sure of information technology will bring to a convergence or a diver-gence for the organization systems of different nations (Osborne PollittDoremus et al Hallerberg and Basinger Kettl) If there is a direct andpositive relationship between e-government and accountability as sug-gested by the first paradigm the convergence theory of globalization willbe supported With the establishment of more websites by more govern-ments around the globe these governments will converge to a global stan-dard of accountability In contrast if the second paradigm is correct that


































Linear relationship























FINDINGS











0

5

10

15

20

25

1997 1998 1999 2000








Low -536 (066) -005 (070) -542 (120)High -134 (101) -218 (109) -352 (184)




p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010




Low -510 (064) 018 (070) -492 (117)High -111 (098) -190 (107) -300 (179)





p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010








Low 162 (172) -397 (191)High 225 (086) -260 (095)






p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010






DISCUSSION





















ACKNOWLEDGMENT


NOTES
























REFERENCES



















































0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

1997 1998 1999 2000




0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000





































Linear relationship























FINDINGS











0

5

10

15

20

25

1997 1998 1999 2000








Low -536 (066) -005 (070) -542 (120)High -134 (101) -218 (109) -352 (184)




p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010




Low -510 (064) 018 (070) -492 (117)High -111 (098) -190 (107) -300 (179)





p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010








Low 162 (172) -397 (191)High 225 (086) -260 (095)






p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010






DISCUSSION





















ACKNOWLEDGMENT


NOTES
























REFERENCES



















































0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

1997 1998 1999 2000




0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000















FINDINGS











0

5

10

15

20

25

1997 1998 1999 2000








Low -536 (066) -005 (070) -542 (120)High -134 (101) -218 (109) -352 (184)




p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010




Low -510 (064) 018 (070) -492 (117)High -111 (098) -190 (107) -300 (179)





p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010








Low 162 (172) -397 (191)High 225 (086) -260 (095)






p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010






DISCUSSION





















ACKNOWLEDGMENT


NOTES
























REFERENCES



















































0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

1997 1998 1999 2000




0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000













0

5

10

15

20

25

1997 1998 1999 2000








Low -536 (066) -005 (070) -542 (120)High -134 (101) -218 (109) -352 (184)




p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010




Low -510 (064) 018 (070) -492 (117)High -111 (098) -190 (107) -300 (179)





p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010








Low 162 (172) -397 (191)High 225 (086) -260 (095)






p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010






DISCUSSION





















ACKNOWLEDGMENT


NOTES
























REFERENCES



















































0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

1997 1998 1999 2000




0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000










Low -536 (066) -005 (070) -542 (120)High -134 (101) -218 (109) -352 (184)




p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010




Low -510 (064) 018 (070) -492 (117)High -111 (098) -190 (107) -300 (179)





p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010








Low 162 (172) -397 (191)High 225 (086) -260 (095)






p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010






DISCUSSION





















ACKNOWLEDGMENT


NOTES
























REFERENCES



















































0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

1997 1998 1999 2000




0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000












Low 162 (172) -397 (191)High 225 (086) -260 (095)






p lt 001 p lt 005 p lt 010






DISCUSSION





















ACKNOWLEDGMENT


NOTES
























REFERENCES



















































0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

1997 1998 1999 2000




0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000










DISCUSSION





















ACKNOWLEDGMENT


NOTES
























REFERENCES



















































0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

1997 1998 1999 2000




0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000



















ACKNOWLEDGMENT


NOTES
























REFERENCES



















































0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

1997 1998 1999 2000




0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000




















REFERENCES



















































0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

1997 1998 1999 2000




0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000






































0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

1997 1998 1999 2000




0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000







0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

1997 1998 1999 2000





does e-government promote accountability? a comparative

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