Week One-Post #1: Public Information and E-Governance (Chapter Two)

Chapter two of David Garson’s, Public Information and E-Governance provides an overview of public-sector information technology policy. The book describes the development of governmental efforts to establish a retention schedule for government produced documents with areas that posed storage concerns. It was difficult to manage the abundant amount of documents that were being retained and poor storage lead to decomposing paper. The utilization of electronic technologies for military purposes was also addressed. Page 29 states “There is a direct line of development of federal information policy form the wartime concerns of 1813 to the launch of electronic publication formats in the 1990’s.”

It is clear that from 1986 to now, information technology policy is in the forefront of congressional attention. Policy issues addressed in the book, such as public access to electronic information; public participation in e-government, accessibility for the disabled, individual privacy, modernizing education, regulating e-vice, securing intellectual property, electronic voting and regulating the outsourcing of IT jobs all weigh heavy on today’s government entities.

I was very surprised to read that the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 (page 40) was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2002. The history of this extremely important topic seems to be of high interest now that access to the internet and information technology has increased. I look forward to reading more on how the government aims to protect vulnerable individuals from such exploitation.

The chapter addresses four policy making benchmarks for success in the information technology policy within the United States. These include; increasing public access to information; increasing public participation; protecting citizen’s rights and establishing a comprehensive approach to the management of public information systems.