The Internet provides a powerful tool for reinventing local governments. It encourages transformation from the traditional bureaucratic paradigm, which emphasizes standardization, departmentalization, and operational cost-efficiency, to the "e-government" paradigm, which emphasizes coordinated network building, external collaboration, and customer services. Based on a content analysis of city Web sites and a survey of Web development officials, this article shows that many cities are already moving toward this new paradigm. These cities have adopted "onestop shopping" and customer-oriented principles in Web design, and they emphasize external collaboration and networking in the development process rather than technocracy. The article also analyzes the socioeconomic and organizational factors that are related to cities' progressiveness in Web development and highlights future challenges in reinventing government through Internet technology.
What participation mechanisms connect citizens and city officials? Do they produce valued outcomes? Surveys of elected officials suggest that microlevel mechanisms such as direct citizen contact are more valuable in meeting participation goals than are mechanisms focusing on macrolevel concerns. However, there is a disconnect between perceptions about value and the use of mechanisms. State-level participation requirements and a city manager have little effect on the value of a mechanism. These findings raise some questions: why are microlevel participation mechanisms favored, why do some mechanisms have value even though respondents have little experience with them, and why is there a misalignment between participatory goals and the mechanisms used?As Jonathan Kahn suggests, budget is government in miniatureFa budget outlines a government's scope of responsibilities, defines its relationship with citizens, and reveals how the government plans to extract resources from private citizens to fund what services and to achieve what goals.
This article examines the decades-long practices of performance budgeting in different countries and their associated challenges from a multilayered institutional framework. Based on theory and lessons learned, the article recommends an array of strategies to address institutional and organizational barriers. It also proposes to reconceptualize performance budgeting as a performance budget management system and suggests how multiyear budget planning, financial risk assessment, policy planning, the departmental budget cycle, the program budget cycle, stakeholder engagement, regular spending reviews, and performance audits should be integrated more closely to address the long-term fiscal challenges faced by many governments and to respond to the public pressure on agencies to do more with less.
is associate professor of public administration at University of Kansas. His research focuses on performance budgeting and management, citizen engagement, and the use of information technology by state and local governments. For the past decade, he also has advised government offi cials in the United States, China, and a few developing countries on the practice of performance-oriented reforms.Despite academic fi ndings that performance information seldom is used in appropriations decisions, many professional organizations and governments continue to press for integrating performance information into local public management, planning, and budgeting processes. Is it possible to reconcile such inconsistencies? Looking beyond the executivelegislative relationship and departmental appropriations, the author examines the budget implications of applying performance information at the subdepartmental program level. Case analysis of Indianapolis's IndyStat initiative underscores that performance measurement application is positively related to intradepartmental program budget changes. Hence, performance-based budgeting (PBB) can improve local budgeting despite severe political constraints. Still, successful use of PBB requires strong executive leadership, and its eff ects remain less visible at the departmental level or within the wider political arena of legislative bargaining. Th e author concludes by recommending some rethinking of the current analytical focus of PBB both in future research as well as recommended practice.
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