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The growth of e-government in municipal planning

E-GOVERNMENT holds the promise of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of government and enhancing the ability of citizens to interact with their government in meaningful and productive ways. In terms of interaction, governments seek citizens’ input in identifying concerns, resolving conflicts, and generating support for policy initiatives. The rapid diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the increasing diversity of e-government tools represent fundamental changes in the means by which government officials and citizens can interact. E-government technologies are promoting greater interactivity between citizens and their government. ICT potentially improves relationships between citizens and government, and it relaxes time and geographic constraints faced by citizens who want to participate. For planning departments, an increase in the use of ICT may result in process and programmatic changes that better accommodate citizen participation in governance. We ask two primary research questions: First, how rapidly are planning departments adding e-government tools? Second, using McMillan’s model of interactivity, how rapidly are municipal planning departments providing opportunities for citizen interaction with planners? We hypothesize that over time e-government interaction tools are rapidly diffusing at the municipal government Editor’s Note: Many of the ideas gathered in this paper were used by the first author in a postHurricane Katrina project. That project is outlined by EvansCowley in an appendix to this article. A more detailed description of that project can be found linked to the online version of this article.