dg.o2004 Marks 5 Years of Research Community's Growth
Scholars and Partners Show off Diversity, Innovation as National Conference on Digital Government Research Convenes in Seattle
By Karen Heyman
For the DGRC

dg.o2004 Opens
	Conference Co-Chair Sharon Dawes convenes dg.o2004

The 2004 Digital Government conference has opened in Seattle.

Its attendance count of more than 170 represents more than four times the size of the original, invitation-only conference held in 2000. Like the field itself, the conference has grown to include participants from a wide variety of academic disciplines. "I was the only social scientist at the first conference," remembered Sharon Dawes, Director of the Center for Technology in Government at SUNY-Albany, "I would look for people with whom I had something in common, like that we both came from New York."

Now looking over a room filled not only with her fellow social scientists, but a range of researchers from fields as diverse as public policy, geography and computer modeling, Dawes said of the challenges ahead, "It is the most intractable problems that demand new ways of collaboration."

The field has come so far in such a short time, that Yigal Arens, of USC's Information Sciences Institute, issued a public call for the creation of a Digital Government Society, which would take over the organizing of the annual conference and other community activities. Those interested in being part of a formation committee are asked to contact Arens directly.

In another sign of its growing maturity, the field is also celebrating the launch of its first, dedicated journal. Co-editor-in-chief Donald Norris, Director of the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (MIPAR) and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), says that selected papers from the conference will appear in the second issue, after having first passed the journal's own peer review process.

Program Manager
	NSF Program Manager Valerie Gregg gave participants a video retrospective of the conference's brief, but rich 5-year history.

NSF Digital Government program manager Larry Brandt says, "The program is evolving over time, it started out as primarily technical demonstration kinds of projects, where we had computer scientists working with federal agencies and the point was to show how new technologies could be used in their particular domain.

"As time has gone on we've tried to pay more attention to what happens to the result of the research after the research grant is over, so we've begun to some more technology transfer kinds of activities, such as training either government agency personnel or their subcontractors to take a technology and use it and maintain it," Brandt says. "We're really interested in having the research have a long-term lifespan, a longer term impact."

In addition, says Brandt, "We're much more interested now in bringing together computer science researchers with social science researchers-to explore what are the long term impacts of information technologies on government, on issues like Internet voting, for example. I think that's where the program has the potential to have the greatest impact, because we're bringing together communities that don't generally work together."

Although the NSF has a division of social, economic and behavioral research, it's typically not been funded as much as the rest of NSF, according to Brandt. "NSF has not done much in the way of funding people who study policy processes, people who are public administration kind of people, that's something completely fresh. We're trying to encourage that."

Program Chair
	Lois Delcambre explains the new "Project Highlights" format and other details of the program.

Since that community is new to applying for grants from the NSF, Brandt offers some pointers: "I would suggest that people familiarize themselves with what we've done in the past. Any grant that NSF makes is available publicly, look at successful grants, how they're structured, how they make their arguments. Use them as models."

Most importantly, he suggests people contact him before investing the time in writing a grant, "I'm always willing to talk with people who have an idea. Give me a call, get in touch with me by email. I review pre-proposals or concepts and I will tell you if you need to strengthen it or if it's a good topic for the program or its not. Because of the heterogeneity of the program, typically as many as 20 or 25% of the proposals we get every year are not well targeted. They're wasting their time writing them, we're wasting our time reviewing them. So getting a dialog going earlier benefits everybody."

Brandt acknowledges that pursuing an interdisciplinary research program can still be a challenge for junior faculty, under pressure to establish themselves in their own, traditional fields. He offers this encouragement: "We try to give more than the usual number of planning grants where I can make the decision myself without the peer review process." The grants are small, only on the order of fifty-thousand dollars, "The intention is to give junior faculty some relief by buying some of their time and letting them think about broader proposals."

Keynote Speaker
	Keith Rhodes, chief technologist of the GAO, emphasizes a point.

The day began with a keynote speech by Keith Rhodes, Chief Technologist of the U.S. General Accounting Office. Rhodes is a man so dedicated to eGovernment, he is actually able to view being awakened at four in the morning two nights in a row by the local police as a good thing:

The police had been alerted that someone in an online discussion forum had seemed suicidal. They were concerned enough to track down Rhodes - whose name was spelled with just one letter's difference from the name in an email address from the actual subject of their quest. E-government in action, indeed. And so, in the middle of the night, Rhodes taught the attentive local police about domain addressing.

"That is the great connection you are making," he concluded, "You are intercepting government and research."

There's a moral to all that, says Rhodes, who has addressed Congress many times - if Digital Government researchers are to continue to be funded, they must translate the abstract into concrete terms, by showing off success stories and practical benefits.

One example is a lesson learned by the Social Security Administration: They had thought it a good idea to put personal earnings and benefits statements online. Of course, they had planned to secure the information-but it was only through public comments, largely gathered off their Web site, that they learned just how much the public distrusted the idea. The success here was digitally-enabled communication-a government agency that had turned its Web site into a two-way interaction, rather than just a unilateral agency notice board.

But it is just the sort of cultural misunderstanding that led to the original, subsequently modified decision, of which all digital researchers must be aware, warns Rhodes. Whether working with agency partners, the general public, or international collaborators we must remember, he says, "A grasshopper can be a pest, good luck, or an appetizer, depending on what culture you're in."

Luncheon Address
	Microsoft's George Spix delivers the luncheon address.

In his luncheon address, George Spix, chief architect in the Consumer Platforms Division of Microsoft Corporation, overviewed Microsoft's products and philosophy. Of special note to DG researchers on the technology side, he suggests checking out the research end of the company, which spends nearly 8 billion a year on software R&D. At http://research.microsoft.com, researchers can find pointers to, "Things not available to the public that may be available to be used under various terms." More information from his talk can be found at http://mysite.verizon.net/res1dch2/dg2004.zip

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The late afternoon featured a series of Birds of a Feather sessions, on topics ranging from Internet public policy participation for rural community citizens to international collaboration. William Sonntag of the EPA moderated a session on the emerging field of Ecoinformatics-the electronic exchange of natural and international environmental information.

Unfortunately, discussing the environment was the closest anyone came to it on a spectacularly beautiful day that defied Seattle's reputation for soggy weather. Despite how fascinating the panels and discussions were, all agreed it was disappointing to be inside on a day so clear Mt. Rainier was visible from sunrise to sunset. Especially the locals, afraid the only deluge would be more tourists. As Spix put it, "You will notice that it's raining outside. Please tell that to the folks back home."