Opportunities and Challenges in Advancing Broadband-Enabled Government Services

This chapter re-examines the potential impact of information technology on public services and suggest a framework that evaluates the “knowns” and the “unknowns” of the impacts of broadband-enabled e-government. It also suggests a stakeholder-logic model to evaluate the implications of this development for elected officials, public employees, service users, and the community-at-large and its potential risks and challenges. Even though many local governments have already begun to implement new e-government tools under the broadband environment, there are still some known broken promises, such as recurring challenges of digital divide and e-democracy, and some unknowns about its impacts, such as the uncertain impacts on policy agenda setting and on the shifting power among different economic classes and demographic groups. The chapter discusses these and then concludes by suggesting questions that require more future research and policy attention.