digital government research and practice

1. Can you briefly tell us about the Center for Technology in
Government at the University at Albany?

The Center for Technology in Government (CTG) at the University at Albany
(UAlbany) is a university wide applied research center that works with
government to develop well-informed information strategies that foster
innovation and enhance the quality and coordination of public services. We carry
out this mission through applied research and partnership projects that address
the policy, management, and technology dimensions of information use in the
public sector. CTG’s research interests and expertise are focused on government
problems or issues that are complex, cross-boundary, and multi-dimensional.
Current thematic focus areas are inter-organizational information sharing and
integration, international digital government research, digital preservation,
and IT-enabled innovation and value generation in the public sector.

2. What are your main responsibilities at the Center?
My responsibilities at the Center range from engaging with practitioners to
identify the key challenges to innovative uses of technology in government
organizations to working with fellow academics to explore key questions about
the interactions between the social and technical processes that play out when
government organizations engage with innovative practices and technologies. More
specifically, I am responsible for the project portfolio of the Center working
with a team of senior program managers to ensure the work conducted in these
projects is of high quality and relevant to both practitioners and researchers.
This involves building partnerships with government practitioners as well as
with academic colleagues. This partnership building process involves for
example, participating in advisory boards within government and actively
engaging with the challenges facing government and working actively in the
professional associations serving both communities. In terms of the partnerships
with academic colleagues, I play a lead role in bringing the work of the Center
to academic audiences through publications in journals and through academic
conferences as well as in presentations and invited lectures. As Deputy Director
I play a role both in setting the direction of the Center in terms of the themes
and issues around which we organize our work and in securing the resources
necessary to do that work.

3. Can you please tell us about the CTG’s focus areas for the next
decade?
CTG’s top priority for the next several years is to maintain and solidify our
leadership position in digital government research and practice. The four themes
of inter-organizational information sharing and integration, international
digital government research, digital preservation, and IT-enabled innovation and
value generation in the public sector will continue to drive our research agenda
and our relationships with funders, sponsors, and partners. In addition to this
research strategy, our existing business model is essential to continued
success. This model rests on mixed and dynamic funding sources, actively managed
human and capital resources, and multi-year financial and program planning.
Within this context, our major goals for the next two years are to:
• Continue to support the core strategies of the NYS Chief Information
Officer Council and state and local agencies through applied research projects
that address key New York State needs and lead to additional externally funded
research projects.
• Extend our research in cross-boundary information
sharing and integration to new sponsors (such as the United Nations and
Department of Homeland Security), to the local government level in New York
State and elsewhere, and to new focus areas (such as immigration and border
control).
• Emphasize the production of scholarly publications from all of
our research areas, including mining the enormous quantity of qualitative case
data that has been amassed over the past 15 years.
• Extend our work on
digital preservation of government information through continued work with the
Library of Congress and state and national partners.
• Extend our work in
public return on investment, building on current international research efforts,
to have greater impact on government decision makers.
• Continue
implementation of our four-year, $1.5 million international digital government
community building grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), including
an international reconnaissance study, establishment and evaluation of
international working groups, and design, implementation and evaluation of an
annual digital government research institute for doctoral students.
•
Initiate a research and practice partnership with academic and government
partners in China, building on relationships established this year under the
auspices of NSF.
For more
http://newdigitalsouth.org/digital/node/425





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