Moving governments on-line: Implementation and policy issues

Abstract

As growing numbers of the public continue to access the Internet, governments at all levels will be encouraged to provide more information, services, and interactive communication in an on-line format. The public administration community should be aware of these important new sources of information and on-line documents, and how to access them. Public administrators also need to be aware of the many new and different policy issues being created by these new forms of publications and communications arenas.

A new type of publication has arisen during the past several years. Online publications, documents placed on the Internet or computer bulletin board systems (bbs), are increasingly used by citizens, private firms, public interest groups, and governments to reach segments of the population. Still lagging behind the private sector, governments are beginning to take advantage of these new technologies to allow managers and citizens access to up-to-date government information quickly and cheaply. By utilizing these new ways of making information available, governments can provide another means of access to many different topics and improve communications with citizens about public issues.

This article describes a mixture of traditional hard-copy and on-line documents which can assist public sector managers and academics to understand some of the implementation and policy issues involved in moving government on-line.

Governments On-Line

More governments today are taking advantage of on-line communication and publications to provide citizens easier access to information, easier communication with officials, and new ways of providing services. Much of this new activity takes place on the Internet or on computer bulletin board systems (bbs). The Internet is a network of many different computer networks, operating by means of common standards, that allows users to communicate with one another and access information. Computer bulletin boards are standalone systems which allow users to connect to a government's system in order to access information, to engage in discussion groups, or to send messages on a limited basis.

Public Technology, Inc.'s new guide, Surfing the 'Net: A Local Government Guide to Internet Connection, addresses many of the implementation issues an organization or government faces in deciding whether to establish an Internet presence and if so, how to make the connection. The PTI guide is written for those with a more technical background who will be making the decisions about how and when to move onto the Internet. It is not a primer for those just beginning to use the Internet, although each section includes some of the basics.

Surfing first discusses the basic Internet tools used today. The first of these is electronic mail, or e-mail, the most widely used communications tool. Three other tools-- gophers, the World Wide Web, and file transfer protocol (ftp)-- are currently used to store, present, and access information. Many decisionmakers would have to be presented with additional introductory materials and examples in order to make an informed decision about establishing an Internet presence with these tools.

The guide goes on to discuss the pros and cons of the various ways a government could connect to the Internet, whether on an individual or an institutional basis. Whether individual staff members or an institution makes the connection, there are four basis ways of connecting: (1) through a local area network (LAN) or network of computers set up at the office; (2) through a commercial on-line service; (3) through a private Internet service providing only basic service; or, (4) through an Internet reseller providing more extensive connections. Details are provided about how make each type of connection, including prices and how to select Internet addresses.

For information systems managers, Surfing the Net also discusses the type of software and hardware required for different types of connections. But the software and hardware are only part of the requirements for a government to establish a full Internet connection. Staff time is required to respond to questions from users both in and out of the organization, to maintain the hardware and software, and to keep files and other information updated. Finally, a very useful glossary and reference section are included in the PTI publication.

Publishing On-Line

Using many of the tools and techniques discussed in the PTI guide, many governments and organizations are already "publishing" documents and policies on-line. The on-line documents discussed in this article are taken from several Internet cools, specifically, gophers, the World Wide Web, and file transfer protocol (ftp, or anonymous ftp).

Gophers are hierarchical menu-driven systems which allow users to access information on many topics. Users may easily transfer from one site to another in a quest for information, guided by the ability to do on-line searches across many sites. Then, users may have files e-mailed to them or may save them on their own computers. Gophers are one of the easiest Internet tools to use because the user simply selects numbered options in order to move from one level of the menu to another. Simple commands (such as m for mail) assist the user in accessing documents and other files located throughout the gopher site or in connecting to other sites.

Gopher addresses appear in the gopher://Computer Site/Menu Option/Submenu option/Sub-submenu option/Filename format. For instance, the computer address and path name of the Privacy in Cyberspace document discussed in this essay is gopher://pwa.acusd.edu/3. USD Campus-Wide information System/10. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse/3. Fact Sheets/18. Privacy in Cyberspace. This means that the user types the command gopher pwa.acusd.edu on his or her home system in order to connect to the system at the University of San Diego. Option 3 of the first menu is USD Campus-Wide Information System; after selecting that option, option 10 of the next menu is the archive for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the publisher of the document. Option 3 is the area where the fact sheets reside and 18 on the Fact Sheet menu is the Privacy in Cyberspace document itself. The reader may access that document and have it mailed to his or her computer account by typing m and the e-mail address.

The World Wide Web, currently the most popular Internet: tool, is a relatively new mode of publishing that can utilize text, graphics, video, and sound to present documents in visually interesting ways. Using software called a browser (such as Mosaic or Netscape), the user points and clicks the mouse on items of interest. Depending upon the design of the document, the user is then either transferred to other documents through an innovation called hypertext, hears a sound dip, or sees graphics or video.

A World Wide Web address is referred to as an URL, or Uniform Resource Locator. URLs for the World Wide Web have formats beginning with http:// which continues with the Internet address of the specific Web document, called a home page. The http refers to a type of standard protocol used for the World Wide Web and is followed by a colon and two slashes; often, the 'www" for World Wide Web follows the slash. The address for a popular Web site, the White House, is thus http://www.whitehouse.gov/ ; when typed into the browser as the requested URL, the White House home page appears on the user's home screen.

File Transfer Protocol, also called ftp or anonymous ftp, is another useful tool in on-line publishing. To use ftp, a computer user transfers from his or her own system and logs on to another system as anonymous (hence the name), using his or her own e-mail address as the password. Computer systems which allow this form of access have archives of files for users to access and to send to their home systems through a simple "get" command. Files may be stored in archives in many different formats; i.e., the tradition ASCII format, in PostScript, or in many other formats.

While not difficult to use, ftp does require some knowledge of Unix software operating system commands and so, is one of the least user-friendly of the three Internet tools. FTP addresses are the address of the ftp archive; for example, to access an archive, the user types ftp ftp.cpsr.org. Then the user must use specific software commands to move to the proper directory and search for files.

Citing On-Line Publications

As pointed out in the newest edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (1995), standards are still evolving for the citation of on-line documents, publications, and communications. Traditional methods of citation are not totally transferable to the on-line context simply because documents and communications there often do not exist in hard-copy format. In addition, other problems exist with finding on-line documents through given citations. For instance, files are often moved around or stored in a tape archive and removed from public access; citations can thus be inaccurate soon after originally obtained. In addition, public sites can be off-line for some technical reason or unavailable due to high demand so citations may appear to be inaccurate. New standards of citation are being developed to overcome some of these problems and to ensure that authors are properly credited and that documents may be found by others.

The Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association suggests some means of citing electronic documents but mainly focuses on on-line journals, databases, CD-ROMS, and computer software at the expense of documents from computer archives such as gopher and World Wide Web sites. Since standards for citation are still undeveloped, it is proposing that hard copies of documents be used if available Of some assistance is the advice that the exact date of an on-line search be provided if a document contains no other date.

Some citation forms are provided. For on-line periodicals, the following format is suggested:

"Author, I. (date). Title of Article. Name of Periodical

On-line

., xx. Available: Specify path to file." (American Psychological Association, 1994: pp. 218).

The Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association advised that, for files found in an ftp archive, the citation also include the computer site address, file name, and directory name.

Li and Crane (1993) provide an expanded set of suggested citations for electronic documents in Electronic Style: A Guide to Citing Electronic Information. This book, which is based upon the APA Manual, provides much more extensive examples and guidance to the citation of on-line materials, particularly for on-line databases, ftp, electronic mail, telnet, electronic conferences, bulletin board systems (bbs), or Usenet groups. One suggested citation from Li and Crane follows:

"Clinton, B. (1932). Clinton/Gore on issues of concern to gays and lesbians (Online). Available FTP: nptn.org Directory: pub/campaign.92/clinton.dir File: c71.txt." (Li and Crane, 1993)

These publications, or any other citation guides, do not address how to cite documents from gopher servers or from the World Wide Web. However, extrapolating from these examples, the following citation styles for the World Wide Web and gopher documents are suggested:

Author. Date. Title of document. (On-line). Available World Wide Web: URL address. File name: exact name of file Author. Date. Title of document. (On-line). Available gopher: gopher site address. Path: exact menu path to file. File name: exact name of file

Two examples of these citations are from documents used in this article:

National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council. (1995). Common Ground: Fundamental Principles for the National Information Infrastructure- First Report of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council.

On-line

. Available World Wide Web: http://nii.nist.gov/commonground.txt

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. (1995). Fact Sheet #18: Privacy in Cyberspace.

On-line

. Available Gopher: pwa.acusd. edu Path: 3. USD Campus-Wide Information System/10. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse/3. Fact Sheets/18.. Privacy in Cyberspace File: Privacy-in-Cyberspace

Other citation guidance is needed for the proper citation of on-line documents. How should authors cite specific quotes taken from on-line documents which list no pages or page numbers] How should a document split into separate files due to its large size be cited-- as one piece or should the addresses of the individual files be included as well] Should that direct connection to a file be the standard (as used above) or should the address of the linked home page on the World Wide Web be used] These and other issues must be resolved so that these rich on-line sources may be fully utilized while giving proper credit to their authors.

On-Line Policy Issues

In addition to the technical implementation issues and the citation issues discussed above, there are many policy issues that organizations face as they use the Internet or establish a presence there. These include the privacy of users, free speech and censorship, ownership of online information leading to copyright, intellectual property, information pricing issues, policies on accessing adult materials, the use of on-line resources for private gain, and on-line behavior (including criminal behavior)(Rose, 1995).

Fundamental On-Line Policy Issues

One of the most concise statements of the basic policy issues faced by the growing movement of citizens, industry, and governments on-line is the First Report of the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council, found at http://nii.nist.gov/common-ground.txt on the World Wide Web. The Advisory Council was co-chaired by the Chief Executive Officers of National Public Radio and Silicon Graphics, a very successful computer graphics firm from the high tech Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area. The council, appointed in 1994, had the task of advising the Secretary of Commerce and the Clinton administration on a national strategy for advancing both a national and an international information infrastructure.

This first report defines the National Information Infrastructure (NII) and sets out fundamental principles for its development. It is clear that the National Information Infrastructure is not just the Internet as we know it today but also other technologies as well, eventually including computer, television, telephone, and radio in a 'nationwide, invisible, seamless, dynamic web of transmission mechanisms, information appliances, content, and people" (National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council, 1995) The council highlights the potential importance of the NII in improving the quality of life through information, creating new communities of interest over geography, distance, and time, strengthening education, improving healthcare, increasing entertainment options, and enhancing participatory democracy.

The advisory council suggests a system driven by the preferences of a broad base of users, requiring interaction and collaboration among the public, private, and academic sectors of the community, but competition among firms and technologies. Through this competition and private investment, it insisted that the system be integrated into the Global Information Infrastructure. Five critical policy areas are identified: "(1) universal access and services; (2) privacy and security; (3) intellectual property; (4) education and lifelong learning; and, (5) electronic commerce." (National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council, 1995).

Among the most interesting of these goals is universal process to information technologies. The advisory council's recommendation is a national goal of individual access to the NII by 2005 and community-based institutional access (such as schools and libraries) by 2000. That the private sector be the impetus behind the development of the NII is emphasized, but incentives and public subsidies are suggested in order to achieve universal access. Government information from all levels of government should be accessible on the network, in accordance with current law.

The importance of individual privacy and the protection of intellectual property are both discussed as critical to the development of the NII, particularly as a tool for the extension of lifelong learning opportunities, another important goal set by the advisory council. The council believes that existing copyright law applies to on-line communities and the NII, with few modifications required to take the existence of new technologies into account. Finally, the advisory council claims that the development of electronic commerce and the NII will transform the workplace as technology becomes even more important. These transformations must be accompanied by protection of the consumer, data, privacy, and intellectual property, and an increased government interest in electronic procurement, electronic service delivery, and computer communications.

Privacy Issues

Another on-line document discusses more fully the privacy issue brought up by the advisory council on the NII. This publication, "Fact Sheet #18: Privacy in Cyberspace' is published by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego. The center, founded in 1992, is funded by the Telecommunications Education Trust, a program of California's Public Utilities Commission (Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, 1994). This document, published on-line using the gopher, provides a useful introduction to concepts of privacy of communication and expression in an on-line context.

This publication clarifies many issues about the privacy of on-line communications. For instance, many users treat electronic mail or messages posted to electronic discussion groups as if they were private. In fact, the clearinghouse points out that any communication which is "readily accessible" to the public, such as messages posted to discussion groups or electronic mailing lists, may be viewed or disclosed by others. On semi-private systems which require a password to access, messages posted to discussion areas may be legally passed on to others without the consent of the author.

The federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) has been ruled to apply to electronic mail messages sent from private on-line services. This act, while not written about electronic mail, has been interpreted to apply to e-mail; according to the act, no one at these services may legally read or pass on electronic mail messages. There are exceptions, however. An on-line service may look at users' e-mail if it has been given permission and if it believes that the user in question is attempting some damage. Most on-line services ask users to sign statements giving permission to view their e-mail when they join. On-line services also may access information stored in a user's account.

Perhaps more important, the act also exempts the workplace from some privacy considerations; an employer may view employees' e-mail on an employer-owned system. Law enforcement is not exempt, however; representatives have to obtain a legitimate search warrant before e-mail may be accessed or disclosed. Actual on-line patterns of users visiting World Wide Web and gopher sites may also be traded by online services. Tracking these patterns, which are often used for marketing purposes, may violate a user's privacy by recording sometimes sensitive viewing preferences. These are important considerations for any government or individual becoming active on-line.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse points out that an Internet user may take some steps to protect his or her privacy; selecting a secure password known only to the user is one of the most important yet simple steps. The document discusses three types of software which may be used to ensure increased security for users' communication: encryption of software to encode messages, anonymous remailers, and memory protection software. Any institution or individual should review a provider's privacy and other policies before joining any on-line service or securing services from an Internet provider. The publication concludes with a useful glossary and reference section.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse document is an excellent example of how the Internet can be used to disseminate a new kind of publication. This document provides useful and up-to-date information, available only days or weeks after being written. It is also easily accessible via an e-mail account so it can provide a good introduction to some of the important privacy issues that any government or agency should address when moving on-line. The immediacy of this type of publication is even more important when one realizes that these issues and the public policies addressing them are still emerging in a rapidly changing field (Rose, 1995).

Intellectual Property

Another critical policy issue is clarified by the Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure in a draft report, known in its hard copy form as the "Green Paper." Who owns on-line documents and files and who has the rights to them] Can users be charged for their use, and if so how much] Can authors receive the benefits of their use? These issues of intellectual property, copyrights, and the ownership of information (particularly public information) are emerging in the community of on-line users; answers to these questions are not yet clear (Rose, 1995).

For governments, the issue of intellectual property leads to the question of the ownership of government information, In many cases, entire industries have sprung up around the resale of government information; these industries stand to lose enormous amounts of money as the public sector moves onto the Internet, since their current income derives from the sale of information- that would then be provided free of charge on the Internet. In the past, governments have also charged access or copy fees to cover the cost of preparing data and documents. Continuing to charge these fees to access government information on the Internet is not feasible at this time since the technology of commercial charges is still being developed. Many governments are attempting to develop policies for dealing with these issues.

At the national level, the Clinton administration appointed the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights of the Information Infrastructure Task Force to address these issues. After research, meetings, and public hearings, the working group published its draft "Green Paper" in July 1994. A preliminary version of the report was placed in an ftp archive of the organization, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.

This report, A Preliminary Draft of the Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, presents an important policy statement about this emerging issue. Changes in technology, such as the development of copying machines and video cassette recorders, have caused periodic revisions in legal thinking and public policies above the authorship and ownership of creative an research works. On-line technology and the blending of communications and computer technology envisioned for the National Information Infrastructure is forcing another such revision. Copyright and intellectual property rights are threatened when on-line users may easily access fib, print them out, and use them or send them on to another user without the permission of the original author. As the working group states,

"The establishment of high-speed, high capacity electronic information systems make it possible for one individual, with a few key strokes, to deliver perfect copies of digitized works to scores of other individuals--or to upload a copy to a bulletin board or other service where thousands of individuals can download it or print unlimited 'hard' copies on paper or disks. The emergence of integrated information technology is dramatically changing, and will continue to change, how people and businesses deal in information and entertainment products and services, and how works are created, owned, distributed,. reproduced, displayed, performed, licensed, managed, presented, organized, sold, accessed, used, and stored. This leads, understandably, to a call for change in the law."

"...Our intellectual property regime must(1) recognize the legitimate rights and commercial expectations of persons and entities whose works are used in the NII environment, whether at their instance or without their permission, and (2) ensure that users have access to the broadest feasible variety of works on terms and conditions that, in the language of the Constitution, 'promote the progress of science and the useful arts" (Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, 1994).

Current copyright law (the Copyright Act of 1976) protects any work which can be fixed in some tangible means of expression. According to the working group report, this currently preludes items such as video games from protection since they may change. Since e-mail resides temporarily in a computer's memory, it is considered to be sufficiently fixed to qualify for copyright protection. Under this current law, other on-line publications are not currently considered publications since no material object changes hands (although' they are copyrightable). Under a twist in interpretation, however, if the purpose is to further distribute the document, as in the posting of a quantity of copies of a work to a bulletin board, then it can be considered published. Copyright protection is available to both published and unpublished works; therefore, much of what is on-line is eligible for copyright protection. Among the types of protected works are literary, musical, pictorial, motion pictures, and multimedia works.

Several exceptions to these principles exist. One important exception exempts works of the U.S. Government, making them ineligible for copyright protection; they may be distributed or reproduced without infringement. Therefore, federal government documents or information can be made freely available on the Internet or bulletin board systems without violation of current law. Another exception is that on-line publications are not subject to the doctrine of first sale. This doctrine allows the owner of a book or other publication to sell or loan it to another, a critical issue for libraries. However, this doctrine does not apply to computer programs; only the program's owners (not the licensees, borrowers, or possessors) may make extra copies for archival purposes. Importantly, governments may also control or manage access to their works through technological means, if desired for copyright or other protection purposes.

As in the case with many other aspects of the newly developing Internet publication and communication fields, education of the public about these issues is crucial to achievement of these policy goals. Part of this education process can take place during the revisions of current copyright laws recommended and discussed in the Working group's report. The remainder should occur as part of the public's overall and continuing introduction to the Internet.

Conclusions

As growing numbers of the public continue to access the Internet, governments at all levels will be encouraged to provide more information, services, and interactive communication in an on-line format. The public administration community should be aware of these important new sources of information and on-line documents, and how to access them. Public administrators also need to be aware of the many new and different policy issues being created by these new forms of publications and communications arenas. As illustrated in this essay, much of the research on these policy and implementation topics can be accomplished on-line. In doing such research, it is important to utilize the citation styles that have been adopted and to be aware that these styles are still in development. This field, and its repercussions for public administration research and knowledge, changes on a daily basis. Only by becoming aware of the nature of these changes and staying attuned to them can public administrators refrain from being left behind the technological curve.

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank Marc Levin and Sheila McCormick for assistance in research on this essay.

References

American Psychological Association, 1995. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Li, Xia and Nancy B. Crane, 1993. Electronic Style: A Guide to Citing Electronic Information. Westport, CT: Meckler Press.

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, 1994. About the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. (On-line) Available Gopher: pwa.acusd.edu Path: 3. USD Campus-Wide Information System/10. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse/1. About the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse File: About-the-Privacy-Rights-Clearinghouse

Rose, Lance, 1995. Netlaw: Your Rights In the Online World. Berkeley, CA: Osbourne McGraw-Hill.