Encyclopedia of Digital Government (3 Vols)

Citation

Dorner, D.G. (2007), "Encyclopedia of Digital Government (3 Vols)", Online Information Review, Vol. 31 No. 5, pp. 708-710. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520710832397

This three‐volume “encyclopaedia” is published by Idea Group Publishing, a USA‐based company which claims to specialise “in high‐quality research publications in the fields of information science, technology, and management” (www.idea‐group.com/about/). This reviewer does not consider this encyclopaedia to meet the standard of a high‐quality research publication, largely because of the poor access to the material within its three volumes.

The two Finnish editors, Ari‐Veikko Anttiroiko and Matti Mälkiä, have put together approximately 250 articles on “digital government”, a term which they use synonymously with the term “e‐government”. The coverage is geographically extensive and provides both scholarly and practitioner perspectives on digital government. The editors contend that this approach has made “it possible to paint an authentic picture of the cultural differences in understanding and approaching digital government and in dealing with the current and emerging context‐specific issues”.

In a work spanning 1,646 pages, one would expect an arrangement that would facilitate easy access to the content. However, the quality of access to the content is well below standard, and the material is very difficult to manoeuvre into and through. Usually, the content in an encyclopaedia is arranged in alphabetical order by subject, but this is not the case here. Interestingly, the invitation to submit entries to the encyclopaedia was still online at the time of this review (www.uta.fi/laitokset/ISI/EnDigG/ accessed 19 May 2007). The information on the website shows that the editors did not know what the exact content and structure would be until after the closing date for submissions. This approach to a reference work is not necessarily bad – after all, the area of digital government is still new, and the themes and issues are only just now emerging. In their rush to get their encyclopaedia onto bookstore shelves, the publishers have ruined what could have been a very useful tool. The context of an emerging area does not excuse the almost impenetrable final result.

The articles are arranged alphabetically by title, so for example the entry “Automatic generation of theories of coordination of multi‐agent systems” (p. 117) is followed by “Back‐office integration for online services between organizations” (p. 123), then “Bavarian secondary modern schools” (p. 131) and “Benchmarking electronic democracy” (p. 135). The randomness of this arrangement could be mitigated by some sound information management practices, but unfortunately it is not. At the start of each volume, the users are provided with a table of contents listing the titles in the order they appear in each of the volumes. Vol. 1 includes titles with initial words beginning with A (i.e. “Access to and use of publicly available information”) through D (“Dubai e‐government project”), Vol. 2 with initial words beginning with E through H, and Vol. 3 covers I through W. The ludicrousness of this arrangement is made clear by the fact that almost one quarter of all titles begin with the letter E because of the popularity of the “E‐” prefix – e.g. 20 titles start with the word “E‐government”.

A second table of contents is provided for access using a subject approach. There are 12 major sections with two to seven categories within each – and each article is grouped into one or more of these section/category sets. For example, the Section entitled E‐Government Policy and Regulation includes two categories: E‐Government Strategies and Policies, and Legal Framework; and the Section entitled State E‐Government and Country Profiles has categories for North America and Europe, Asia, Africa and Arab Countries, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

There are also two indexes provided – an Index of Key Terms and a general index. The key terms relate to what appears to be a set of controlled vocabulary terms listed at the end of each article with brief definitions of those terms. However, looking back from the Index of Key Terms to the specific articles, the reader finds that the definitions provided actually vary from article to article, so in fact are not from a controlled vocabulary. And the more general index does not appear to be linked in any way to the Index of Key Terms. So instead of providing a clear set of access points, the indexes just add to the confusion.

Here is an example. An article entitled “E‐Government Act of 2002 in the United States” (p. 476) is in the Legal Framework category of the E‐Government Policy and Regulation section. Surprisingly, the article is not listed in either index under the headings for the United States or E‐government, though many articles are listed under the latter in the Index of Key Terms. At the end of the article itself the term “Electronic Government” appears as one of the key terms, yet no entry could be found for the article under that heading in the Index of Key Terms.

Though each article has been peer reviewed, there is, nonetheless, a variable level of quality among the 250 articles. For example, the previously mentioned “E‐Government Act of 2002 in the United States” is very well written, as one would expect from a submission by Jeffrey W. Seifert and Harold C. Relyea, both accomplished writers on USA information policy. However, the contribution entitled “Informational Literacy” (p. 1083) by David Casacuberta, a Spaniard, is somewhat problematic for several reasons. First, his choice of terminology causes access problems. By using “Informational Literacy” instead of the more familiar “Information Literacy”, the article is placed out of the sequence where English‐speaking users would locate it by title through the alphabetical sequence (and of course, access through the indexes is almost of no value). Second, it is difficult to understand Casacuberta's theoretical approach, which attempts to link information literacy to the digital divide and then to digital government. And third, after taking what appears to be a broad approach to the subject, his perspective suddenly becomes narrow and he focuses on how information literacy has been (and should be) taught to university students, rather than continuing with the broader digital divide perspective on the topic.

While there are no doubt many good articles in this encyclopaedia, the very poor quality of access to the contents far outweighs the cost of purchasing it. For example, if you wish to use this work to research digital government issues related to Canada, the indexes and tables of content would be of very little use to you. In fact, Canada does not appear at all in the index, though I found six articles with Canada in the title simply by browsing. And since you will be unable to tell whether the Encyclopedia of Digital Government has information that you need, you will have very little reason to acquire it.