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Editor Login


Convener in chief:


David Lazer
(Methodology, Networked Governance)

Editors:


Stanley Wasserman
(Current Trends, Methodology, Social Networks)
Guy Stuart
(Economic Sociology, Finance)
Allan Friedman
(Simulations)
Nathan Eagle
(Technology, Social Computing, Powerlaws, Current Trends)
Ben Waber
(Technology, Social Computing) Ines Mergel
(Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Current Trends)
Maria Binz-Scharf
(Qualitative Methodology, Knowledge Sharing, eGovernment)
Alexander Schellong
(Admin, eGovernment, Citizen Relationship Management)

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« Finding talent for government and public administration - The strength of weak ties and Social Software | Main | Automatically Sensing Social Networks »

30 April 2007

eGooglement - How google is trying to improve the accesibility of government websites

Today Google announced partnerships with the states of Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia to make it easier to search for hard-to-find public information on state government websites. With millions of data bases scattered throughout the government landscape, Google is of course interested in tapping into that market. It is already offering a special search engine for US government information. Google also provided Ireland with its search technology. Governments on the other hand realized that many citizens already prefer finding government information by using private sector search engines (due to better search results) instead of the ones developed for government portals. Google's government collaborations are probably more about using their technology like "Coop" or "Search Appliance" rather than the data but the press release did not elaborate further on that issue. Google retains personally identifiable information which is a big issue for privacy advocates. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google once said that, "We are moving to a Google that knows more about you". Google, therefore, refused sharing this data with governments in the past. If Google just supplies the technology and data is stored on government servers Google should be safe from conflicts of interest. However, in other arrangements (i.e. outsourcing) it might be more difficult to draw the line in terms of data ownership and access.

In any case here is an overview on how to find government information.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at April 30, 2007 11:15 AM