FC: Can technology expose miscreant government officials?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

Subject: Could Technology have caught Gov. Davis?
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 09:40:26 -0700
From: "Sonia Arrison" <SArrison () pacificresearch org>
To: <declan () well com>

Declan,

Your Politech list might be interested in this piece on the California 
Governor's messy Oracle scandal and how technology might help to catch 
these types of improper actions by politicians in the future.

Best,
Sonia

http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&CID=1051-053002A

Making Gray Davis Accountable
By Sonia Arrison
California's Governor Gray Davis is in hot water over his acceptance of 
$25,000 from Oracle Corporation following the state's no-bid $95 million 
dollar e-government deal with the company. And while the governor probably 
wishes he had never heard of e-government, Americans want more of it in the 
form of e-accountability.

E-government -- using technology to make government more efficient -- has 
received a lot of lip service over the past couple of years. Homeland 
security director Tom Ridge says he's "convinced e-government will change 
society" and Senator Joseph Lieberman is known to wax poetic about 
e-government's "transformative potential."

Given these comments, one might be excused for thinking that the "dot-gov 
revolution" -- the next American Revolution as some 
<http://www.netcaucus.org/books/egov2001/pdf/Bluecove.pdf> have called it 
-- will be some sort of magic event that will usher in a new era of 
responsible government. But as the California government's Oracle debacle 
clearly shows, giving a bunch of overpriced computer systems to 
uninterested government bureaucrats does not guarantee increased efficiency 
or responsibility.


[...]




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