November 14, 2005 —
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DGRC Assistant Director Valerie Gregg: "The time is ripe." |
The Digital Government Research Center (DGRC), headquartered in
USC’s Information Sciences Institute, will partner on a $1 million grant
from the National Science Foundation aimed at encouraging
international collaboration on digital government issues.
The project will be carried out under the leadership of University
at Albany’s Center for Technology in Government (CTG) “We are excited
to partner with CTG in this challenging endeavor. The time is ripe to
prepare a solid foundation for the next generation of global DG
researchers and the DGRC is committed to making this vision a reality,”
said Valerie Gregg, DGRC Assistant Director for Development, who
co-wrote the grant application and is co-principle investigator on the
project.
The DGRC and CTG will work over a span of four years to create
opportunities and venues for international research discussions and
collaboration.
The project will begin with a six-month reconnaissance study to
identify and summarize the state of international digital government
research, leading to creation of three topical working groups. Each
group will produce a white paper discussing research challenges,
recommend strategies for undertaking this research, and the
accomplishments within its sub-domain; the creation of an international
summer institute on digital government research; and the support of
U.S. participation in international digital government research
conferences.
“Most funded research around the world addresses digital government
challenges within the context of a single country; only a few
investigations have compared results across national boundaries or
tackled problems that are transnational in scope,” said CTG Director
Sharon S. Dawes. “The most damaging result of this situation is that
comparative and transnational issues in digital government, which are
of growing importance in an increasingly networked world, are not
receiving the attention they deserve.”
"Here at DGRC, we have had encouraging success in identifying ways for
governments to become more efficient and more responsive to citizens
through the use of information technology." said DGRC director Yigal
Arens.
"Bigger isn't always better, but for picking new, productive research
directions, it is: I know that broadening the circle of participants
sharing their experience will be good for our existing community, and
good for those that join us."
The results of this project will enable the United States to extend its
skills by systematically studying, understanding, organizing, and
facilitating a global research community in the digital government
domain, the partners hope. The DGRC expects that the connections and collaborative efforts
developed between the United States and international research
institutions will ultimately result in major research advances both in
the fields of technology and policy. These international
collaborative efforts in digital government research will not only
enhance government responsiveness, communications, and international
relations, but also new lines of intellectual inquiry, and sustainable
support for future international digital government research
relationships and projects, Arens believes.
The Digital Government Research Center (DGRC),
http://www.dgrc.org/ is
a joint research center of the
Information Sciences Institute at the
University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering and the Department of Computer
Science at Columbia University,
http://www.cs.columbia.edu .
Current DGRC research focuses on dealing with large dispersed
collections of government data. Government agencies at all levels
collect vast amounts of numerical and textual data. Processing
and integrating information across different sources can be extremely
difficult. DGRC is developing new methods and approaches that
will ultimately make government data more accessible and useful to
policy makers, statisticians, sociologists, teachers, students, and the
public at large.
