Digital Government: Information Technology serving the Public Good [1]

Spring, 2006, The Evergreen State College

Lectures: Tuesdays 4-5:30, Place LH5

Seminars:  Thursdays 1-3 or Wednesdays, 10-11:30

Judy Cushing (SOS), Alan Coppola and Richard Weiss (DtoI)

 

Government at all levels is a major collector and provider of data and user of information technologies, and often finds itself testing the limits of information technology and of the appropriate use of that technology.  More than 200 National Science Foundation research grants to date support interdisciplinary collaborations that contribute to government strategic planning for information services while providing interesting and unique new research problems and data sets for the academic research community.  Studying these projects, and issues that face government information providers, provides both a cross-section of innovative research in information technology and a study of the use of information and technology in government organizations. This lecture series (open to Evergreen students as a 2- or 4-credit course, and to the public as free lectures) will examine a cross section of applied information and technology research, and help participants better understand the broader societal questions that must be addressed by those who build and use government information technology.  The sponsoring programs are Student Originated Software (SOS) and Data to Information.[2]

Week 1.   April 4.  No lecture. Students enrolling in 2- or 4-unit option meet the faculty in the assigned lecture hall.  SOS (Wednesday) Seminar:  Unlocking the Clubhouse.

Week 2.  April 11.  Daniel Headrick, Professor of Social Science and History, Roosevelt University. Has the Alphabetical Order Served its Purpose? 

Week 3.  April 18. Theresa Pardo, Center for Technology in Government, SUNY Albany. Modeling the social and technical processes of inter-organizational information integration.

Week 4.  April 25.  Lois Delcambre, Professor of Computer Science Portland State University. Using Semantic Components to Facilitate Access to Government Documents.

Week 5.  May 2 (Panel) Gary Robinson (DIS), Larisa Benson (GMAP), Tracy Guerin (DIS), Washington State Dept. of Information Services and Special Assistant for Government Management Accountability and Performance (GMAP).  Interoperability of Emergency Communication devices and GMAP

Week 6.  May 9.  Alan Borning Professor of Computer Science University of Washington. UrbanSim http://www.urbansim.org/

Week 7.  May 15 (extra lecture, 3:00-4:30, Place TBA) David Jefferson, Center for Applied Scientific Computing, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,  e-voting.

Week 7.  May 16 Arthur Keller, Open Voting Consortium and University of California, Santa Cruz, Open Voting: Design and Implementation of a Prototype System.

Week 8.  May 23  Toby Cremer Shulruff, Technology Safety Specialist, National Network to End Domestic Violence, sex offender management.

Week 9  May 30 Frank Hardisty,  Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina, and Evergreen Alumnus, Making geo-spatial government data widely available.

Week 10 June 5   No Lecture.

 

For additional readings see:  http://scidb.evergreen.edu/DigitalGovernment,

Week 1 (SOS Program): Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher.  Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing

Week 2: Daniel R. Headrick.  When Information Came of Age: 

Weeks3-9 Companion readings as recommended by each speaker.

Related Links: http://digitalgovernment.org/about/, http://www.dgrc.org/dgo2006/



[1]This series is supported by the PLATO Royalty Lecture Fund, est.~1985, with royalties from Computer Assisted Instruction Software developed for the PLATO system, under contract between Evergreen and Control Data Corp. by faculty John Cushing (aka John Aikin) and his Evergreen students.

 

[2]Two-unit (lecture only) and four-unit (lecture + seminar) course credit options are open for Evergreen students. Requirements for the 2-unit option are to attend every lecture, and write a reflection of each lecture.  For the 4-unit option, students must attend the weekly lecture and seminar, complete the required reading, and write either a weekly reflection on the reading and lecture, or a 5-7 page paper (with staged deliverables) on a topic relevant to the series.