How political mechanism influences Digital Government-comparative case study of United States and China

Digital Government (DG) has become a hot topic in the field of the governmental administration. In China, various kinds of DG projects mushroomed all over the country. In addition, financial expenditure put in this field was estimated at no less than 5 billion dollars annually. Because USA is birthplace of ICT and Digital Government, many Chinese scholars and officers took on USA as the model of China. Some criticized the digital government in China by using the case of USA as a criterion. Others suggested that China should transplant some experiences of USA directly. However, the experience from USA does not work well in the practice of China. For example, CIO in government, which was an idea initiated in USA, has not found its seat in Chinese Governments till now. The author of this paper believes that the reasons for such a transfer to fail are great differences between these two countries in the field of political mechanism. Differences existing in the political system and administration are the fundamental reasons resulting in various patterns of DG. For example, in decentralized countries, Digital Government systems are usually established by local governments at different levels. These systems are usually small and have no interactive links between each other. However, in the countries with centralization of administrative power, DG projects are usually established as integrated systems within a country or a province, with relatively large scale and interactive links more conveniently accessible for governments at different levels, although their application is still far from the ideal in the actual operation. This article reports the results of research on the influence of the political systems and administrations over DG on the basis of United States of America and China, and puts forward a hypothesis how the political mechanism influences DG. This research was supported by the Education Ministry of China, under the project 07JZD0019. Copyright 2008 ACM.EI