This article reviews the history of executive budgeting in the United States a century after President William Howard Taft's Economy and Efficiency Commission proposed an executive budget. This history, the authors argue, does not suggest that giving more budget power to the president will improve budget outcomes. Instead, what is needed is more cooperation between the branches of government an…
The U.S. federal budgeting system faces severe challenges in coming years. Deficits are being recorded at levels and with regularity not seen in prior periods. This article suggests that such problems reflect the uncomfortable mix of logics informing budgetary and political institutions—that is, the rules of the game. Logics make it appropriate to expect that government be limited in its tax de…
William Howard Taft and Frederick A. Cleveland’s vision of executive budgeting clashes with the unique status of the U.S. Congress among the world’s legislatures, and its proponents may exaggerate the potential for presidents to act as fiscal guardians. This article advocates more congressional budgeting by reinstituting effective fiscal rules and strengthening the role of the budget committees…
The administration of President Barack Obama, like those of his immediate predecessors, is focused on trying to improve the quality of, and use of, performance data. The federal government has been pursuing performance-informed budget reforms for more than 50 years. Most recently, the Bush administration reforms included the President’s Management Agenda and the Program Assessment Rating Tool (…
The authors examine the track record of applying performance-based budgeting (PBB) across three time periods within a sample of U.S. state governments: (1) throughout the 1990s, (2) in the early 2000s, and (3) during the Great Recession. State-level PBB is analyzed according to four elements: (1) the development of performance measures, (2) its applicability to budgeting and management processe…
Despite academic findings that performance information seldom is used in appropriations decisions, many professional organizations and governments continue to press for integrating performance information into local public management, planning, and budgeting processes. Is it possible to reconcile such inconsistencies? Looking beyond the executive–legislative relationship and departmental approp…
There is a growing recognition in the field of e-government that improving the quality and impact of research requires taking into account their complex contexts and drawing on more interdisciplinary and collaborative research. Limited attention so far has been directed toward the conduct of such research, particularly in contract-based research arrangements for developing e-government policy. …
This case study reports an innovative e-government experiment by a local government in Seoul, South Korea—Gangnam-gu. A new local political leadership in Gangnam made strategic use of e-government applications to exert greater political control over the local civil service bureaucracy. The authors find that e-government applications possess political properties that can be applied effectively b…
Despite significant growth in public participation GIS (PPGIS) literature since the 1990s, little engagement by e-government scholars is evident in the extensive scholarly PPGIS debates. To fill this void, recent trends in PPGIS adoption by local governments are analyzed. Three waves of GIS are identified: desktop GIS, web GIS, and the Geospatial Web 2.0 platform. Such technological advancement…
This study explores the effects of information technology (IT) in terms of longitudinal changes in organizational structures at the central government level. Interestingly, although IT has increased the ratio of middle managers to subordinates, the number of middle managers has not changed radically and, in some cases, has steadily increased, while the proportion of lower-level employees has de…
E-government uses information and communication technology to provide citizens with information about public services. Less pervasive, e-democracy offers greater electronic community access to political processes and policy choices. Few studies have examined these twin applications separately, although they are widely discussed in the literature as distinct. The authors, Chung-pin Lee of Tamkan…
As government agencies, private sector corporations, the military, and even retail shoppers shift their activities to the Internet, cybersecurity becomes increasingly important. Past presidential administrations recognized that cybersecurity necessitates a comprehensive national policy to protect electronically transmitted and stored information from intrusion. But so far, development of a cohe…
Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are falling far short of what a consensus of scientists argues is necessary to avoid potentially catastrophic increases in the mean global temperature. Increasingly, attention is devoted to understanding the vulnerability and adaptability of social and ecological systems to climate change in particular areas of the world. In the Western United States a…
Objective: To examine the effectiveness of interventions for incarcerated women. Method: The researchers use a two-model system: the risk-reduction model for studies analyzing interventions to reduce recidivism rates, and the enhancement model for studies that target psychological and physical well-being. Results: Incarcerated women who participate in substance abuse interventions appear less l…
Objectives: The Internet has created a new communication tool, particularly for young people whose use of electronic communication is exploding worldwide. While there are many benefits that result from electronic-based communication, the Internet is concurrently a potential site for abuse and victimization. Methods: This paper systematically reviews the effectiveness of cyber abuse intervention…
Objective: To examine the effects of psychosocial cognitive rehabilitation on employment outcomes in a randomized controlled trial for individuals with early course schizophrenia. Method: Early course schizophrenia outpatients (N = 58) were randomly assigned to cognitive enhancement therapy (CET) or an enriched supportive therapy (EST) control and treated for 2 years. Comprehensive data on cogn…
Objective: To preliminarily evaluate telephone-delivered motivational enhancement therapy (MET) in motivating unadjudicated and nontreatment seeking intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators, who also use substances, to self-refer into treatment. Method: 124 adult men were recruited via a multimedia marketing campaign and were randomly assigned to the intervention (MET) or comparison group f…
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to develop a realist evaluation paradigm in social work evidence-based practice. Method: Wraparound (at Gateway-Longview Inc., New York) used a reliable outcome measure and an electronic database to systematically collect and analyze data on the interventions, the client demographics and circumstances, and the outcomes. Results: Research designs (e.g., …
Substance abuse counselors have shown limited success in adopting evidence-based practices (EBPs). The purpose of this paper is to identify the barriers and facilitators of adopting an EBP called motivational enhancement therapy (MET). One hundred thirty-six predominantly female (60%) African American (68%) addiction counselors representing over 40 agencies completed surveys before and after pa…
This study utilized a replicated one-group pretest-posttest design with 3 month follow-up to evaluate the impact of a one-day continuing education training on the evidence-based practice (EBP) process with community practitioners (N = 69). Outcome measures assessed the level of workshop participants’ familiarity with the EBP process, their attitudes toward the EBP process, their perceived feasi…