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Crafting the message: Controlling content on agency Web sites
Government Information Quarterly 24 (2007) 505 – 521
Crafting the message: Controlling content on agency Web sitesB Julianne Mahler ⁎, Priscilla M. Regan Department of Public and International Affairs, George Mason University, MSN 3F4, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA Available online 17 August 2006
Abstract While much research has focused on the new opportunities that government Web sites offer for greater citizen involvement and improved agency efficiency, less attention has been given to agency decisions about what to post on these Web sites. Here we use interviews with content managers in seven federal agencies to investigate the political and institutional influences behind decisions about Web content. We analyze the approval processes for new content and the emerging governance structures for evidence of greater centralization and political control or greater decentralization and autonomy for Web posters. In the end, it appears that institutional factors persist to influence content governance. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction: who controls Web site content? With the advent of e-government and the increased usefulness of government Web sites, scholars, and policymakers have focused on the new opportunities these innovations offer for greater involvement by citizens and improved efficiency in government agencies. Much less attention, however, has been given to the political and institutional influences behind agency decisions about what to put on these Web sites. Here we explore questions about the control of B Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, September 2004. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Mahler), [email protected] (P.M. Regan).
0740-624X/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2006.06.008
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content in these enhanced Web sites, and how decisions about content are being made. Since providing information online is central to all categories of e-government,1 understanding how decisions are made about what to post becomes critically valuable. Three different perspectives on these questions seem plausible and will be examined with information from interviews and agency documents. The first perspective, derived largely from the political communications literature, suggests that we will see centralized control over messages in a Web-based environment. As agency heads and political leaders realize the enormous audiences that can be reached quickly, inexpensively, and continually through the Internet, they will seek to control what is posted on agency Web sites. Several questions arise from this perspective. Has the shift from office based to Web-based communication meant that agencies, particularly agency heads, and directors exercise greater control over the message? Does the Administration, through the White House or political appointees in an agency, exercise greater message control in the new Web-based environment than it did in the older, office-based communication? Have agency Web sites become vehicles for the dissemination of an agency's political message? That is, are the Web sites crafted to communicate the public values, interests, and goals of the agency conveyed through the overt content, tone, and timing of statements, reports, images, and other Web-based information? A second perspective, based on the idea that technologies drive institutional change, suggests that control over messages on the Internet will be decentralized. Because technologies, incentives, and innovative ideas are dispersed throughout an organization, a large number of agency actors will post a wide variety of information on agency intranet and Internet Web sites. The uneven path of Web development in agencies is also thought to lead to fragmented, decentralized control. Questions posed under this perspective include whether Web-based dissemination of agency information has meant more discretion over what to post for career professionals in program offices within agencies? Is there now less centralized control over communications? Are officials more likely to communicate with a wider variety of outside actors with a wider range of information than before the advent of enhanced Web sites? Finally, an institutional perspective would predict a struggle over the control of this valued new organizational resource among actors in different divisions and levels in the bureau. History, organization culture, and professional coalitions will shape how content decisions are made and by whom. Do we see differences among agencies in the arrangements that have emerged for approving Web site content? Are these differences linked to institutional features of the agency? The following sections review current literature on each of these three perspectives. We then present the case study evidence to see which perspective best accounts for Web content decision making in our agencies.
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Typically, categories of e-government include government-to-business, government-to-citizens, governmentto-employees, and government-to-government, as describe in Balutis, Alan P. 2001. “E-Government 2001: Part I. Understanding the challenge and evolving strategies.” The Public Manager (Spring): 33–37.
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2. Web sites as mechanisms of political communication We might expect that agency Web sites with their requirements for technical knowledge and their starkly visible public nature might provoke agency heads to exert top-down control over what is being posted to the world. The public face of an agency on its Web site can be easily and continuously monitored. This contrasts with a paper environment in which information dissemination is more silent and unobserved with greater opportunities for exaggeration and disinformation. In the Web environment, the technical knowledge required to post information on a Web site means that there are gatekeepers who can be recognized while in a paper environment informal reports, draft documents, and responses to congressional requests might be generated and disseminated, unobserved, by many people. Research on the evolution of the Internet offers some support for this expectation. Davis finds that both executive and legislative offices are using the Internet “as a public relations rather than a public participation tool (Davis, 1999).” He notes that “not only are public officials placing on the Net favorable material about themselves, but they are also attempting to restrict access to other bits of information they don't wish the public to have (Davis, 1999).” This conclusion is consistent with a political communication model where government messages serve a political purpose. Malone monitored the USDA Web site from 1999 to 2004 and found an interesting evolution that supports Davis, in part. He found that the 1999 USDA Web site was “plain and simple” serving the needs of librarians and researchers; the 2000 Web site had more news stories featuring the secretary of agriculture or the president and served “as a great public relations tool for the administration”; the 2003 Web site still contained “blatant public relations headlines”; and the 2004 homepage “achieved a better balance between public relations and information dissemination (Malone, 2004).” In research we conducted previously on the congressional use of agency Web sites, some congressional staff offered anecdotal evidence of greater message control, suggestion that the Administration took a direct roll in shaping the message on agency Web sites (Mahler & Regan, 2005). Eschenfelder found, in research at the state level, that respondents generally characterized content development at a “bottom-up” process, but that top level managers did on occasion directly intervene to create or remove content defined as sensitive (Eschenfelder, 2004). More direct political intervention may also occur. Documentation of politically driven control over information on agency Web sites has been found in two policy areas. The first is in the area of science and politics. The minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform issued a report that discussed two instances of the Bush administration's altering of Web sites (U.S. House of Representatives and Committee on Government Reform—Minority Staff, 2003). One involved an analysis on the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Web site concluding that there was no link between abortion and risk of breast cancer. In November 2002 the Bush administration removed this and posted a new fact sheet suggesting that there was evidence on both sides. After members of Congress protested the change and NCI held a meeting of experts, the NCI Web site was changed back to state the conclusion in the original analysis. The second incident occurred on the Web site of the Center
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for Disease Control in October 2002 with the replacing of one fact sheet on condom use with a new one that emphasized condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinence. The State Department's Agency for International Development (USAID) also removed information on the effectiveness of condoms. E-government research typically looks at the impact of enhanced Web sites on citizen participation. This focus leads to the assumption that the critical communication channel in the e-government environment is from the citizen to the government. But if the focus is on the political content of Web sites, then communication from government to citizen becomes the key channel. One cannot assume that citizens are offered a richer information environment in this new means of communication. The choices with which citizens are presented through the Internet are choices presented by the administrative decision makers. This literature leads us to hypothesize that agency elites will attempt to control Web posting and shape the Web site around their agenda.
3. Technological capacity drives content On the other hand, there are several factors that may make it more difficult for agency heads to exert top-down control. We know that many agencies have developed Web sites in a disaggregated fashion, following their traditional stovepipes and programmatic areas (Mahler & Regan, 2002). Those who developed these decentralized Web sites have an interest in maintaining their control and have the technical skills and experience to continue that control. Another factor making to difficult to exert top-down control is that agency Web sites are able to be changed quickly, with little fanfare, and on a 24-hour/7day a week/365 days a year timetable. The imperative to post information promptly is contrary to centralized decision making. Additionally, the amount and detail of information on an agency Web site make it difficult to exercise central control. Thus, a second approach to e-government research focuses on agency processes and is driven by the new operational opportunities and constraints of Internet communication with the public. In this view, agency decisions about providing public information are shaped by the new capacities of professionals throughout the agency to create and post content. Decentralization is inherent in the new informational and communication capacities of Internets and intranets. These new capacities themselves drive change (Weare, 2002). “Business process” models for the use of Web-based communications developed in the most advanced private sector and governmental organizations become standards for agency practice. Much of this research focuses on how agencies can best adopt technology to increase the productivity and efficiency of agency operations. A key lesson from the business world is that as computers have become more decentralized, and information technology has permeated all aspects of operations, their decentralizing effects have been stronger than any centralizing ones. As Nye points out “power over information is more widely shared (Nye, 2002).” The business process research emphasizes the importance of knowledge management and networked environments. In their e-government plans, both the Clinton administration in Executive Order 13011 (July 1996) and the Bush
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administration (Office of Management and Budget, 2003) highlighted the role of the private sector in developing e-government and in serving as a model for the efficiencies to be gained from e-government. Ward and Mitchell suggest that such administrative mandates to adopt private sector methods may be minimizing expected differences between management practices and priorities of the public and private sectors (Ward and Mitchell, 2004). This literature leads us to hypothesize that lower level agency program actors will have more independence in making Web content decisions than they did in the pre-Web site environment.
4. Web sites arise within institutions A third approach takes a more nuanced view of the agency environment as a complex organization. This institutional dynamics approach explores the organizational and political context in which decisions about Web content are made. To some extent, this research builds upon earlier research documenting the effects of computer use by governments. Beginning in the late 1970s as more governments were beginning to use mainframe computers to standardize their operations and decision making, it was hypothesized that computers would decrease the politics of government administration (Laudon, 1974, 1977). Subsequent empirical research found that this did not occur and that politics continued to affect administration and the uses of technology in administration (Danziger, Dutton, Kling, & Kraemer, 1982). It seems reasonable to expect that tensions between political values and technical capacities within organizations continues in the Internet environment as well. An institutional approach to the ongoing Web site development process recognizes that the adoption and use of technologies occur in an organizational setting with existing task definitions, constraints, incentives, rules, personalities, and opportunities (March & Olsen, 1989; Seidman, 1998; Wilson, 1989). As Agre similarly points out, “Institutions do often change as a result of the opportunities that a new technology makes available, but it is only through the workings of the institution that the dynamics of the change can be found (Agre, 2002).” Thus, a careful investigation of decision making within an institution setting is in order. Fountain takes a similar path in her research, recognizing the importance of the institutional arrangements in which Web-based transactions are embedded. Her work investigates the influences on the adoptions of particular technologies and applications, termed enacted technologies. She highlights “the critical role played by socio-structural mechanisms in organizational and institutional arrangements as public managers struggle to makes sense of, design, and use new IT (Fountain, 2001).” Her case studies examine policy adoptions of specific technological innovations, but her approach has implications for our efforts to investigate the political and institutional factors behind decisions about the content of the online, public face of government agencies. This literature leads us to hypothesize that institutional factors, the history of the agency, its program routines, its professional culture and subcultures, and patterns of influence within the agency will directly shape Web content decisions.
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The research investigates several dimensions of agency message-making. How does decision making about the content of agency Web sites proceed within an agency? What offices and actors are involved and how has the approval process for public information changed with the advent of agency Web pages? Can we discern greater centralization in the creation of agencies' public messages from the pre-Internet to post-Internet days? How is the approval process linked to institutional factors such as the history of IT development in the agency or the professional culture? To begin to examine these questions we look particularly at who is involved in the process of approving Web site postings and in the creation of information content. The role of agency public relations offices, director's offices, congressional relations offices, Information Resource Management (IRM) staff, often located with library staff, and IT staff. We seek to identify who are involved in decisions about Web site structure, content, tone, and timing. We will also examine the content approval processes that agencies use and how these developed.
5. Data and method To investigate these questions, we use a comparative case study of seven agencies with varying levels of Web site development and sophistication as judged in West's fourth annual rankings of sites. These ranking are based on the quality of online publications, online databases, audio and video clips, advertisements, fees, privacy and security policies, comment forms, readability level, and presence and number of online services (West, 2003). Although these features are not directly relevant to our interest in political content of agency Web sites, they do provide an overall measure of the usefulness and professionalism of a Web site. Using the West rankings, we selected two agencies rated most highly, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Three agencies were in the mid-range of the rankings, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Federal Aviation Administration in the Department of Transportation (DOT-FAA), and the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA). Finally two agencies rated lower were included, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). On a 100-point scale, the agencies we studied ranked in Table 1.
Table 1 West rankings for the agencies selected Agency
West rating
FCC HUD FDA DOT-FAA EPA EEOC NLRB
73 62 53 51 50 41 38
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The West rankings allow us to compare agencies with well developed Web presence with those just beginning to offer more kinds of information online. This variation may be important to the political communication hypothesis. Agencies that have more elaborate and sophisticated online presences may be more likely to have more orchestrated and controlled messages because much research, including our own (Mahler & Regan, 2002), has shown that typically the leadership within the organization must take an interest in and support that Web site for it to become large and sophisticated. Within the constraints of the West ratings, we also tried to select small and large agencies. Three kinds of evidence about the factors influencing Web site content decisions were collected for each agency. First, a snapshot of each homepage and its first level links was taken on July 23, 2004, to provide the basis for comparison. On each page we look for evidence of a visual message offered by the agency in images presented, evidence of policy advocacy, and information about its public relations message. Second, documentation of procedures, rules for posting decisions, or MOUs were sought in each agency, though as we show, written rules have not developed in all cases. Information about the number of agency officials authorized to post documents on the Web was also collected for each agency giving a rough estimate of the centralization of control of content. Finally, interviews were conducted with selected agency staff including some of the principals responsible for information technology, information management, program content, public relations, or congressional relations in each of our agencies. Our interviews were semi-structured with a template of six questions. Specific questions include the following: who is involved in crafting messages; what are the approval processes before information is placed online as opposed to the approval process for press releases; are the public and congressional staff treated as similar or different attentive audiences. Interviewee responses determined the follow-up questions and the depth of our investigation. We interviewed a total of fourteen agency officials in ten offices. In some large, multidivisional Departments, we interviewed Web content staff in program divisions as well as in upper level public relations staff, sometimes located in the top administrator's offices. Interviews lasted at least a half hour and often extended an hour and a half. Subsequent phone calls and e-mails allowed us to clarify and elaborate on the information gleaned during the interviews.2
6. Evidence from the agency homepage We selected four criteria related to our research questions and compared agency homepages on each criterion. This is presented briefly below as it provides a context for the following discussion of the interview findings (Table 2).
2
In reporting the results of these interviews, we will report on the identity of the agency when the information is a matter of public record, but not when the responses reflect the views and opinions of the respondents themselves on the subject of political control or content.
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Table 2 Characteristics of home pages Agency
West rating
FCC HUD FDA DOT-FAA EPA EEOC NLRB
73 62 53 51 50 41 38
Leadership picture
X X X
Leadership news/links
Length
X
3 1 1 1 2 3 0.5
X X
6.1. Photo of political figure in public relations setting Only three of the seven agencies have a picture of a political nature on their homepages. The Department of Transportation prominently displays a picture of Secretary Mineta on the top right side of the homepage. The Environmental Protection Agency shows two pictures of Administrator Leavitt; one is a in a box on the right upper hand side of the page with links to his biography and speeches, and the other is a picture of him giving a speech in the center of the home page under top stories. The EEOC has a picture of the signing of a mediation agreement under news stories in the lower left side of the home page. The FCC, HUD, FDA, and NLRB have no political pictures. 6.2. Agency leadership Of the seven agencies, three prominently display information about the political appointees and leadership in the agency, two present more discreet information, and two present no obvious information. The FCC on the top of its right sidebar lists the members of the Commission and has links to each. As noted above both the Department of Transportation and the EPA provide links under the picture of their agency heads. Both the FDA and the EEOC are more circumspect in their presentation. The third link on the right sidebar of the FDA homepage is to “FDA Activities,” and the fourth is a link to the Commissioner's Page, featuring a picture of the Commissioner with links to speeches and testimony. The sixth center category on the EEOC homepage is “About the EEOC” and the second link under that is to “The Commission.” The NLRB and HUD provide no obvious link to information about the political leadership of the agency. 6.3. Size of homepage One concern with the user friendliness and accessibility of Web pages is their length. This feature is also relevant to our research as the size of the homepage equals the space that can be used for content. The homepages of three of our agencies, HUD, FDA, and DOT, can be printed on one sheet. The NLRB homepage can be printed on half a sheet. The EPA homepage takes two pages to print. And finally the FCC and EEOC homepages take three pages to print.
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6.4. Current news The homepages of all seven agencies contain a news feature with links to current stories. The length and placement of these varies among the agencies. The FCC centers its “headlines” on the homepage and contains sixteen stories over a fourteen-day period; their headlines are somewhat wordy with links in Word and PDF to press statements and commissioners' statements. HUD “highlights” is similarly featured in the center of the homepage but with seven brief links to stories. FDA News is also in the top center of the home page with five headlines. DOT's News is less obvious and can be found on the left sidebar, listed third in a list of nine. EPA has Top Stories in the center of its homepage and gives a headline and brief summary of three news stories. EEOC has News on the left sidebar with four stories. NLRB features What's New in the center of the homepage with links to three items. The evidence from the Web page snapshots is relevant for the questions raised about political communication, but does not support that hypothesis. Under that hypothesis, we would expect that the most highly rated sites would have the greatest political presence. We do not see this pattern here, and our findings below continue to confirm this.
7. Interview findings on institutions and messages Not surprisingly, the interview findings about views and practices surrounding the control of federal Web sites turned out to be highly variable. While most respondents said that the degree of centralization was essentially unchanged since the emergence of the web sites, some said it was greater and some less. What does come out clearly in the findings, however, is that agencies are struggling to find a way to control the creation of new content on Web sites and trying to prevent Web site posting from becoming (or remaining) a “free for all” as one respondent said. This struggle often pits front-line professionals against top level administrators and puts various key actors in Web creation and updating such as program staff offices, director's office staff, Information Resources Management groups, and IT Departments at odds with each other. Behind this struggle are differences in perspective about how to make the sites useful and accessible for different audiences. These are the stakes respondents see as important to the mission and integrity of their organization. Thus, another major trend was that the challenges agencies face in arriving at content decisions are closely tied to the character of their mission and to emerging ideas about how the agency's mission is advanced through the use of the public Web site. We begin by examining some of the indications of the struggle for control, in the approval process, in the trends regarding centralization, and in the reports of our respondents about conflicts they see within the organizations that are being worked out in governance. Next we consider the actors in these struggles and what they perceive to be the stakes. We explore the relationship of the message to the mission. Finally, we report on the governance forums and policies that are emerging and what they tell us about the evolution of processes for controlling the institutional message in federal agency Web sites.
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7.1. Where are decisions about content made? When we asked more or less directly about political control over the creation of Web site messages, we were told universally that the agency had no message, no party line, beyond serving the customers, citizens, and industry groups from physicians to communications lawyers to other governmental actors. Actors rejected the idea that there was a political message shaped by the agency or, for the most part, by the past or current Administrations. The process of designing the content of Web sites is more complex and subtle than our original hypotheses admitted. In contrast, when we asked actors about the approval process for posting new Web site information, a different picture emerges. In almost all cases top-level agency Web content managers reported that the program offices initiated and controlled the content of the sites and that they had almost complete autonomy over what to post. However, virtually without exception the Web posters or Web masters in subordinate program offices identified an elaborate and careful hierarchical procedure for review and approval of content. For example, in one agency our respondent from the subordinate division reported an multi-stage approval process for all but modifications and updating of already existing pages. A new regulatory rule, for example, would require this treatment. A concept for a new kind of page enters a “product approval process” first at the program level and then finally at the public affairs division of the top administrator of the agency. If controversial, the proposal will be ultimate be reviewed by administration appointees in the agency or even by White House officials. If approved, a draft of the new product goes through a similar review before funds for contracts to create the page are released. This process generally takes between one and two months. Yet at the top of the agency, in an office of public affairs, the Web poster we talked with characterized the process as decentralized. He emphasized that the vast majority of Web site information goes up automatically as updates to existing Web sites with no approval procedure. In one program division of another agency, the Web poster we interviewed said that the program staff developed 99 percent of the material with little but formatting reviews from his office. He also noted that, rarely but significantly, politically sensitive statements had been shaped or in some cases imposed on the agency to post directly from administration sources without the usual participation of the technical experts in the agency. The respondent described a case in which the office was required to put up a new policy guidance almost immediately. Interestingly, it was the compromised integrity of the document posting process and the substitution of political decisions for those based in agency expertise, not the content of the imposed message itself that the poster was most unhappy about. But the respondent also noted that normally the public affairs staff in the director's office is closely involved only in large policy issues and does not alter the content that program offices submit. However, in another part of the same agency, our respondents described the content approval process as rigid, requiring approval by the following: subject matter experts, general council, the agency public affairs director, and in some cases the FOI office depending on the seriousness of the issue, since the agency makes sometimes controversial regulatory decisions. All these clearance points were seen to be sources of conflict and delay in getting material online. When we asked if the reviews and delays affected content, we received a very sensible
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answer: why would the reviews be required if the reviewers did not want to affect the postings, either by preventing or deterring unwanted content? Yet, again, the highest level Web site poster in the agency characterized the process of deciding what material would be posted as decentralized because all the content is created in the program offices, but also noting there was occasionally tension between his office and the subdivisions of the agency. The difference in perceptions helps account for the absence of a clear pattern of findings about centralization. In another regulatory agency, the Web posters are located in an information resource management sector of library services that serves as a central clearing house for all information to go up on the Web site. Even the decisions of top agency policy makers were not posted directly from the agency director's office. Yet this did not mean that the library staff were able to make decisions independently. When library staffed decided they wanted to promote citizen education about agency programs and to provide information about how to initiate certain agency procedures, they were blocked. In this instance, the struggle was between the Web posters in the library and the legal staff who want to control the creation of content. Not surprisingly, the legal staff ultimately exerted more control. This left the Web site, in the words of the respondent, with only static information about past agency decisions. In other agencies we found less formalized procedures. While program officers from scientists to Commissioners were the originators of the content, the content would be vetted minimally for format and readability but most often to ensure a coherent unified look and policy voice. Typically, this would occur in the Web content manager's office of a program division or, for major policy issues or “sensitive content,” in the public affairs office of the toplevel agency director. Our respondent in one agency described this arrangement as a “centrally decentralized” process. Content creators and managers in program offices now work under largely informal agreements worked out over time about what must be cleared and what content can be added to existing pages without new clearance. In one case, a content management subcommittee representing a larger group of high level agency experts and political appointees makes the day-to-day decisions. In another regulatory agency, few limits had been placed on posting until recently. Program staff with servers in that agency had practiced a kind of “wild west” approach to Web site creation. In another agency too steps are underway to rein-in “renegade” sites. Formal policies are emerging in a few of these agencies as noted below. One implication of these findings is that perceptions of content control depend on the respondents' place in the organization. Only the most technologically sophisticated experts in the subunits perceived that they had a fair amount of autonomy in posting content. Across the agencies studied formal or informal procedures are emerging for controlling content. Further findings about emerging governance structures for content are reported below. 7.2. How centralized is decision making about content? As noted above, no clear characterization of Web content decisions as more centralized or decentralized in contrast to the pre-Web site era emerged from the interviews. One indirect measure of locus of content decisions might be the number of people who have authority to
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post to the Web site. In some cases, as noted above, the posting rights are held only at the top of the organization, and sometimes at mid or lower level program professionals. Those who post may be obliged, formally or informally, to obtain clearance for what they post, however. Nevertheless, the number who can post provides some indication of how tightly held posting rights are. Policies regarding posting are, of course, a key issue in emerging Web governance discussions. The number of Web site content posters was reported in Table 3. Interestingly, the agencies in the mid-range of development show the largest number of posters, and we will see they are also the ones in the forefront of efforts to develop a formal governance process for posting rights. It may be that they are the ones in which controversies over posting are most acute. These mid-range agencies are also among the largest agencies among those we studied. 7.3. Is there a political message? Our interest in whether agency Web sites carry a political massage was sparked in part by our earlier research on congressional users of federal Web sites, some of whom thought that the sites reflected administration influence and more centralized control of information than had been the case prior to Web sites. This suspicion was largely not confirmed. Most respondents, as just noted, did not think that information was more centrally controlled. Few respondents saw a political motive in the occasional administration Web site requirements. Recent requirements that the Web sites within an agency look alike with a uniform banner, so that users know they are still at the agency site, for example, were seen as a benign intervention. Most did note that there were places on the home page or on pages linked from the home page for political remarks by the Secretary or administrator. Most also said that the public had little interest in these speeches and remarks. Two respondents noted explicitly that the public expects unbiased information and does not want political content on government Web sites. Several respondents did observe that any Administration influence over the Web site contents came about in the traditional way, through administration influence over the work and policies of the agency. One respondent went beyond this, however, and cited instances, noted earlier, in which the Administration had gone around agency posting procedures to require the site to represent the policy statement as through it were based on technical considerations, when in fact it was a political decision. Yet none of this demonstrates that the Web sites do not have messages with political implications. The Web site messages respondents described most often communicated agency Table 3 Number of personnel authorized to post content Agency:
FCC
HUD
FDA
FAA
EPA
EEOC
NLRB
No. who may post Agency size % of personnel who may post
74 2,058 3.6%
48 10,660 0.5%
50–60 9000 0.6%
300+ 47,329 0.6%
400+ 18,126 2.2%
4 2,669 0.1%
4 1,932 0.2%
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views about mission of the organization. Pride in the mission and satisfaction with representing the capacities and resources the agency offers the public came though in virtually all interviews. Most also were actively engaged in soliciting feedback about the usability of the Web sites with click-throughs to the Web masters or with focus groups. One of the few criticisms of the OMB Web rules we encountered was from a respondent who was frustrated in her efforts to collect information about users and their needs. The Web content manager in one subdivision has made great efforts to improve the educational uses of the agency Web site and extend its usability. She has tried to get programs to stretch beyond traditional regulatory information to be creative in providing consumer education sites on topics of immediate interest, such as terrorism. Emerging risk management approaches to regulation were also seen to justify the emphasis on consumer education. In another center the Web master is justly proud of the speed with which new emergency postings can be made and of the outreach of the site offerings in over twenty languages. In another agency, Web content managers are struggling to improve the usability of the site for citizens and other governmental actors. At both the agency and program level, we heard about efforts to build a Web site that integrated information across the stove-piped program offices, trying to do on the Web site what many have tried without success to do with restructuring the organization. The challenge the new Web policies and institutions face is to rebuild the site around categories in which citizens and other political actors may be more interested. Information is also said to be encased in jargon or in data sets that are not easily accessible. The object is to rebuild the site moving toward “One agency, One voice,” balancing the concerns of content managers and information technology staff. Currently the plan is “out for comment” within the agency. These results suggest that despite the suspicions of some congressional staff, agency, and administration elites generally are not controlling the Web site message. For the most part, the creators of content are technical and administrative/policy/regulatory experts, not political appointees. As one respondent put it, “Content wags the dog.” The message is not political in an overt, partisan sense, yet it does represent values held dear to staff—about the mission, citizens' rights, and the education of citizens in the capacities of the agencies. Mission, the strategic definition of the work of the agency (Wilson, 1989), can be highly controversial however, and can lead to conflict over Web site content.
8. Governance arrangements to resolve conflicts over control A number of respondents described tension or conflict in their agency over the control of the Web site content. Most often, the conflicts were between program officials in the subdivisions of the agency and public affairs offices at the agency director's level. In one regulatory agency, there was a struggle over where responsibility for authorizing new content would reside: in the information technology division or in public affairs in the director's office. A Memo Of Understanding was created to divide responsibility between them, assigning one the authority for content and the other the authority for the “look and feel” of the site. In another agency tension between public affairs in the top-level administrator's office and subunits was resolved
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with the creation of a central advisory committee to oversee content decisions. In two cases the main conflict appears to have been between program offices and legal counsel. In two other cases, we heard how the IT division gave up or did not seek to control Web content decisions only to realize later what a significant organizational resource such control was. In each case efforts by IT staff to wrest control from content managers were unsuccessful. But in another agency IT dominates. The CIO is the agency's representative to the federal Web Content Managers Forum and does not communicate new developments from that group to the content managers in agency's subdivision. Finally, we found one case in which the shift away from IT control has been gradual, so that now half of the content managers are in public affairs. In most agencies IT handles the server technology and in some cases the intranet, but not the Internet content. These conflicts and the typical uncertainties about who should authorize important postings have led some of the agencies in our study to create formal procedures for making posting decisions. In others, as noted, the program actors seem to have greater independence. This freedom is said to create inconsistent policy and legal positions. Some agencies have confronted these problems directly by creating governance structures. Three have developed procedures or institutions to govern content decisions, while three more are at varying stages of trying to create such structures. In EPA a governance committee with formal authority to reorganize the Web site has been created. The entire Web Working Group consists of about 500 staff and contractors, but a new formal governance structure is emerging with two representatives each from public affairs, the environmental information office, the Web steering committee, program office representatives and regional representatives. The group is drafting Web site design principles and a management structure to improve the integration of environmental information across the presently segmented Web site. Program participants say it will enhance the usefulness of the site for citizens and will help ensure a consistent message across the site. In the FCC, each subdivision has its own Web master. An Internet policy group emerged in 1996, one year after the emergence of the Web site itself, to share information and help make the site more user friendly. Originally, the group was more focused on technical than design issues. Despite its name the group is advisory, not policy making. In 2001 the work was focused on providing a common look and format and greater usability for the agency's audience of technical users. The group continues in an advisory capacity. At the FDA, the Internet Work Group is directed from the public affairs staff in the Commissioner's office. It has created a clear set of procedures for creating Web pages that meet the design standards of the FDA and are well coordinated with other FDA materials. The policy guidelines are explicit about not imposing onerous clearances on projects. They state “We do not want to place unnecessary constraints on the design and management of the Web sites operated by FDA.” The guidelines themselves describe standards for formatting and coordinating Web information. They describe the clearance process through the Office of Public Affairs, and they offer guidance on how to prepare program clearance forms. In three other agencies, governance efforts are just beginning. A small agency tried four or five years ago to set up a task force to create a more useable site that would educate citizens in how to use the services the agency provides, but lack of support from top-level management
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blocked the effort. Our respondent characterized the Web site currently as static. Another small agency has a content management committee composed of top program management and presidential appointees. A larger regulatory agency had a Web council of content managers with advisory status. They pushed for the recent hiring of a new content manager and helped establish a policy making group. This group includes officially designated Web liaisons from the subdivisions of the agency and an executive committee with greater authority to make Web policy. In other offices, procedures and clearances are managed but no power-sharing arrangements appear have emerged so far.
9. Discussion and conclusions We began by investigating three views of the effects of the emergence of elaborate federal Web sites on the control of information. Our findings suggest that neither centralization nor decentralization entirely describe what is happening. Overall, we did not find that Web content is likely to be created by agency elites, except for rare but significant instances. Overwhelmingly, content is produced in program offices but approved for posting by high level agency officials in offices of public affairs or legal council. There is no clear pattern indicating greater overall centralization of content decisions. The standards for upper-level reviews of Web content generally appear to be content-neural, but the deterrence effect of the reviews cannot be discounted. We cannot say definitively, given the limitations of the study, whether the voices of dissent or innovation in bureaus are more likely to be stifled online than they were in print. What does emerge from this foray into the procedures for agency Web posting is the importance of institutional factors. Web sites are viewed by their makers as the public face of large, complex government organizations and the conduit for most of what the public knows or can learn about their purposes and capacities. The Web site represents the visible record of agency activities from regulatory rule-making to real-time records of program implementation that other governmental and political actors can observe. The image and reputation of the agency, its interpretation of its strategic task definition, and the resources it directs are all represented online. This is the message that Web content managers are concerned about. The stakes are high, so it should not be surprising that there are struggles over control over what might initially seem to be a “merely” technical problems. Nor should it be surprising that institutional factors, including the organizational hierarchy and the power structure that evolved over time among IT actors, would shape the actions of those concerned with Web content. The sense of mission, the values, and the routines that emerge from the history and culture of the agency, all influence these Web content decisions and structures. We see the effects of these institutional factors in our findings. The positions the respondents occupy in their organizations clearly shape their views of the degree of autonomy Web content creators have in the process. Their place in the organizational hierarchy affects their perspective on what is the appropriate process. We see also the clear imprint of agency history as content management shifts from IT staff, and offices of public affairs or IRM solidifies its hold over content management. The legacy of print press releases is strong and
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has been generalized to the new Web medium as well in most cases. We were often told that the procedures for clearances reflect the traditions and imperatives of press and public affairs more than the new views of the business process model of decentralized communication. The most ambitious and innovative proposals for Web content are coming from program staff who have become Web savvy. They see the educational possibilities of the Web sites and their outreach potential. They do not see the Web sites only as an extension of the fax blasts of new regulations, testimony, and facts sheets of the past. These are the real stakes behind the control of Web content. Agency Web sites offer a major new resource for carrying out the agency mission, but the governance structures we see emerging in agencies have the capacity to push these new uses forward or to constrain them. Governance structures in the sample we looked at appear somewhat more likely to impose a constraining than a liberating or innovation-enhancing clearance process. These governance structures within agencies and across the federal government, through efforts such as the emerging OMB guidelines, cannot help but have a major influence on the evolution of the agency Web sites and their uses.
References Agre, Philip E. (2002). Real-time politics: The Internet and the political process. The Information Society, 18: 311–331, p. 315. Danziger, James N., Dutton, William H., Kling, Rob, & Kraemer, Kenneth L. (1982). Computers and Politics: High Technology in American Local Governments. New York: Columbia University Press. Davis, Richard (1999). The Web of politics: The Internet's Impact on the American Political System. New York: Oxford University Press, p.147. Eschenfelder, Kristin (2004). Behind the Web site: An inside look at the production of web-based textual government information. Government Information Quarterly, 21, 337−358. Fountain, Jane E. (2001). Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, p. 89. Laudon, Kenneth L. (1974). Computers and Bureaucratic Reform: The Political Functions of Urban Information Systems. New York: Wiley. Laudon, Kenneth L. (1977). Communications Technology and Democratic Participation. New York: Praeger. Mahler, Julianne, & Regan, Priscilla M. (2002). Learning to govern online: Federal agency internet use. American Review of Public Administration, 32(3), 326−349. Mahler, Julianne, & Regan, Priscilla M. (2005). Agency internets and changing dynamics of congressional oversight. International Journal of Public Administration, 28(7–8), 553−565. Malone, Chuck (2004). Agency Web pages—An information resource and a public relations tool: The USDA Example. Government Information Quarterly, 21(3), 383−390. March, James G., & Olsen, Johan (1989). Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics. New York: Free Press. Nye, Joseph S. Jr. (2002). “Information Technology and Democratic Governance” in Elaine Ciulla Kamarck and Joseph S. Nye Jr. (eds), Governance.com: Democracy in the Information Age. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, pp. 1–16. Office of Management and Budget (2003). Implementing the President's Management Agenda for e-government: E-government strategy. April. Available online at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/2003egov_strat.pdf Seidman, Harold (1998). Politics, Position and Power: The Dynamics of Federal Organization. New York: Oxford University Press.
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U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform—Minority Staff, Special Investigations Division. (2003). Politics and Science in the Bush Administration. Prepared for Rep. Henry A. Waxman. August [updated November 13, 2003]. Available online at: www.reform.house.gov/min Mark A., Ward, & Mitchell, Scott (2004). A comparison of the strategic priorities of public and private sector information resource management executives. Government Information Quarterly, 21(3), 284−304. Weare, Christopher (2002). The Internet and democracy: The causal links between technology and politics. Government Information Quarterly, 25(5), 659−691. West, Darrell M. (2003). State and Federal E-Government in the United States, 2003. (Sept.), p. 4. Available online at: www.InsidePolitics.org Wilson, James Q. (1989). Bureaucracy: What government agencies do and why they do it. New York: Basic Books.
Julianne Mahler teaches organization theory in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She directs the graduate programs in political science and currently publishes on the evolution and use of agency Web sites and on problems in organizational learning. Priscilla M. Regan teaches public policy and American Government in the Department of Public Affairs at George Mason. Her primary area of research concerns privacy issues related to information and communication technologies, as well as the evolution of e-government.
Crafting the message: Controlling content on agency Web sitesB Julianne Mahler ⁎, Priscilla M. Regan Department of Public and International Affairs, George Mason University, MSN 3F4, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA Available online 17 August 2006
Abstract While much research has focused on the new opportunities that government Web sites offer for greater citizen involvement and improved agency efficiency, less attention has been given to agency decisions about what to post on these Web sites. Here we use interviews with content managers in seven federal agencies to investigate the political and institutional influences behind decisions about Web content. We analyze the approval processes for new content and the emerging governance structures for evidence of greater centralization and political control or greater decentralization and autonomy for Web posters. In the end, it appears that institutional factors persist to influence content governance. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction: who controls Web site content? With the advent of e-government and the increased usefulness of government Web sites, scholars, and policymakers have focused on the new opportunities these innovations offer for greater involvement by citizens and improved efficiency in government agencies. Much less attention, however, has been given to the political and institutional influences behind agency decisions about what to put on these Web sites. Here we explore questions about the control of B Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, September 2004. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Mahler), [email protected] (P.M. Regan).
0740-624X/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2006.06.008
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content in these enhanced Web sites, and how decisions about content are being made. Since providing information online is central to all categories of e-government,1 understanding how decisions are made about what to post becomes critically valuable. Three different perspectives on these questions seem plausible and will be examined with information from interviews and agency documents. The first perspective, derived largely from the political communications literature, suggests that we will see centralized control over messages in a Web-based environment. As agency heads and political leaders realize the enormous audiences that can be reached quickly, inexpensively, and continually through the Internet, they will seek to control what is posted on agency Web sites. Several questions arise from this perspective. Has the shift from office based to Web-based communication meant that agencies, particularly agency heads, and directors exercise greater control over the message? Does the Administration, through the White House or political appointees in an agency, exercise greater message control in the new Web-based environment than it did in the older, office-based communication? Have agency Web sites become vehicles for the dissemination of an agency's political message? That is, are the Web sites crafted to communicate the public values, interests, and goals of the agency conveyed through the overt content, tone, and timing of statements, reports, images, and other Web-based information? A second perspective, based on the idea that technologies drive institutional change, suggests that control over messages on the Internet will be decentralized. Because technologies, incentives, and innovative ideas are dispersed throughout an organization, a large number of agency actors will post a wide variety of information on agency intranet and Internet Web sites. The uneven path of Web development in agencies is also thought to lead to fragmented, decentralized control. Questions posed under this perspective include whether Web-based dissemination of agency information has meant more discretion over what to post for career professionals in program offices within agencies? Is there now less centralized control over communications? Are officials more likely to communicate with a wider variety of outside actors with a wider range of information than before the advent of enhanced Web sites? Finally, an institutional perspective would predict a struggle over the control of this valued new organizational resource among actors in different divisions and levels in the bureau. History, organization culture, and professional coalitions will shape how content decisions are made and by whom. Do we see differences among agencies in the arrangements that have emerged for approving Web site content? Are these differences linked to institutional features of the agency? The following sections review current literature on each of these three perspectives. We then present the case study evidence to see which perspective best accounts for Web content decision making in our agencies.
1
Typically, categories of e-government include government-to-business, government-to-citizens, governmentto-employees, and government-to-government, as describe in Balutis, Alan P. 2001. “E-Government 2001: Part I. Understanding the challenge and evolving strategies.” The Public Manager (Spring): 33–37.
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2. Web sites as mechanisms of political communication We might expect that agency Web sites with their requirements for technical knowledge and their starkly visible public nature might provoke agency heads to exert top-down control over what is being posted to the world. The public face of an agency on its Web site can be easily and continuously monitored. This contrasts with a paper environment in which information dissemination is more silent and unobserved with greater opportunities for exaggeration and disinformation. In the Web environment, the technical knowledge required to post information on a Web site means that there are gatekeepers who can be recognized while in a paper environment informal reports, draft documents, and responses to congressional requests might be generated and disseminated, unobserved, by many people. Research on the evolution of the Internet offers some support for this expectation. Davis finds that both executive and legislative offices are using the Internet “as a public relations rather than a public participation tool (Davis, 1999).” He notes that “not only are public officials placing on the Net favorable material about themselves, but they are also attempting to restrict access to other bits of information they don't wish the public to have (Davis, 1999).” This conclusion is consistent with a political communication model where government messages serve a political purpose. Malone monitored the USDA Web site from 1999 to 2004 and found an interesting evolution that supports Davis, in part. He found that the 1999 USDA Web site was “plain and simple” serving the needs of librarians and researchers; the 2000 Web site had more news stories featuring the secretary of agriculture or the president and served “as a great public relations tool for the administration”; the 2003 Web site still contained “blatant public relations headlines”; and the 2004 homepage “achieved a better balance between public relations and information dissemination (Malone, 2004).” In research we conducted previously on the congressional use of agency Web sites, some congressional staff offered anecdotal evidence of greater message control, suggestion that the Administration took a direct roll in shaping the message on agency Web sites (Mahler & Regan, 2005). Eschenfelder found, in research at the state level, that respondents generally characterized content development at a “bottom-up” process, but that top level managers did on occasion directly intervene to create or remove content defined as sensitive (Eschenfelder, 2004). More direct political intervention may also occur. Documentation of politically driven control over information on agency Web sites has been found in two policy areas. The first is in the area of science and politics. The minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform issued a report that discussed two instances of the Bush administration's altering of Web sites (U.S. House of Representatives and Committee on Government Reform—Minority Staff, 2003). One involved an analysis on the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Web site concluding that there was no link between abortion and risk of breast cancer. In November 2002 the Bush administration removed this and posted a new fact sheet suggesting that there was evidence on both sides. After members of Congress protested the change and NCI held a meeting of experts, the NCI Web site was changed back to state the conclusion in the original analysis. The second incident occurred on the Web site of the Center
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for Disease Control in October 2002 with the replacing of one fact sheet on condom use with a new one that emphasized condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinence. The State Department's Agency for International Development (USAID) also removed information on the effectiveness of condoms. E-government research typically looks at the impact of enhanced Web sites on citizen participation. This focus leads to the assumption that the critical communication channel in the e-government environment is from the citizen to the government. But if the focus is on the political content of Web sites, then communication from government to citizen becomes the key channel. One cannot assume that citizens are offered a richer information environment in this new means of communication. The choices with which citizens are presented through the Internet are choices presented by the administrative decision makers. This literature leads us to hypothesize that agency elites will attempt to control Web posting and shape the Web site around their agenda.
3. Technological capacity drives content On the other hand, there are several factors that may make it more difficult for agency heads to exert top-down control. We know that many agencies have developed Web sites in a disaggregated fashion, following their traditional stovepipes and programmatic areas (Mahler & Regan, 2002). Those who developed these decentralized Web sites have an interest in maintaining their control and have the technical skills and experience to continue that control. Another factor making to difficult to exert top-down control is that agency Web sites are able to be changed quickly, with little fanfare, and on a 24-hour/7day a week/365 days a year timetable. The imperative to post information promptly is contrary to centralized decision making. Additionally, the amount and detail of information on an agency Web site make it difficult to exercise central control. Thus, a second approach to e-government research focuses on agency processes and is driven by the new operational opportunities and constraints of Internet communication with the public. In this view, agency decisions about providing public information are shaped by the new capacities of professionals throughout the agency to create and post content. Decentralization is inherent in the new informational and communication capacities of Internets and intranets. These new capacities themselves drive change (Weare, 2002). “Business process” models for the use of Web-based communications developed in the most advanced private sector and governmental organizations become standards for agency practice. Much of this research focuses on how agencies can best adopt technology to increase the productivity and efficiency of agency operations. A key lesson from the business world is that as computers have become more decentralized, and information technology has permeated all aspects of operations, their decentralizing effects have been stronger than any centralizing ones. As Nye points out “power over information is more widely shared (Nye, 2002).” The business process research emphasizes the importance of knowledge management and networked environments. In their e-government plans, both the Clinton administration in Executive Order 13011 (July 1996) and the Bush
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administration (Office of Management and Budget, 2003) highlighted the role of the private sector in developing e-government and in serving as a model for the efficiencies to be gained from e-government. Ward and Mitchell suggest that such administrative mandates to adopt private sector methods may be minimizing expected differences between management practices and priorities of the public and private sectors (Ward and Mitchell, 2004). This literature leads us to hypothesize that lower level agency program actors will have more independence in making Web content decisions than they did in the pre-Web site environment.
4. Web sites arise within institutions A third approach takes a more nuanced view of the agency environment as a complex organization. This institutional dynamics approach explores the organizational and political context in which decisions about Web content are made. To some extent, this research builds upon earlier research documenting the effects of computer use by governments. Beginning in the late 1970s as more governments were beginning to use mainframe computers to standardize their operations and decision making, it was hypothesized that computers would decrease the politics of government administration (Laudon, 1974, 1977). Subsequent empirical research found that this did not occur and that politics continued to affect administration and the uses of technology in administration (Danziger, Dutton, Kling, & Kraemer, 1982). It seems reasonable to expect that tensions between political values and technical capacities within organizations continues in the Internet environment as well. An institutional approach to the ongoing Web site development process recognizes that the adoption and use of technologies occur in an organizational setting with existing task definitions, constraints, incentives, rules, personalities, and opportunities (March & Olsen, 1989; Seidman, 1998; Wilson, 1989). As Agre similarly points out, “Institutions do often change as a result of the opportunities that a new technology makes available, but it is only through the workings of the institution that the dynamics of the change can be found (Agre, 2002).” Thus, a careful investigation of decision making within an institution setting is in order. Fountain takes a similar path in her research, recognizing the importance of the institutional arrangements in which Web-based transactions are embedded. Her work investigates the influences on the adoptions of particular technologies and applications, termed enacted technologies. She highlights “the critical role played by socio-structural mechanisms in organizational and institutional arrangements as public managers struggle to makes sense of, design, and use new IT (Fountain, 2001).” Her case studies examine policy adoptions of specific technological innovations, but her approach has implications for our efforts to investigate the political and institutional factors behind decisions about the content of the online, public face of government agencies. This literature leads us to hypothesize that institutional factors, the history of the agency, its program routines, its professional culture and subcultures, and patterns of influence within the agency will directly shape Web content decisions.
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The research investigates several dimensions of agency message-making. How does decision making about the content of agency Web sites proceed within an agency? What offices and actors are involved and how has the approval process for public information changed with the advent of agency Web pages? Can we discern greater centralization in the creation of agencies' public messages from the pre-Internet to post-Internet days? How is the approval process linked to institutional factors such as the history of IT development in the agency or the professional culture? To begin to examine these questions we look particularly at who is involved in the process of approving Web site postings and in the creation of information content. The role of agency public relations offices, director's offices, congressional relations offices, Information Resource Management (IRM) staff, often located with library staff, and IT staff. We seek to identify who are involved in decisions about Web site structure, content, tone, and timing. We will also examine the content approval processes that agencies use and how these developed.
5. Data and method To investigate these questions, we use a comparative case study of seven agencies with varying levels of Web site development and sophistication as judged in West's fourth annual rankings of sites. These ranking are based on the quality of online publications, online databases, audio and video clips, advertisements, fees, privacy and security policies, comment forms, readability level, and presence and number of online services (West, 2003). Although these features are not directly relevant to our interest in political content of agency Web sites, they do provide an overall measure of the usefulness and professionalism of a Web site. Using the West rankings, we selected two agencies rated most highly, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Three agencies were in the mid-range of the rankings, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Federal Aviation Administration in the Department of Transportation (DOT-FAA), and the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA). Finally two agencies rated lower were included, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). On a 100-point scale, the agencies we studied ranked in Table 1.
Table 1 West rankings for the agencies selected Agency
West rating
FCC HUD FDA DOT-FAA EPA EEOC NLRB
73 62 53 51 50 41 38
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The West rankings allow us to compare agencies with well developed Web presence with those just beginning to offer more kinds of information online. This variation may be important to the political communication hypothesis. Agencies that have more elaborate and sophisticated online presences may be more likely to have more orchestrated and controlled messages because much research, including our own (Mahler & Regan, 2002), has shown that typically the leadership within the organization must take an interest in and support that Web site for it to become large and sophisticated. Within the constraints of the West ratings, we also tried to select small and large agencies. Three kinds of evidence about the factors influencing Web site content decisions were collected for each agency. First, a snapshot of each homepage and its first level links was taken on July 23, 2004, to provide the basis for comparison. On each page we look for evidence of a visual message offered by the agency in images presented, evidence of policy advocacy, and information about its public relations message. Second, documentation of procedures, rules for posting decisions, or MOUs were sought in each agency, though as we show, written rules have not developed in all cases. Information about the number of agency officials authorized to post documents on the Web was also collected for each agency giving a rough estimate of the centralization of control of content. Finally, interviews were conducted with selected agency staff including some of the principals responsible for information technology, information management, program content, public relations, or congressional relations in each of our agencies. Our interviews were semi-structured with a template of six questions. Specific questions include the following: who is involved in crafting messages; what are the approval processes before information is placed online as opposed to the approval process for press releases; are the public and congressional staff treated as similar or different attentive audiences. Interviewee responses determined the follow-up questions and the depth of our investigation. We interviewed a total of fourteen agency officials in ten offices. In some large, multidivisional Departments, we interviewed Web content staff in program divisions as well as in upper level public relations staff, sometimes located in the top administrator's offices. Interviews lasted at least a half hour and often extended an hour and a half. Subsequent phone calls and e-mails allowed us to clarify and elaborate on the information gleaned during the interviews.2
6. Evidence from the agency homepage We selected four criteria related to our research questions and compared agency homepages on each criterion. This is presented briefly below as it provides a context for the following discussion of the interview findings (Table 2).
2
In reporting the results of these interviews, we will report on the identity of the agency when the information is a matter of public record, but not when the responses reflect the views and opinions of the respondents themselves on the subject of political control or content.
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Table 2 Characteristics of home pages Agency
West rating
FCC HUD FDA DOT-FAA EPA EEOC NLRB
73 62 53 51 50 41 38
Leadership picture
X X X
Leadership news/links
Length
X
3 1 1 1 2 3 0.5
X X
6.1. Photo of political figure in public relations setting Only three of the seven agencies have a picture of a political nature on their homepages. The Department of Transportation prominently displays a picture of Secretary Mineta on the top right side of the homepage. The Environmental Protection Agency shows two pictures of Administrator Leavitt; one is a in a box on the right upper hand side of the page with links to his biography and speeches, and the other is a picture of him giving a speech in the center of the home page under top stories. The EEOC has a picture of the signing of a mediation agreement under news stories in the lower left side of the home page. The FCC, HUD, FDA, and NLRB have no political pictures. 6.2. Agency leadership Of the seven agencies, three prominently display information about the political appointees and leadership in the agency, two present more discreet information, and two present no obvious information. The FCC on the top of its right sidebar lists the members of the Commission and has links to each. As noted above both the Department of Transportation and the EPA provide links under the picture of their agency heads. Both the FDA and the EEOC are more circumspect in their presentation. The third link on the right sidebar of the FDA homepage is to “FDA Activities,” and the fourth is a link to the Commissioner's Page, featuring a picture of the Commissioner with links to speeches and testimony. The sixth center category on the EEOC homepage is “About the EEOC” and the second link under that is to “The Commission.” The NLRB and HUD provide no obvious link to information about the political leadership of the agency. 6.3. Size of homepage One concern with the user friendliness and accessibility of Web pages is their length. This feature is also relevant to our research as the size of the homepage equals the space that can be used for content. The homepages of three of our agencies, HUD, FDA, and DOT, can be printed on one sheet. The NLRB homepage can be printed on half a sheet. The EPA homepage takes two pages to print. And finally the FCC and EEOC homepages take three pages to print.
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6.4. Current news The homepages of all seven agencies contain a news feature with links to current stories. The length and placement of these varies among the agencies. The FCC centers its “headlines” on the homepage and contains sixteen stories over a fourteen-day period; their headlines are somewhat wordy with links in Word and PDF to press statements and commissioners' statements. HUD “highlights” is similarly featured in the center of the homepage but with seven brief links to stories. FDA News is also in the top center of the home page with five headlines. DOT's News is less obvious and can be found on the left sidebar, listed third in a list of nine. EPA has Top Stories in the center of its homepage and gives a headline and brief summary of three news stories. EEOC has News on the left sidebar with four stories. NLRB features What's New in the center of the homepage with links to three items. The evidence from the Web page snapshots is relevant for the questions raised about political communication, but does not support that hypothesis. Under that hypothesis, we would expect that the most highly rated sites would have the greatest political presence. We do not see this pattern here, and our findings below continue to confirm this.
7. Interview findings on institutions and messages Not surprisingly, the interview findings about views and practices surrounding the control of federal Web sites turned out to be highly variable. While most respondents said that the degree of centralization was essentially unchanged since the emergence of the web sites, some said it was greater and some less. What does come out clearly in the findings, however, is that agencies are struggling to find a way to control the creation of new content on Web sites and trying to prevent Web site posting from becoming (or remaining) a “free for all” as one respondent said. This struggle often pits front-line professionals against top level administrators and puts various key actors in Web creation and updating such as program staff offices, director's office staff, Information Resources Management groups, and IT Departments at odds with each other. Behind this struggle are differences in perspective about how to make the sites useful and accessible for different audiences. These are the stakes respondents see as important to the mission and integrity of their organization. Thus, another major trend was that the challenges agencies face in arriving at content decisions are closely tied to the character of their mission and to emerging ideas about how the agency's mission is advanced through the use of the public Web site. We begin by examining some of the indications of the struggle for control, in the approval process, in the trends regarding centralization, and in the reports of our respondents about conflicts they see within the organizations that are being worked out in governance. Next we consider the actors in these struggles and what they perceive to be the stakes. We explore the relationship of the message to the mission. Finally, we report on the governance forums and policies that are emerging and what they tell us about the evolution of processes for controlling the institutional message in federal agency Web sites.
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7.1. Where are decisions about content made? When we asked more or less directly about political control over the creation of Web site messages, we were told universally that the agency had no message, no party line, beyond serving the customers, citizens, and industry groups from physicians to communications lawyers to other governmental actors. Actors rejected the idea that there was a political message shaped by the agency or, for the most part, by the past or current Administrations. The process of designing the content of Web sites is more complex and subtle than our original hypotheses admitted. In contrast, when we asked actors about the approval process for posting new Web site information, a different picture emerges. In almost all cases top-level agency Web content managers reported that the program offices initiated and controlled the content of the sites and that they had almost complete autonomy over what to post. However, virtually without exception the Web posters or Web masters in subordinate program offices identified an elaborate and careful hierarchical procedure for review and approval of content. For example, in one agency our respondent from the subordinate division reported an multi-stage approval process for all but modifications and updating of already existing pages. A new regulatory rule, for example, would require this treatment. A concept for a new kind of page enters a “product approval process” first at the program level and then finally at the public affairs division of the top administrator of the agency. If controversial, the proposal will be ultimate be reviewed by administration appointees in the agency or even by White House officials. If approved, a draft of the new product goes through a similar review before funds for contracts to create the page are released. This process generally takes between one and two months. Yet at the top of the agency, in an office of public affairs, the Web poster we talked with characterized the process as decentralized. He emphasized that the vast majority of Web site information goes up automatically as updates to existing Web sites with no approval procedure. In one program division of another agency, the Web poster we interviewed said that the program staff developed 99 percent of the material with little but formatting reviews from his office. He also noted that, rarely but significantly, politically sensitive statements had been shaped or in some cases imposed on the agency to post directly from administration sources without the usual participation of the technical experts in the agency. The respondent described a case in which the office was required to put up a new policy guidance almost immediately. Interestingly, it was the compromised integrity of the document posting process and the substitution of political decisions for those based in agency expertise, not the content of the imposed message itself that the poster was most unhappy about. But the respondent also noted that normally the public affairs staff in the director's office is closely involved only in large policy issues and does not alter the content that program offices submit. However, in another part of the same agency, our respondents described the content approval process as rigid, requiring approval by the following: subject matter experts, general council, the agency public affairs director, and in some cases the FOI office depending on the seriousness of the issue, since the agency makes sometimes controversial regulatory decisions. All these clearance points were seen to be sources of conflict and delay in getting material online. When we asked if the reviews and delays affected content, we received a very sensible
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answer: why would the reviews be required if the reviewers did not want to affect the postings, either by preventing or deterring unwanted content? Yet, again, the highest level Web site poster in the agency characterized the process of deciding what material would be posted as decentralized because all the content is created in the program offices, but also noting there was occasionally tension between his office and the subdivisions of the agency. The difference in perceptions helps account for the absence of a clear pattern of findings about centralization. In another regulatory agency, the Web posters are located in an information resource management sector of library services that serves as a central clearing house for all information to go up on the Web site. Even the decisions of top agency policy makers were not posted directly from the agency director's office. Yet this did not mean that the library staff were able to make decisions independently. When library staffed decided they wanted to promote citizen education about agency programs and to provide information about how to initiate certain agency procedures, they were blocked. In this instance, the struggle was between the Web posters in the library and the legal staff who want to control the creation of content. Not surprisingly, the legal staff ultimately exerted more control. This left the Web site, in the words of the respondent, with only static information about past agency decisions. In other agencies we found less formalized procedures. While program officers from scientists to Commissioners were the originators of the content, the content would be vetted minimally for format and readability but most often to ensure a coherent unified look and policy voice. Typically, this would occur in the Web content manager's office of a program division or, for major policy issues or “sensitive content,” in the public affairs office of the toplevel agency director. Our respondent in one agency described this arrangement as a “centrally decentralized” process. Content creators and managers in program offices now work under largely informal agreements worked out over time about what must be cleared and what content can be added to existing pages without new clearance. In one case, a content management subcommittee representing a larger group of high level agency experts and political appointees makes the day-to-day decisions. In another regulatory agency, few limits had been placed on posting until recently. Program staff with servers in that agency had practiced a kind of “wild west” approach to Web site creation. In another agency too steps are underway to rein-in “renegade” sites. Formal policies are emerging in a few of these agencies as noted below. One implication of these findings is that perceptions of content control depend on the respondents' place in the organization. Only the most technologically sophisticated experts in the subunits perceived that they had a fair amount of autonomy in posting content. Across the agencies studied formal or informal procedures are emerging for controlling content. Further findings about emerging governance structures for content are reported below. 7.2. How centralized is decision making about content? As noted above, no clear characterization of Web content decisions as more centralized or decentralized in contrast to the pre-Web site era emerged from the interviews. One indirect measure of locus of content decisions might be the number of people who have authority to
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post to the Web site. In some cases, as noted above, the posting rights are held only at the top of the organization, and sometimes at mid or lower level program professionals. Those who post may be obliged, formally or informally, to obtain clearance for what they post, however. Nevertheless, the number who can post provides some indication of how tightly held posting rights are. Policies regarding posting are, of course, a key issue in emerging Web governance discussions. The number of Web site content posters was reported in Table 3. Interestingly, the agencies in the mid-range of development show the largest number of posters, and we will see they are also the ones in the forefront of efforts to develop a formal governance process for posting rights. It may be that they are the ones in which controversies over posting are most acute. These mid-range agencies are also among the largest agencies among those we studied. 7.3. Is there a political message? Our interest in whether agency Web sites carry a political massage was sparked in part by our earlier research on congressional users of federal Web sites, some of whom thought that the sites reflected administration influence and more centralized control of information than had been the case prior to Web sites. This suspicion was largely not confirmed. Most respondents, as just noted, did not think that information was more centrally controlled. Few respondents saw a political motive in the occasional administration Web site requirements. Recent requirements that the Web sites within an agency look alike with a uniform banner, so that users know they are still at the agency site, for example, were seen as a benign intervention. Most did note that there were places on the home page or on pages linked from the home page for political remarks by the Secretary or administrator. Most also said that the public had little interest in these speeches and remarks. Two respondents noted explicitly that the public expects unbiased information and does not want political content on government Web sites. Several respondents did observe that any Administration influence over the Web site contents came about in the traditional way, through administration influence over the work and policies of the agency. One respondent went beyond this, however, and cited instances, noted earlier, in which the Administration had gone around agency posting procedures to require the site to represent the policy statement as through it were based on technical considerations, when in fact it was a political decision. Yet none of this demonstrates that the Web sites do not have messages with political implications. The Web site messages respondents described most often communicated agency Table 3 Number of personnel authorized to post content Agency:
FCC
HUD
FDA
FAA
EPA
EEOC
NLRB
No. who may post Agency size % of personnel who may post
74 2,058 3.6%
48 10,660 0.5%
50–60 9000 0.6%
300+ 47,329 0.6%
400+ 18,126 2.2%
4 2,669 0.1%
4 1,932 0.2%
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views about mission of the organization. Pride in the mission and satisfaction with representing the capacities and resources the agency offers the public came though in virtually all interviews. Most also were actively engaged in soliciting feedback about the usability of the Web sites with click-throughs to the Web masters or with focus groups. One of the few criticisms of the OMB Web rules we encountered was from a respondent who was frustrated in her efforts to collect information about users and their needs. The Web content manager in one subdivision has made great efforts to improve the educational uses of the agency Web site and extend its usability. She has tried to get programs to stretch beyond traditional regulatory information to be creative in providing consumer education sites on topics of immediate interest, such as terrorism. Emerging risk management approaches to regulation were also seen to justify the emphasis on consumer education. In another center the Web master is justly proud of the speed with which new emergency postings can be made and of the outreach of the site offerings in over twenty languages. In another agency, Web content managers are struggling to improve the usability of the site for citizens and other governmental actors. At both the agency and program level, we heard about efforts to build a Web site that integrated information across the stove-piped program offices, trying to do on the Web site what many have tried without success to do with restructuring the organization. The challenge the new Web policies and institutions face is to rebuild the site around categories in which citizens and other political actors may be more interested. Information is also said to be encased in jargon or in data sets that are not easily accessible. The object is to rebuild the site moving toward “One agency, One voice,” balancing the concerns of content managers and information technology staff. Currently the plan is “out for comment” within the agency. These results suggest that despite the suspicions of some congressional staff, agency, and administration elites generally are not controlling the Web site message. For the most part, the creators of content are technical and administrative/policy/regulatory experts, not political appointees. As one respondent put it, “Content wags the dog.” The message is not political in an overt, partisan sense, yet it does represent values held dear to staff—about the mission, citizens' rights, and the education of citizens in the capacities of the agencies. Mission, the strategic definition of the work of the agency (Wilson, 1989), can be highly controversial however, and can lead to conflict over Web site content.
8. Governance arrangements to resolve conflicts over control A number of respondents described tension or conflict in their agency over the control of the Web site content. Most often, the conflicts were between program officials in the subdivisions of the agency and public affairs offices at the agency director's level. In one regulatory agency, there was a struggle over where responsibility for authorizing new content would reside: in the information technology division or in public affairs in the director's office. A Memo Of Understanding was created to divide responsibility between them, assigning one the authority for content and the other the authority for the “look and feel” of the site. In another agency tension between public affairs in the top-level administrator's office and subunits was resolved
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with the creation of a central advisory committee to oversee content decisions. In two cases the main conflict appears to have been between program offices and legal counsel. In two other cases, we heard how the IT division gave up or did not seek to control Web content decisions only to realize later what a significant organizational resource such control was. In each case efforts by IT staff to wrest control from content managers were unsuccessful. But in another agency IT dominates. The CIO is the agency's representative to the federal Web Content Managers Forum and does not communicate new developments from that group to the content managers in agency's subdivision. Finally, we found one case in which the shift away from IT control has been gradual, so that now half of the content managers are in public affairs. In most agencies IT handles the server technology and in some cases the intranet, but not the Internet content. These conflicts and the typical uncertainties about who should authorize important postings have led some of the agencies in our study to create formal procedures for making posting decisions. In others, as noted, the program actors seem to have greater independence. This freedom is said to create inconsistent policy and legal positions. Some agencies have confronted these problems directly by creating governance structures. Three have developed procedures or institutions to govern content decisions, while three more are at varying stages of trying to create such structures. In EPA a governance committee with formal authority to reorganize the Web site has been created. The entire Web Working Group consists of about 500 staff and contractors, but a new formal governance structure is emerging with two representatives each from public affairs, the environmental information office, the Web steering committee, program office representatives and regional representatives. The group is drafting Web site design principles and a management structure to improve the integration of environmental information across the presently segmented Web site. Program participants say it will enhance the usefulness of the site for citizens and will help ensure a consistent message across the site. In the FCC, each subdivision has its own Web master. An Internet policy group emerged in 1996, one year after the emergence of the Web site itself, to share information and help make the site more user friendly. Originally, the group was more focused on technical than design issues. Despite its name the group is advisory, not policy making. In 2001 the work was focused on providing a common look and format and greater usability for the agency's audience of technical users. The group continues in an advisory capacity. At the FDA, the Internet Work Group is directed from the public affairs staff in the Commissioner's office. It has created a clear set of procedures for creating Web pages that meet the design standards of the FDA and are well coordinated with other FDA materials. The policy guidelines are explicit about not imposing onerous clearances on projects. They state “We do not want to place unnecessary constraints on the design and management of the Web sites operated by FDA.” The guidelines themselves describe standards for formatting and coordinating Web information. They describe the clearance process through the Office of Public Affairs, and they offer guidance on how to prepare program clearance forms. In three other agencies, governance efforts are just beginning. A small agency tried four or five years ago to set up a task force to create a more useable site that would educate citizens in how to use the services the agency provides, but lack of support from top-level management
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blocked the effort. Our respondent characterized the Web site currently as static. Another small agency has a content management committee composed of top program management and presidential appointees. A larger regulatory agency had a Web council of content managers with advisory status. They pushed for the recent hiring of a new content manager and helped establish a policy making group. This group includes officially designated Web liaisons from the subdivisions of the agency and an executive committee with greater authority to make Web policy. In other offices, procedures and clearances are managed but no power-sharing arrangements appear have emerged so far.
9. Discussion and conclusions We began by investigating three views of the effects of the emergence of elaborate federal Web sites on the control of information. Our findings suggest that neither centralization nor decentralization entirely describe what is happening. Overall, we did not find that Web content is likely to be created by agency elites, except for rare but significant instances. Overwhelmingly, content is produced in program offices but approved for posting by high level agency officials in offices of public affairs or legal council. There is no clear pattern indicating greater overall centralization of content decisions. The standards for upper-level reviews of Web content generally appear to be content-neural, but the deterrence effect of the reviews cannot be discounted. We cannot say definitively, given the limitations of the study, whether the voices of dissent or innovation in bureaus are more likely to be stifled online than they were in print. What does emerge from this foray into the procedures for agency Web posting is the importance of institutional factors. Web sites are viewed by their makers as the public face of large, complex government organizations and the conduit for most of what the public knows or can learn about their purposes and capacities. The Web site represents the visible record of agency activities from regulatory rule-making to real-time records of program implementation that other governmental and political actors can observe. The image and reputation of the agency, its interpretation of its strategic task definition, and the resources it directs are all represented online. This is the message that Web content managers are concerned about. The stakes are high, so it should not be surprising that there are struggles over control over what might initially seem to be a “merely” technical problems. Nor should it be surprising that institutional factors, including the organizational hierarchy and the power structure that evolved over time among IT actors, would shape the actions of those concerned with Web content. The sense of mission, the values, and the routines that emerge from the history and culture of the agency, all influence these Web content decisions and structures. We see the effects of these institutional factors in our findings. The positions the respondents occupy in their organizations clearly shape their views of the degree of autonomy Web content creators have in the process. Their place in the organizational hierarchy affects their perspective on what is the appropriate process. We see also the clear imprint of agency history as content management shifts from IT staff, and offices of public affairs or IRM solidifies its hold over content management. The legacy of print press releases is strong and
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has been generalized to the new Web medium as well in most cases. We were often told that the procedures for clearances reflect the traditions and imperatives of press and public affairs more than the new views of the business process model of decentralized communication. The most ambitious and innovative proposals for Web content are coming from program staff who have become Web savvy. They see the educational possibilities of the Web sites and their outreach potential. They do not see the Web sites only as an extension of the fax blasts of new regulations, testimony, and facts sheets of the past. These are the real stakes behind the control of Web content. Agency Web sites offer a major new resource for carrying out the agency mission, but the governance structures we see emerging in agencies have the capacity to push these new uses forward or to constrain them. Governance structures in the sample we looked at appear somewhat more likely to impose a constraining than a liberating or innovation-enhancing clearance process. These governance structures within agencies and across the federal government, through efforts such as the emerging OMB guidelines, cannot help but have a major influence on the evolution of the agency Web sites and their uses.
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Julianne Mahler teaches organization theory in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She directs the graduate programs in political science and currently publishes on the evolution and use of agency Web sites and on problems in organizational learning. Priscilla M. Regan teaches public policy and American Government in the Department of Public Affairs at George Mason. Her primary area of research concerns privacy issues related to information and communication technologies, as well as the evolution of e-government.