A group of local governments and the tech giant, Google, have partnered up in creating the National 311 day aimed at promoting the awareness of the units of administration regarding the use of 311 to cut down on the emergency calls made to the already existent 911. The governments working with google on the same are Santa Clara, Los Angeles, San Jose, Las Vegas, and Oakland counties. The National 311 Day is set to be added to the national calendar of the US and to be observed for the first time in March 2020. The day is meant to create the awareness of the number 311, created by the Federal Communications Commission in 1997, and how to use it appropriately. The author further reports that 311 has been in use in over 200 cities across the US and has achieved its primary goal of reducing the traffic of calls made regarding emergencies. Santa Clara and San Jose counties performed audits in 2019 that revealed that the police response times to emergencies were in dire need of improvement and hence concluded that 311 might be an essential tool towards the reduction of the volume of calls made to the 911 dispatchers. San Jose's 311 project commenced in October 2019 and received support and funding from google to automate the calls. It was reported that the service had earlier been available to AT&T and Sprint customers. The san Jose reported that plans were underway to provide the service to the Verizon and T-Mobile subscribers as well. The article also reports that the 311 calls in the city were being channeled to the police department. San Jose migrated the 311-call system to a city customer care department created to reduce the pressure exerted on the police and the 911 dispatchers. E-governance has been a quintessential part of the understanding of how public administration and IT have interacted to enhance the relationship between the government and the public. An example of the relationship between the government and its people is the already existent 911 emergency reporting and response system in the US that has significantly reduced the level of crime in the country. In an attempt for the various local governments across the US to improve the emergency response system, the 311 system is currently in use across more than 200 cities. The article, therefore, explores more on the public management system that the book has highlighted as being beneficial to the public administration practices. The use of IT in the public administration in the various parts of the world has built a foundation for the achievement of organizational change in management regarding e-governance. The support in the form of funds and technology that the county governments mentioned above have received from Google is an example of the betterment of public service delivery as a concept that has been discussed in the book. The use of websites and mobile phone applications have been reported to significantly increase service delivery as more and more citizens embrace the transformational force of e-governance at different capacities. The automation of the 311-call system is yet another example of the state-of-the-art practices that the US local governments have applied to create more meaning for the citizens as the rapid growth in the development and use of technology takes over the world by storm. Thus, the development of the 311-emergency response service is an appropriate example of e-governance, which is a result of incremental use of IT in the public administration practice. Cybersecurity concerns have doubled in the twenty-first century with the increase in the use of technology by governments and other organizations. Hackers of Russian origin are reported to have recently launched a ransomware attack in Durham, North Carolina, USA. The hackers targeted the county and city governments of Durham and are therefore reported to have caused a stall in the various departments that are served by computers and other networks. As one of the state agencies investigating the attack, North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations has reported that the suspected Russian hackers used the infamous Ryuk virus, which targeted the emails and other operations in the affected governments. The Ryuk malware was spread through the malicious attachments that were sent through phishing emails, a move that is reported to threaten Durham both as a city and a county.
The author reports that the ransomware attack is one of the several attacks that have been launched in the year 2020 against the city and county governments, which reveals that the trend of cyber insecurity is further developing and requires creative solutions to solve. In the recent incident involving Durham, the government officials reported that the virus spread internally as the workers opened the emails and forwarded others. The attack by Russian hackers seems to have been well planned to weaken the city and county governments of the US in a bid to attack the country in the developing cyberwar. However, Kerry Goode, the CIO of the city, explained how the pre-existing cyber-contingency arrangement in the city of Durham was able to handle the ransomware attack by harnessing the power of stakeholders involved in the tech industry in the county. Greg Marrow, the CIO of the county, also reported a similar response strategy at the state level, which ensured that the malware did not affect the government as the hackers may have expected. The issue of cybersecurity has dominated the news headlines in the various parts of the world, with the various governments wallowing in the challenge of having poor disaster response management in the wake of a cyberattack. According to the book, the increased use of IT in the modern public institutions has been reported to be the main issue contributing to the spread of malware attacks. The governments have severally been advised to implement solutions such as the implementation of antiviruses to counteract the effects of the ransomware attacks, as well as eliminating them in entirety. However, the lack of understanding of the differences between the public and private sectors' needs for cybersecurity has often posed a risk to the security of data across the various countries in the world. That has undermined the efforts implemented to join in the fight against cyber insecurity in the world. As the e-government and e-commerce systems grow around the world, concerns have risen among the governments globally regarding cyber insecurity. That has led to the implementation of strategies like the collection of private data from the citizens, which have invaded their privacy but still proven to enhance cybersecurity. The article discussed above attributed the mitigation of the Durham ransomware attack issue to the presence of an existing contingency plan for cyberattacks. Modern governments can implement such a strategy to defeat cyber insecurity as a rising wave in the IT-filled e-governance systems. The other strategies involve setting standards to enhance security testing as well as educating both individuals and businesses on the presence of cyber insecurity, how it affects them, and the solutions which can be used to address the issue. SeamlessDocs has been reported to add payment capabilities on its website recently. SeamlessDocs enables the government to provide digital and automated forms used in license applications and the freedom of information requests. The move by SeamlessDocs to provide the payment options to its customers has been approached from an ecommerce angle as well as e-procurement of the services that the citizens need from the government. The payment feature that has been available in beta mode has been made available to the public and is set to enhance the convenience of the government in the collection of money from the clients requiring its services through digital channels. SeamlessDocs Founder and CEO issued a statement that emphasized the importance of the government agencies in the digitization of the services provided to the citizens in a bid to keep up with the expectations of the clients who increasingly want to carry out their activities online. SeamlessDocs has provided access to several payment platforms to its software, including PayPal, WePay, and Stripe, which are popular among American citizens. More payment platforms have been set to be added to the list at a later date to ensure that the citizens conveniently access the services of the government with the payments done online. SeamlessDocs is reportedly working on improving the payment section by adding a feature that enables the government customers to customize how much they are willing to pay for a particular service delivered by the various government agencies. Governments are increasingly changing their procurement and ecommerce services in response to the influence of IT in public administration. Information technology in the twenty-first century is responsible for the transition of both procurement and commerce from conventional forms to more modern waves of the same. Increasingly, the clients to the various government agencies prefer accessing the services required, such as legal forms online, filling them online, and then submitting them without having to go through the hassle of handling the forms physically. The payments for such services have also undeniably changed with an influx in the number of clients requiring digital payment for the services that they receive. The adoption of the e-procurement models has been heavily reliant on the human and technology factors, which have indicated that there is a rise in the number of people seeking convenience in the e-procurement models of the government as well as the advent of technology that can support the e-procurement activities. The growth of the e-commerce sector concerning the modern governments has also been accelerated by the rise in the technology and the use of IT, as well as the acceptance by the citizens. The CEO and founder of SeamlessDocs have implied that the government has been involved in seeking digital payments for its services offered to the citizens upon their demand. Therefore, the article connects to the book in that the human factors and their acceptance are the building blocks towards the adoption of IT in the world. Various governments, however, have been skeptical of implementing the ecommerce systems more owing to the rise in the wave of cybercrime that has affected the various organizations across the globe. Nonetheless, the government has created portals, mobile phone applications, and websites to increase the access of its citizens to paid services, which have created an avenue for the enhancement of payment platforms such as PayPal. The target to overhaul the Californian government with a user-focused design of the government website has led to the celebration of wins as the first phase of the website sprint is completed after three months. Since December 2019, the team members behind the revamping of the government website of the state have performed street-level investigations aimed at finding out the various needs of the residents on their state website. That has just been the first step in the designing of a user-centered alpha website to interact more with the residents. The website has been reported to offer simplified tools that will enable the residents of the state to maneuver around the website with ease and the convenience that allow them to fulfill their needs. Therefore, the alpha website has been reported to enhance the e-government that many states across the US are adopting in the wave of smart public administration. The alpha website also allows the residents of California to apply and request for birth certificates, checking the quality of the local water, finding food banks across the state, applying for employment, looking for licensed contractors, among other services. The coordinator of the team spearheading the development of the alpha website for the government of California expressed her gratitude to the residents in helping them come with several prototypes that they would discuss to decide the next steps towards the development of the contemporary website. The team made use of particular principles in the development of the website. Firstly, they made use of the "less is more" principle terming that an overly complicated website would bar the access of the services by the people. The other principle applied was the determination of the zip code provision services for the quality tap water for the residents, which has been reported to be challenging at the moment. The introduction of IT in the public administration has reduced the negativities associated with bureaucracy while at the same time, enabling the various governments to achieve an e-government system that reduces the paperwork. The development of the alpha website for the government of California has exemplified the reduction of bureaucracy in the governments as the institutions move towards the achievement of e-government systems. While bureaucracy has been found to enhance the effectiveness of the governments through the creation of particular order and holding the various agencies accountable for the service provision, the delays in the processing of paperwork have been experienced and caused uproars among the members of the public.
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Therefore, the advancement of e-government has eliminated the problems associated with bureaucracy in the quest to keep up with the technology and the use of IT in the governing processes at the various levels and to serve the citizens more conveniently. The revitalized management practices supported by e-government have led to the birth of new ideas that are useful in public administration practice. An example is an idea of providing information on the quality of the water to the users of the alpha website that has been created to focus on the government of California. The idea would not have been useful in the presence of bureaucracy, which mostly deals with the written rules and a lot of paperwork. Therefore, the use of IT in public administration has taken the process of governing a notch higher to enable the citizens and residents to access the various services that have been provided by the institutions. The coronavirus menace has in the last several months originated from Wuhan, a city in China, and has spread to other regions of the world, thus raising concerns among the local and state governments on the readiness that the institutions are having to deal with the spread of the pandemic. The various public health officials in the various parts of the US have been on a mission to provide education to the masses on how to respond to emergencies involving COVID-19. The news regarding the novel COVID-19 has risen among the national media houses of the US, with most of them reporting that the country might be at the risk of the pandemic in the case of contact with the virus. One of the strategies that the public health officials have given to fight the disease is the advice on the sick employees to stay at home amid the spread of the virus, as evidenced by the media house reports. The US has recently reported a few cases of the COVID-19 in the state of Seattle with the forecasted reports stating that the states of New York and Illinois being at a high risk of being affected. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have also advised businesses and employers to separate sick employees from the rest in the case of the flu. They are then advised to raise the alarm for the case and have the medical practitioner examine the employee(s). Increasingly, tech companies are testing their preparedness for shutdown due to COVID-19 by urging their workers to work from home while comparing the output of the work done at home against that done at the office. The state governments, such as those of Washington, California, and Michigan, are allocating funds meant to fight the spread of the virus while advising their residents to take care of their environment and practice good hygiene. The recent case involving the spread of COVID-19 into the US has created avenues for the practice of e-participation in the delivery of health information services by the state and local governments. The book illustrates three models of e-participation, including the flow of information, the role of the government, and the actors involved. In the COVID-19 situation, the central role of the government is to improve the efficiency of the delivery of the public health services and information to the citizens to ensure that the possible effects of the coronavirus outbreak are minimized. The actors involved in the e-participation process include citizens, voluntary groups, mass media, and businesses that are involved in the deliberation of the best course of action to take in the fight against the spread of COVID-19 across the US. The flow of information between the local and state governments and the actors involved has been channeled to be a two-way interaction to enhance the practice of e-participation, thus contributing to the fight against the spread of coronavirus.
The use of IT in public administration has been reported as one of the ways through which the practice of e-participation has been considered to be effective. The use of technological innovations such as social media in the fight against the COVID-19 has contributed significantly to the e-participation in the governing systems of the state and local governments, as well as significantly contributing to the increase in the delivery of public services to the people.
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