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Subject: Could Technology have caught Gov. Davis?
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 09:40:26 -0700
From: "Sonia Arrison" <SArrison_at_pacificresearch.org>
To: <declan_at_well.com>
Declan,
Your Politech list might be interested in this piece on the California
Governor's messy Oracle scandal and how technology might help to catch
these types of improper actions by politicians in the future.
Best,
Sonia
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&CID=1051-053002A
Making Gray Davis Accountable
By Sonia Arrison
California's Governor Gray Davis is in hot water over his acceptance of
$25,000 from Oracle Corporation following the state's no-bid $95 million
dollar e-government deal with the company. And while the governor probably
wishes he had never heard of e-government, Americans want more of it in the
form of e-accountability.
E-government -- using technology to make government more efficient -- has
received a lot of lip service over the past couple of years. Homeland
security director Tom Ridge says he's "convinced e-government will change
society" and Senator Joseph Lieberman is known to wax poetic about
e-government's "transformative potential."
Given these comments, one might be excused for thinking that the "dot-gov
revolution" -- the next American Revolution as some
<http://www.netcaucus.org/books/egov2001/pdf/Bluecove.pdf> have called it
-- will be some sort of magic event that will usher in a new era of
responsible government. But as the California government's Oracle debacle
clearly shows, giving a bunch of overpriced computer systems to
uninterested government bureaucrats does not guarantee increased efficiency
or responsibility.
[...]
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Received on May 30 2002
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