May 29, 2002

I apologize both to Jane Fountain and to my fellow workshop participants for the lateness of this memo, which reflects both an overwrought end-of-semester schedule and a certain diffidence stemming from my lack of expertise in the topic of the workshop. My own empirical research on digital technologies has dealt with how typical Americans – that is, the cross-section of folks that a well designed sample survey can pick up – use the Internet. Unlike most of you, I have not studied how the new digital technologies change organizational structures or how, from the producer’s side, they affect service delivery. Consequently, my comments shall be largely “theories and conceptual frameworks,” as much by default as by choice. I’ll cover three topics below: (1) The enduring value of the Weberian problematic for the study of government accountability, which I take to be a central issue in this research area; and (2) A few issues raised by my own research on the consumer side (which has dealt with government services only in the most limited way, but from which one can at least derive a couple of questions).