Information micro-practices in Texas rural courts:methods and issues for E-GovernmentPhilip Dotya,*, Sanda ErdelezbaUniversity of Texas at AustinbUniversity of Missouri at ColumbiaAbstractThis paper reports on an empirical study of the information behavior of governmental actors inrural Texas courts. The study used multiple data collection and data analysis methods to produce arich, thick description of the participants’ behavior which is contextualized and used to identifyimportant challenges to e-government. The paper argues that moving beyond the silo-based approachto reporting and information technology implementation that characterizes the current policy envi-ronment can be done only with a strong and detailed understanding of governmental actors’ jobresponsibilities and their information and communication patterns. Doing so is important to achievingthe vision of e-government. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.1. IntroductionIt is plain that the value of computer and telecommunications technologies is growing andthat the Internet and Web have proliferated from the technical and social elites that were theiroriginal users. As a result we see that citizens, policy makers, and others have raised theirexpectations about the delivery of government services digitally. Initially, these expectationscentered on the increased efficiencies that information technologies (IT) promised publicorganizations; on the delivery of governmentally held information, for example, informationabout government benefits, real estate transactions, and the like; or on the institution ofinteractive fora for citizens in a democracy to deliberate with each other and with theirelected representatives. In the past decade, however, delivery of a robust suite of governmentservices to citizens, businesses, governmental actors, and others through the Web has* Corresponding author. Tel: ⫹1-512-471-3746.E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Doty).PergamonGovernment Information Quarterly 19 (2002) 369–3870740-624X/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.PII: S0740-624X(02)00121-1become a commonly articulated goal. Terms such as “e-government,”“digital government,”and others have become common place in the mainstream media as well as in governmentaland academic studies and white papers. Further, numerous jurisdictions in the United Stateshave initiated and successfully maintained thousands of projects to distribute governmentinformation and other government services digitally.1Many of the e-government reports, white papers, workshops, and initiatives, however, fallprey to common weaknesses: technological determinism, unfounded optimism about thebenefits of increased reliance on integrated digital technologies, superficial consideration ofmajor obstacles to integrated e-government, dismissal of critics as ignorant about or afraidof technologies, and lack of attention to how similar weaknesses have led to significantfailures in reinventing organizations and services in the private sector. Perhaps the greatestproblem with what some might call unfettered boosterism about e-governments and verti-cally and horizontally integrated systems is lack of consideration of founding principles ofparticipatory democracy –open government, public access to information, public confidencein public institutions, and public recognition of the presumption that government, first andforemost, belongs to the people. This weakness is more than a bit ironic, given that theideology and rhetoric of e-government consistently assert that increased public access togovernment services and deliberations is one of the major (presumed) outcomes of e-gov-ernment. The reality of e-government, however, offers a more sobering picture.E-government does not start with a tabula rasa or in a vacuum; rather, it builds uponseveral elements of the existing social landscape. Among these are the information skills andabilities of citizens, the global and local characteristics of the technology infrastructure,information and telecommunications policies at multiple levels of government, currentlyavailable government services and business models, and the information needs and uses ofvarious stakeholders at the individual and organizational level. While investigations of thetechnology-specific aspects of e-government are common, there is little research into theintegrated and holistic information work practices of governmental actors. This paperconcentrates on this foundational element of e-government: the situated information prac-tices, skills, and concerns in rural Texas courts. Even though research into federal and stateinformation initiatives has grown immensely, what Fletcher and Foy said in 1994 is still true:“Research on state and local government information technologies is...sparse.”2The current authors, under contract to the Texas Office of Court Administration, per-formed an empirical study of the local judiciary in eight rural Texas counties at the end ofthe 1990s.3While the most important features of the study are more fully explored below,generally speaking the study revealed a stunning contrast between the fragmented picture ofinformation technology (IT) implementation and use in rural Texas courts held by outsiders(including state reporting agencies), on the one hand, and the sophisticated, integratedinformation practices of local judicial actors, on the other. While that finding echoes thoseof empirical studies of information behavior in other environments, the Texas rural courtstudy is useful for considering the promise and the inherent challenges of e-government.The goal of this paper is not what might be termed traditional policy analysis, that is, theidentification of important areas of public dissensus (issues), important policy instruments,conflicts among major stakeholders, and recommendations for policy actors. Instead theanalysis results from ethnography of important information behaviors of local judicial actors.370 P. Doty, S. Erdelez / Government Information Quarterly 19 (2002) 369–387This ethnography, in turn, has led to the identification of important policy issues relative toe-government that spring largely from the complex relationships among state regulatory andoversight agencies on the one hand and local judicial actors on the other. These relationshipsare the focus of the analysis and recommendations.The Texas rural court study identified a number of