e-government legislation meets the poverty threshold: issues for the economically disadvantaged

Abstract

E-government has promised to deliver government services faster and with greater efficiency and transparency, reduce costs, engage the public as government partners, and serve as a democratizing agent. But rather than leverage e-government to examine the assumptions and presumptions that are part of the existing manual processes to deliver services to the poor, those processes have been automated without deep consideration of the recipients' needs and barriers to access, privacy or civil rights, or building in solid data points to measure their effectiveness. This paper examines the legislative framework that supports the most common public assistance programs and other e-government policies that have indirectly impacted the poor. It identifies several successes in easing living in poverty and suggests several points in the legislation that could help bring the poor to fuller engagement and reduce invisibility within the government.