838: turning random curiosity into publishable work

Quick notes, 838, meeting with Amit:

• Come up with a clear list of requirements. Don't sweat the existence of other systems. Go ahead, catalog those other systems, but make the system that meets your reqs.
• Borrow from large-group collaboration research
• --making room for more voices, allowing all to speak: recall the introductory survey/requirement idea
  
• "social phenomenon is PB itself"
• education! pre-test and post-test: "What do you think are the key issues in the budget?" test for educating
• so these other systems exist -- they haven't been studied yet. The focus that makes the paper worthwhile is studying the system in the context of the constructs.
• But what is your theory? What are you testing? You can't just go out, hand out a survey at random, and get a bunch of data. What is your theory? Go look on AISWorld, find the theory list.
  

Good E-Government Journals

University of Albany's Center for Technology in Government has a nice list of journals dedicated to digital government research:

• Electronic Journal of eGovernment (EJEG)
• International Journal of Electronic Government Research
• Journal of E-government
• The Information Polity
  

CTG also highlights Communications of the ACM, Government Information Quarterly, Information Technology & People, Journal of Government Information, Social Science Computer Review, and The Information Society as good general journals that carry occasional e-gov-relevant research.

ePB and DSS: Reason to Pursue

In INFS 838, we read Arnott and Pervan (2005), who find DSS research declining and often lacking relevance. One symptom: lack of clear mention of client or user. Check my article: pretty clear who the users are. Focus on that area, make it even clearer, talk about impacts on different specific groups of users within the community.