Perhaps due to my background in technology, I was encouraged to do a
review of the literature of issues concerning technology and government,
although this class, URPA 5351, is about the study of Human Resources in
government. I wanted to relate the findings to the content of the class, and I
quickly realized that this would involve more than a listing of particular software
or databases used by different government agencies. In fact, as a first step, it
would take me on a journey into the concept of e-government. However,
throughout the course, I began to see that HR management acts within a political
context. Just as “ideal” HR values of a particular organization can be skewed by
organizational culture (Dresang, 2002, p.10), so also can these values be
distorted by forces that provide the framework for organizational existence at the
city, state, federal, and even regional level of political organization. And just as
the fact that HR acts within a political context, so also does technology ‘act’
within a political context, and has social implications. Ultimately, the technology
utilized directly or indirectly by an HR department acts within a political context as
well. In narrowing the topic of this paper, I decided to focus on the values and
the forces that are shaping the way government uses and influences technology,
whether or not the values and forces reinforce one another, and some effects this
might have on hiring decisions made by HR in government. Therefore, this
paper will not touch on many technologies such as GPS, GIS, particular designs
and protocols for future internet construction such as I2, and so forth. Due to the
nature of the topic, current information is somewhat difficult to unearth since until
recently, most of discussions of e-government focused on ICT and restructuring
of government rather than the accompanying social problems. Most of the
sources I have used are easily accessible from the internet, fitting well with the
online course format.
E-Government
E-government has been defined and described in different ways by various
authors, attempting to capture a number of areas ranging from e-service and e-
management to e-democracy and e-policy. Roughly speaking, e-government is
concerned with using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to
enhance the provision of public services, improve management effectiveness,
and promote democracy. This roughly parallels the attempts in the private sector
to change from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge and technology-based
economy. The Cox News Service reported as of February 27, 2007, that Texas
was ranked fourth in the amount of e-government initiatives. Has all of this
activity pushed Texas to a leadership position in terms of economic
transformation? Unfortunately, the article states that Texas ranked fourteenth
overall compared to other states (Keefe, 2007). While Texas builds prisons and
discusses infrastructure arrangement such as The Trans-Texas Corridor (TCC),
other states have pulled ahead. Keefe states that
Texas, particularly Austin and the Dallas-Fort Worth area, helped usher in the
New Economy age during the 1990s, with the rise of high-tech and telecom jobs
and companies. But since then, Texas has been outpaced by states such as
Massachusetts and California in new areas such as biotechnology,
nanotechnology and Internet-based communications.
Robert Behn (2005) exhorts us to move beyond e-government to I-
government. He sees e-government largely as an effort to automate formerly
manual processes of handling information, while the crux of what government
does remains the same. On the other hand, he sees I-government as true
innovation – the attempt to redesign and re-engineer as opposed to simply
automate existing processes. He gives the example of Chicago’s 311 call
system, as well as the Compstat and Citistat technologies developed by New
York’s Police Department, and Baltimore, respectively. It is interesting to note
that most of the innovations that he listed came from law-enforcement.
And while Behn challenges us to use technology for true innovation in
government, other leading voices encourage us to think about how technology
effects the relationship we have with our fellow man. One of the innovators in the
discussion of e-government is Jane Fountain, author of “Building the Virtual
State”. In a 2006 online article, Allison Lake quotes Ms. Fountain as stating that
“we shouldn't really be talking about e-government anymore. We are well beyond
the e-mail and Web site stage. We need to return to the objective of government”
(Lake, 2006). Fountain made similar remarks back in October of 2005 in her
keynote address at the eGovernment Consultation Workshop for the 7th
Framework Programme in the Information Society Technology Programme held
in Brussels. In the speech, she states that one of the three areas for future
research with regard to these e-government key challenges is social justice –
and not just the digital divide with regard to access to the internet. Fountain
(2005) states the following:
At the core of democracy is the need to constantly fight against social inequalities.
We need to pay explicit attention to the relationship between the development of
e-government and it’s potential and actual effects on social inequality. If we do
not, I fear that without an explicit research agenda, we will just be building faster,
better, cheaper, status quo e-government.
Fountain should be credited with the recognition that although technology has
made us more efficient, it does not automatically make us more democratic.
So how can we examine the relationship between technology and social
inequality? Where is money being spent, and by whom, and for what type of
innovations? These and myriad other questions can be asked, most beyond the
scope of this paper, but one tool to take note of is Fountain’s introduction of the
Technology Enactment Framework. One of the key aspects of this framework is
the distinction between ICT itself, on the one hand, and the perceptions and use
of this technology by people. There has been debate about the number and type
of actors involved, whether she is guilty of ‘technological determinism’, and
whether or not it could be applied on a macro scale. However, her concepts for
the most part have served as a guiding light in the discussion of e-government,
and others have attempted to modify some of her ideas to better explain why
some attempts at e-government seem to succeed while other efforts fail.
Harvard University’s Alexander Schellong (2007), for example, is hesitant to
agree with Fountain’s argument, yet he does not outright reject them either.
Instead, he admits that she has made an important contribution, and he attempts
to modify the Technology Enactment Framework in order to pull it into a more
acceptable socio-technical systems theory approach. In addition, both Schellong
and Fountain, in the previously cited sources, have indicated a need for greater
interoperability between government agencies.
For purposes of the rest of this paper, we will assume that there is indeed a
difference between ICT and the actors who use it. The focus will be on social
justice issues called for by Fountain rather than interoperability. Not only can ICT
shape the actions of the actors who use the technology, but the reverse is also
true. The actors themselves, including government and even individual citizens
(Schellong, 2007), who use technology, have the opportunity to shape future
implementations of technological development through market participation as
well as product feedback. The multiple actors, besides the e-government
utilizing organizations, are not as critical from an HR perspective as simply the
understanding that technology can indeed be shaped by different groups of
actors, including government itself. How does this relate to social justice? There
are multiple answers to this question, but one of the biggest questions involves
how government influences the use and development of technology, and whether
this leads to social justice and a more representative society in terms of the hiring
decisions performed by HR agencies on a daily basis. This will be expanded
upon further at the end of the discussion on forces/trends that affect technology
and ultimately hiring decisions.
Values
In order to understand how technology and other forces can affect HR hiring
decisions, let’s back up a moment and take a look at some of the values of HR,
as discussed in the opening paragraph. Human resource management within
government is concerned not just with finding competent employees, but also
that these employees are representative of society. Too often, however, the
connection is overlooked concerning the fact that a representative society is the
basis for a representative government. Therefore, it is important to at least
consider some of the benefits and drawbacks of representative government. In
order to do this, it is helpful to consider the term itself. “Representative
government”, like the term “diversity”, can have several meanings. The first
meaning involves the idea of accountability of elected officials to the people that
elect them. The second meaning involves social representation of the
multiformity and variety of different types of people included within our society.
The first definition implies that the person being elected by peers to represent
them will do so on some basis of merit, and that is the first value and benefit of a
representative government. It also implies the value and benefit of accountability
for one’s work, since the elected official is answerable to voters, at least on
election day. The second definition implies the value and benefit of equal
opportunity to people who work in this country. However, it does not just mean
citizens of the United States, for better or for worse. Indeed, Title VII of the 1964
Civil Rights Act specifies that there should be no discrimination against any
individual due to race, color, sex, religion, or national origin. Despite questions
of fairness, Title VII implies that there is no longer such a thing as an “American
job”. A foreigner has just as much right to a job offered by a corporation on
American soil as an American citizen. Therefore, it is a bit disconcerting to speak
of a representative society and diversity when the target population for a job on
American soil can include everyone from the entire planet.
Anyone, that is, except a US citizen who has been screened out of the
employment process due to a conviction. Although a person coming from a
different national origin may have a conviction as well, this would not be detected
in many cases by American HR background searches, which would only screen
out citizens of this country. Many local governments have requirements for
employment that a person must live within the boundaries of the city; however,
they also screen applicants based on background checks. Simply put, most
employers are unwilling to hire those with convictions, and if they are hired, they
end of working in menial labor where there is little chance of contact with the
public. Holtzer, Raphael, and Stoll (2001) stated in their study concerning
employer background checks and their willingness to hire ex-offenders, that
Employer willingness to hire ex-offenders is very limited, even relative to other groups of disadvantaged workers (such as welfare recipients). Employer willingness to hire is highly correlated with establishment and job characteristics, and is much lower in financial or service jobs and in those involving a variety of tasks, particularly direct customer contact, than elsewhere. Employer tendencies to check criminal backgrounds also vary greatly with characteristics of the establishment such as its size, which presumably reflects both the resources and expertise available for human resource functions. (Holtzer, Raphael, and Stoll, 2001, p.30)
The study states that 9 percent of all men will serve time in state or federal
prisons, including 30 percent of African-American men and 16 percent of
Hispanic men (Holtzer, 2001, p.3). It should be kept in mind that these men are
or become fathers, and that their children need to be supported. Elaine
Sorensen(2001), in testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommitee on Human Resources Committee on Ways and Means, states that
One employment barrier that disproportionately affects poor noncustodial fathers is incarceration and having a criminal record. Nearly 30 percent of poor noncustodial fathers who do not pay child support are institutionalized. Most of these fathers are in prison. Once these fathers leave institutional life, their work prospects will not improve that much. Their criminal record and interrupted labor force participation make these men unattractive to prospective employers.
Technology has provided the HR professional the means to discriminate on
behalf of the employing entity by means of database and criminal records
searches which are shared across the country. A man with a mark on his record
has no place to go to start a new life…anywhere he turns, the situation will be the
same in terms of the employment process. Yet the sad fact is that employers are
more willing to break the law by hiring foreigners and illegal aliens (who, by
definition, broke the law by entering the country illegally) than domestic ex-
offenders citizens. The forces behind this fact are the subject of the following
discussion on the economic plans formed and / or endorsed by some of the most
influential leaders of our nation.
Forces
Rather than attempt to prove a casual relationship between technology and
hiring decisions in government agencies, I will simply point towards a few major
and obvious trends that I believe influence the hiring process negatively in
relationship to the values that have thus far been hammered out through the
political process within the United States. Some might argue that each element
is not actually a negative force, such as the first force or element - the trend
towards reinventing government. But what is important is how the element
affects the values of a representative society and representative government,
and also how it might affect the hiring decision of HR professionals. The second
force or element is the push towards regionalization as a solution to current
economic problems. The third element is the alarming rate of incarceration of
U.S. citizens compared to other countries of the world, and is more of a trend
than an independent force.
The current emphasis on reinventing government is but the latest phase of
change since the inception of the Pendelton Act of 1883, and includes
reinventing Human Resource management, which has generally meant a
strengthening of accountability of employees to management in order to provide
managers with more flexibility in pursuing goals of increased productivity. This is
particularly true in reform states such as Texas, Florida, and Georgia. Focusing
on Texas, which has done away with a mandatory civil-service structure, and
embraced at-will employment principles, the question remains as to whether
there is still a balance in the interplay of values. In order to examine this issue,
Jerrell D. Coggburn (2006) surveyed HR directors of different these state
agencies. He concludes that
at-will employment does enhance executive control over government, it does
nothing to attract new employees or to positively motivate existing staff members.
Moreover, at-will employment may discourage certain forms of desirable
behavior (e.g., whistleblowing, risk taking) and, at the same time, encourage
undesirable behavior (e.g., poor decision making, insensitivity to procedural
fairness). At a time when America’s best and brightest opt not to pursue
government careers, when those retiring from government do not recommend
public service careers to others, and when antigovernment sentiment runs deep,
government should be exploiting the competitive advantages it has—such as job
security—to meet its HR challenges. Far from helping curb the quiet crisis, at-will
employment may be helping to build a perfect storm in public sector employment
(Coggburn, 2006, p.174).
Organizational culture can certainly affect the balance of representative
government values at a department level (Dresang, 2002, p. 10), but it is clear
that Coggburn believes that state laws also can have an effect on organizational
culture as well. And while I agree that a perfect storm may be brewing, I believe
that the problem has progressed far enough to have attracted the attention of
legislators. While the reinvention of government started under Clinton, its
acceleration of effects, particularly the most negative effects, have taken place
while republicans have been in power. Were the country to move strongly back
to the left, I believe that there would be an attempt to address these excesses
that Coggburn sees on the horizon. However, the success of restoring a more
representative government and a representative bureaucracy, hopefully based
on merit, will largely be dependent on the stability and growth of the economy. At
the point of this writing, the housing market continues to crash, the dollar is
taking a continued beating on the exchange market and has reached all-time
lows against the euro, several major countries have or are considering
diversifying assets from dollars to other currencies, and consumer debt is soaring
while consumer spending has cooled. The BBC reported on April 30, 2007 that
the US and EU have agreed to build a common market (see endnotes for
reference), and of course there is the continued push for a North American
Union. It could be asked whether the balance of values of representative
government, some of which were mentioned earlier such as merit, accountability,
societal representation, and career opportunities (Dresang, 2002, p.10), are
skewed or contradicted by these forces as well.
This, of course, leads to the second force that might provide a context for the
understanding of how technology in government can effect the hiring decisions
reached at the HR level. The second force to be discussed is the push towards
regionalization as a solution to economic problems within the United States.
Again, just as the values of a representative government can be skewed by
organizational culture, and, as we have seen, state legal frameworks, so can
these values be effected at other levels of government. The Council on Foreign
Relations (2005) sponsored an independent Task Force to study issues related
to follow up of the NAFTA accords, and released the results of their study in their
2005 paper entitled “Building a North American Community”. While the Council
has no affiliation with the U.S. government, it is important to note that nearly
every former US president since WWII has been a member as well as the
majority of State Department influentials. The paper calls for a common market
and common security perimeter between Canada, the United States, and Mexico
on page 30 and 31 of the document. It does not call for a political union, but
keep in mind that economic union is a natural precursor for political union, just as
in the EU, and this will be even more pronounced since security will be an issue
on the table. Central to the arrangement is the issue of handling border security
in ways which would not impede the free movement of goods and people across
the border. And central to border security is the development of a North
American Border Pass with biometric identifiers as an alternative to building a
physical wall at the border. The biometric agreement is not suprising based on
the Smart Border Declaration update published by the (2004), which states that
the facial recognition biometric “had been selected as the globally interoperable
biometric”, with iris recognition and fingerprints to be used as secondary
identifiers. The U.S. Department of State (2007) has informed the public
through their departmental website that the newly designed e-passports (U.S.
Electronic Passports) contain small electronic chips that enable the use of this
facial recognition technology at international airports. Facial recognition
technology was proven highly inaccurate in crowd control situations back in
2002 according to the ACLU report “Drawing a Blank”(Stanley & Steinhardt,
2002), although the technology may have improved since then. However,
although the use of closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) by local law
enforcement may involve the use of face-recognition technology, many of the
cameras being installed around the country are being installed on roads and
traffic light intersections, so the probability is that the technology is being used
to read license plate tags, which it is more than accurate enough to perform.
Instead of trying to imagine a policeman in an isolated room trying to read
license plates from a multitude of networked CCTV cameras, simply imagine
software that detects the license plates from the feeds of these traffic light
cameras. Car tags from people that have been identified for whatever reason
as potential law-enforcement risks can be fed into the system, enabling police
and under-cover agents to monitor and quickly converge on a ‘suspect’ once
the cameras and software had alerted them of the suspect’s location, and
thus would be a complement to GPS tracking technology.
Without getting into the legalities of privacy issues, which are a legitimate
concern, it is helpful to understand the existing state of incarceration of U.S.
citizens. An article in Criminal Justice by Catherine L. Anderson(2005) states
that since 1980, the adult prison population has increased more than 300
percent, and that our incarceration rate is at least six times that of Canada,
Australia, and Western Europe. She wonders whether more people are
committing crimes in the United States as compared to the rest of the world, or if,
on the other hand, is there a political motivation to appear tough on crime. At
any rate, she points out that Federal crimes account for only 5 percent of all
prosecutions in the United States. Most prosecutions take place at the local
level. I will point to an article written by Paul Craig Roberts (2006), former
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. Apparently Mr.
Roberts believes that a great deal of this increase has come under the Bush
administration, and is unwarranted. Roberts cites statistics from The International
Center for Prison Studies at King's College in London:
the US has the largest percentage of its citizens imprisoned of all countries in the world, including China. One of every 32 US adults is behind bars, on probation or on parole...the US has 700,000 more of its citizens incarcerated than China, a country with a population four to five times larger than that of the US, and 1,330,000 more people in prison than crime-ridden Russia. The US has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. The American incarceration rate is seven times higher than that of European countries. Either America is the land of criminals, or something is seriously wrong with the criminal justice (sic) system in "the land of the free”.
It is reasonable to assume that the addition of cameras planted throughout
American cities will only increase the rate of incarcerations. According to
Roberts, many of these incarcerations are based on prosecutor gaming of the
system in order to procure easy convictions by threatening maximum prison
times allowed by law unless a person makes a plea-bargain deal, and not
surprisingly more than 95% or all felony cases are therefore settled with a plea
bargain. As a Reagan Republican and already a stauch defender of legal rights
of citizens, he became convinced that the present administration is acting
contrary to the Constitution of this country, and that these trends towards
criminalization of the American public are increasing due to illegal use of power,
such as spying without warrants. Roberts (2006), in another article, states the
following:
…We have reached a point where the Bush administration is determined to totally eclipse the people. Bewitched by neoconservatives and lustful for power, the Bush administration and the Republican Party are aligning themselves firmly against the American people.
Their first victims, of course, were the true conservatives. Having eliminated internal opposition, the Bush administration is now using blackmail obtained through illegal spying on American citizens to silence the media and the opposition party.
Whether or not one agrees with Roberts about the politicalization and corruption
of the justice system, it is possible for HR professionals to develop empathy for
fellow citizens. How many people do you know that have had a brush with the
law due to something like substance abuse or driving while under the influence?
People can get over a drinking or drug problem, but they can never get over a
conviction due to background screening of employers and the HR companies,
both in private industry and in government. This is true whether the charge
involves drugs, or trumped up charges of “assault on a police officer” which may
be politically motivated, such as was attempted on Rep.Cynthia McKinney, a
lawmaker and outspoken anti-war activist (Head, 2006). The fact that certain
segments of the domestic population (blacks) are convicted at such high rates
compared to their population percentage should be kept in mind when entering
into discussions of affirmative action and equal opportunity. If illegal immigration
were uniformly enforced to the same extent as laws concerning drugs, the prison
system would be crushed under it’s own weight. For some Americans born and
raised in this country, the idea of illegal immigrants being allowed to work illegally
in the United States is not an issue of prejudice or xenophobia, but of fairness. If
we wish for those released from prison, or who otherwise have a mark on their
record, to be able to go on and live a clean life free from crime, then it is
important to not cut them off from employment for which they are suited and
capable of performing. Branding someone with a scarlet letter for life can in no
way contribute to the functioning of a just society, and is just as important a
social justice issue as a representative society. Unfortunately, shared national
criminal databases, the push for open borders, and the de-Americanization of
jobs located within corporations still located on US soil almost guarantees that
the Scarlet Letter will be branded on these men and women for life, even after
they have supposedly already “paid their debt to society”.
Some of the brightest advocates of e-government have recognized the need
to also focus on the relationship between technology and social inequalities. HR
professionals both within government and the private industry have the capability
of peeking into a person’s entire life through the use of background search
databases. At the same time, the staggering amount of incarcerated citizens in
the United States, in comparison to the rest of the world, only portends a
continuance of the same trends due to the ability of law enforcement to watch
and monitor nearly every footstep of it’s citizen population, in an increasingly
politicalized environment, and to create databases which are shared with the
public, including HR professionals. Americans are becoming progressively more
criminalized, and those branded with convictions are screened out of the
employment process, while at the same time jobs are being given to newcomers
to the country, some of which broke the law by entering the country illegally.
However, although the author of this paper support legal immigration, this paper
is not meant to target illegal aliens, many of who come here in desperation
because they have absolutely no future in their own country. The real focus,
once again, is on the progressive criminalization of those in the United States by
police who increasingly seem to have forgotten the constitution and Bill of Rights,
and the effects on the employability of those who have a conviction on their
record. The HR professional who does a background check usually does not ask
questions when finding a mark of certain categories on an applicant’s record.
Instead, the assumption is made that the police made a moral arrest, and that the
legal system is for the most part infallible. The New York Civil Liberties Union
(2005) reports that over 1,800 people were arrested at the Republican National
Convention back in 2004, and 10% of those arrested were convicted of
supposedly committing some crime, although videotapes abounded providing
evidence of police perjury. Some of these people will find that the mark on their
record will affect their employment for the rest of their life. On May 1, 2007,
LAPD police and SWAT teams used non-lethal (but still painful) rubber-bullet
technology to attack citizens and non-citizens who were engaging in a peaceful
immigrant-rights demonstration. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewed
Carol Sobel, president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.
Sobel(2007) states that
“quite frankly, what happened is when the police decided to sweep the park and
close it down, there was no one that was doing anything more than heckling them.
And they were -- I wouldn't say “heckling,” even, I would say “criticizing” them
-- and they were doing it because what happened during the course of this march
is that the police wanted open up a street, and rather than talking to people and
saying, “Can you move onto the sidewalk? Can you move into the park now?”
what they did was run their motorcycles into women and children in the Aztec
dancers group, who were in the street at that point still. And the street was closed
to traffic, but they were in the street performing their ritual circle dance at the end
of the march. And so, you had the police doing one of the most provocative things
they could do, and all of a sudden it is the fault of the demonstrators when the
police literally use their motorcycles to strike people as a means of crowd control
and to strike women and children as a means of crowd control, when people were
peaceful…
…there are rules within the LAPD about how you set up a press area. They just
didn't care. I mean, they just -- you know, if a press person was knocked down,
they struck him with a baton to get him up. If the cameraman got knocked down
and the reporter tried to help him up, they beat the cameraman and the reporter. It
was just -- it was senseless.”
While some swaggering law-and-order types might promote a “that’s what you
get” attitude and wield the brand of the scarlet letter, it may be that the forces that
wish to recreate government are actually influencing technology in an Orwellian
manner, and in such a way as to work against the values of social equality and
equal opportunity that are valued by the America public. If the public decides
that law-enforcement and the justice system have morphed into instruments of
social control, perhaps we will find a small miracle occurring - that HR
professionals and hiring managers might actually experience a paradigm shift
with regard to their interpretation of background checks, hopefully resulting in a
bit more compassion in the hiring decisions that they make on a daily basis.
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