E‐government access to social service information: State web resources for domestic violence survivors

Abstract

This study provides the first nationwide analysis of states' e-government support for domestic violence (DV) survivors, identifying characteristics and patterns of domestic violence content and access to this content on all state government Web sites (50 states plus the District of Columbia). Using a systematic examination of click paths and site search results, DV content was located, examined, and codified in terms of information type (e.g., shelter access), accessibility (e.g., language), and type of authoring agency (e.g., law enforcement). General DV resources such as hotline/referral services were more prevalent than content related to specific needs such as child custody. States provide substantially more information on immediate emergency needs, which are actually met at the local level, than on intermediate or long-term support. Accessibility was hampered by both cognitive concerns (e.g., English-only sites) and affective concerns (e.g., a tone which focused on data transmission rather than on information use). Legal/law enforcement agencies rather than social service or medical agencies consistently provided the most information as well as the largest numbers of connections to other sites, both within and beyond the state government site.

Watching young children “play” with information technology: Everyday life information seeking in the home

“…265-266). This typology has been explored in other studies of adults' ELIS activities (Copeland, 2011;Davenport, Richey, & Westbrook, 2008), mainly using interview methods to examine participants' views and perspectives. In order to extend the current analysis to examine this typology, interviews with children or other techniques designed to capture their personal outlooks on their ELIS activities, would be required.…”

Lessons from multi-agency information management projects: Case of the Online Business Licensing Service (OBLS) Project, Singapore

“…Empirical studies (Davenport, Richey, and Westbrook, 2008;Srivastava & Teo, 2007a) tend to be relatively sparse. Topics examined in past research includes factors affecting e-government development (Pärna & von Tunzelmann, 2007;Srivastava & Teo, 2007b), potential of e-government (Heeks, 2002), e-government payoffs (Irani, Love, Elliman, Jones, & Themistocleous, 2005;Lawson-Body, Keengwe, Mukankusi, Illia, & Miller, 2008;Srivastava & Teo, 2007a), adoption and trust in e-government (Carter & Bélanger, 2005;Liu & Chetal, 2005;Warkentin et al, 2002), e-government policies (Mele, 2008) and evolution of e-government (Layne & Lee, 2001;Park et al, 2009).…”

Intimate partner violence online: Expectations and agency in question and answer websites

“…Examinations of the increasing “e‐government” movement indicate that governmental websites are (a) the primary, even sole, resource for governmental information and (b) increasingly designed for interactive, end‐user support (Chua, Goh, & Ang, ; Donker‐Kuijer, de Jong, & Lentz, ; Verdegem & Verleye, ). At the state level (Davenport, Richey, & Westbrook, ; Wathen & McKeown, ) as well as the local level (Westbrook, 2008a) these sites fail to provide situational IPV resources, opting instead for broad referrals placed outside the governmental context. The mandated information distributed by law enforcement officers privileges the concrete, task‐oriented responsibilities of survivors and criminal justice actors with little of the social service context survivors need to complete these tasks (Finn, Westbrook, Chen, & Mensah, ; Westbrook & Finn, ).…”