Determinants of E-government implementation: The effect of Automated Information Systems (AIS) on child support enforcement policy outcomes

This dissertation explores the characteristics crucial to implementing E-government. It focuses specifically on a particular E-government application: Automated Information Systems (AIS) for child support enforcement policy.;Four empirical research questions are explored: first, did AIS increase the probability of child support receipt, and the amount received, among non-welfare single mothers?; second, did AIS increase child support payments more for previously-married mothers than for never-married mothers?; third, when AIS was implemented within individual state IV-D Child support systems, did AIS increase the amount if child support collected through those systems, once expenditures on child support collections and state characteristics are controlled?; and fourth, to what extent do political, institutional, and organizational factors affect the implementation of AIS and hence, the productivity gains from investments made or foregone?;Multiple methods are employed to answer the questions. Using Current Population Survey (CPS) data and Department of Health and Human Services' administrative data from 1994 to 2007, an econometric analysis is undertaken to test whether and how AIS affects policy outcomes. In addition, interviews with government practitioners probe into the roles of political leadership and institutional, political, organizational, cultural factors in AIS implementation.;Child support policy outcomes are analyzed from two different perspectives: one, from the single mother's perspective, tests whether AIS increased the probability and the amount of child support received by single mothers. The other is from the government's perspective where I examine whether AIS raised total child support collection, conditional on total expenditure. Heckman's two-step method and fixed effect Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) are employed for the respective analyses.;The results show that AIS had a positive and statistically significant effect on the amount of child support received by single mothers: among single mothers who received child support, those living in a state that implemented AIS received ;In-depth interview case studies reveal that there are many specific factors beyond technology that influenced the level of adoption, implementation, and achievement of AIS, and which also therefore influence child support program outcomes. These factors include: how the individual states run their child support (organization); centralized or county-run (institutions); interactions among stakeholders (politics); state management (managerial style); the IV D directors who run the program (leadership style); what kind of support they get from their legislation and their governor (resources and politics); and effective cycles (culture). Also states' economic situations and demographics are important reasons for variation across states' automated systems.