Engaging community in the technical design process: An analysis of the development of the Seattle public schools' Budget Builder World Wide Web Site

In this dissertation I analyze the development of the Budget Builder World Wide Web Site from September 1996 to April 1998. The Budget Builder is an Internet-based tool designed to facilitate and support local school-based budgeting. It was jointly developed by people from the University of Washington Graduate School of Public Affairs (GSPA), the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform (CCC), the Seattle Public Schools (SPS), and other community members. The analysis is primarily concerned with the social and political issues that affected the development of the site, but also looks at technical issues. I especially highlight factors that encouraged or discouraged citizen participation in the site design.;As part of the development team, I was a participant observer of the design process. In addition, I interviewed key members of the team for more in-depth descriptions of the process. I analyzed the site from the point of view of many fields, including participatory design, user-centered design, democratic technology, and community participation.;The analysis shows how the various assets of each group (GSPA---technical expertise, CCC-funding, SPS-budget data) interacted in a way that limited community participation in the design. SPS, which had the least interest in community participation, had the most crucial element for the design: data about budgeting costs and systems. The other groups, which were more community-focused, had more replaceable assets. Although participation was limited, many community-friendly features were introduced into the Budget Builder, most notably the move to having the tool be publicly available via the Internet.;Use of the Budget Builder is still in its early stages, although feedback from users (including many outside of Seattle), has been extremely positive. Future work will include increasing community involvement and expanding the Budget Builder to additional cities.;This dissertation was created as a web site linked to the Budget Builder site. The report also contains a discussion of the decision to produce the dissertation as an online document.