C16-99-1497.9

The Virtual Department of Business

It has become commonplace to think of using the World Wide Web as a way to seek out and to serve customers in the private sector. The growth and spread of the internet has, at the same time, raised the expectation that government, too, will reach the public through the use of Web sites. But, in contrast to buying books or clothes "on-line", information of use to a prospective customer of public services may not be concentrated in a single government source.

This case describes the effort by officials of the U.S. federal government to build an interagency web site primarily aimed at small business owners. It describes the evolution of the site, from its public debut in 1995 with the proclamation of Vice-President Al Gore that the U.S. Business Advisor would allow "one stop Internet access to every service and every bit of information that government provides to business" to the spring of 1998, when the future of the site was clouded and little was being done to maintain the interagency effort.

This case focuses on the World Wide Web and is itself housed on a web site. It can be used both to raise questions about public sector use of new technologies--do they, for instance, suggest wholesale reorganization of government; should government Web sites provide online service or information only? It also raises, however, perennial questions about where incentives for cooperation across agencies lie in the public sector, absent a private-style profit motive.

Harvard University > John F. Kennedy School of Government > Case Program

CREDITS:

This case was written by David Eddy Spicer for Associate Professor Jane Fountain, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. (0399)

Copyright © 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 617-495-9523, fax 617-495-8878, email cp_sales@harvard.edu, or write the Case Program Sales Office, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138. No part of this publication may be reproduced, revised, translated, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means--electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise--without the written permission of the Case Program Sales Office at the John F. Kennedy School of Government

This file was last updated on 23-Mar-99.

Email the Case Program.