Framing Virtual Interactivity between Government and Citizens: A Study of Feedback Systems in the Chicago Police Department Shelley Fulla Ph.D. Student Public Administration University of Illinois at Chicago Email: shelley.fulla@chicagopolice.org Eric Welch Assistant Professor Public Administration University of Illinois at Chicago Email. ewwelch@uic.edu Abstract This paper considers the current efforts to describe the effect of Internet-based technology on interactivity between citizens and public organizations to be incomplete and poorly linked. This paper develops a model of interactivity that reflects the self-organization potential of virtual communication and the social context within which citizens and bureaucrats operate. The model helps us to identify ways in which different levels of feedback communication, e.g., email, may affect change in organizations, communities, and the relationship between organizations and communities. A case analysis of the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) Citizen ICAM is reviewed to determine the effects of feedback and the technology on the organization. We find that virtual interactivity is a complex process – more complex than typically described – that has significant effects on the structure and work processes of the CPD. We conclude by proposing a staged model of citizen-government interactivity and by identifying future research topics. 1. Introduction The radical communication technologies of the Internet and the World Wide Web are expected to alter the relationship between citizens and government, but how? Recent literature on the social effects of the Web considers that by increasingly personalizing experiences, the technology threatens to de-emphasize and ultimately hinder public and community life (Shapiro, 1999). Other researchers believe that the technologies not only hold the promise for increased efficiency and effectiveness of government, they also may enhance the ability of citizens to interact with bureaucrats and politicians in meaningful and civically productive ways (Shi and Scavo, 2000). Some of the reasons why there is confusion about the ultimate effects of eGovernment on citizen government interaction are the newness of the technology, the fact that only around half of the citizens are connected (Nie and Erbring, 2000), and the small portion of governments that have developed eGovernment strategies (Norris, Fletcher, and Holden, 2001). Nevertheless, surveys clearly show that governments recognize that eGovernment has changed the way it operates: roles of staff, demands on staff and business process are being changed (Norris, Fletcher, and Holden, 2001). These studies beg the question that this paper will attempt to clarify: How does the Internet change the nature of the interactive relationship between citizen and bureaucrat? In the field of Public Administration, the Cyberspace Policy Research Group (CyPRG) at the University of Arizona has been working to address the issue of interactivity the longest. Based on the reasonable premise that the openness of websites provides a window into the willingness of organizations to divulge information and interact with citizenry, CyPRG developed a means of measuring two constructs called transparency and interactivity. Transparency concerns the extent to which an organization provides information about activities and decision processes. “[In terms of a web site, transparency] constitutes a layman’s basic map of the organization as depicted in the information on the site [and] reveals the depth of access it allows, the depths of knowledge about processes it is willing to reveal, and the level of attention to citizen response it provides (La Porte, et. al, 1999).” The more transparent an organization’s website, the more it is willing to allow citizens to monitor its performance (Reichard, 1998). Interactivity concerns the quality of communication between the public organization and the citizen. “[It] is a measure of the level of convenience or degree of Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2002 0-7695-1435-9/02 $17.00 (c) 2002 IEEE 1