This work provides in-depth case studies of the state of e-government today. The book chronicles the early days of e-government and presents a collective snapshot in time as to where governments - at the federal, state and local levels - are today as they continue their march toward e-government. Editors Abramson and Morin present a comprehensive progress report on e-government before a distinguished list of contributors discuss such varied topics as the quality of federal websites, technology and innovation in the State Department, online voting and the public-sector information security. Through grants for research and forms, the IBM Endowment for the Business of Government stimulates research and facilitates discussion on new approaches to improving the effectiveness of government at the federal, state, local and international levels.

Just after 9:00 a.m. on February 1, 2003, the space shuttle "Columbia" broke apart and was lost over Texas. This tragic event led, as the "Challenger" accident had 17 years earlier, to an intensive government investigation of the technological and organizational causes of the accident. The investigation found chilling similarities between the two accidents, leading the "Columbia" Accident Investigation Board to conclude that NASA failed to learn from its earlier tragedy.

Despite the frequency with which organizations are encouraged to adopt learning practices, organizational learning -- especially in public organizations -- is not well understood and deserves to be studied in more detail. This book fills that gap with a thorough examination of NASA's loss of the two shuttles. After offering an account of the processes that constitute organizational learning, Julianne G. Mahler focuses on what NASA did to address problems revealed by "Challenger "and its uneven efforts to institutionalize its own findings. She also suggests factors overlooked by both accident commissions and proposes broadly applicable hypotheses about learning in public organizations.