A Comparative Study of Digital Government Policies, Focusing on E-Government Acts in Korea and the United States

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper consists of a comparison between the Digital Government Policies of Republic of Korea and United States.

Introduction

The introduction is rather short. It misses references to prior research in the area. Terms such as digital government and e-Government are used interchangeable, which might be ok, but the author should at least give a reader which is not familiar with the field some sort of definition of them. As stated by the title, the purpose follows: to compare the content of the e-government acts of Korea and United States. It is not clear what the “to analyze the process of digital government policy change” means. Moreover, since the introduction does not ground the purpose in any sort of former literature, it is unclear exactly how and why it is motivated to compare the two policies. Several authors have published policy analyses of similar policies in the past. The introduction should be updated to reflect these papers, in order to put the research into (academic) context. I would also expect an overview of the structure of the rest of the paper.

Chapter 2

This chapter contains background to digital government policies in Korea and USA. As historical backtracks to the digital government of today, they include important and valuable knowledge. The Clinton administration is mentioned in Section 2.2.1 and it might be an idea to stretch the analysis to include this area as well, since the “reinventing government” movement constitutes an important historical background to the development of e-Government and digital government.

While this chapter is interesting, in this section of the article, I would expect to find some sort of theoretical background, which is used to frame the paper. However, in a similar fashion as the introduction, references to prior research are missing.

Chapter 3

The author proceeds with a description of “procedures and contents” of the e-Government acts of Korea and USA. Since no methodological description has been provided I find this Chapter rather confusing. I know from the purpose that it is a comparison of some sort, but no information has been given about used methods or analytical tools (e.g. content analysis).

Chapter 4 and 5

These chapter continue in line with Chapter 3 to present content from the policies, and compare them through concepts not previously introduced. The author concludes that “Governance” is needed, suddenly referring to countries such as UK and Denmark.

To summarize the review, I would suggest the author to perform the following activities before submitting the paper to an academic journal:

Include a literature review in the introduction Use prior theory Describe methodology and material in a separate chapter

The current paper does not include these features and is thus not suitable for publication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers:

 

Thank you for reviewing our manuscript and inviting it for revision and resubmission. We also appreciate the reviewers’ detailed and constructive comments that greatly helped improve our work. Please find attached revised manuscript entitled “A Comparative Study of Digital Government Policies: Focusing on the E-Government Acts in Korea and the United States.” We have made substantial revisions in response to the reviewers’ comments as summarized below.

 

In response to the general comments on the manuscript, we have improved the presentation by standardizing the terminology and references, conducted proofreading to check typos and improve writing style, fully wrote out acronyms/abbreviations when they first appeared in text, and clarified vague terms or expressions.

 

We also revised each section in accordance with the reviewers’ comments. In the introduction section, we added the recommended previous studies and others that were particularly relevant. We also added the definitions for the terms e-government and digital government, an overview of the structure of the rest of the paper, and briefly described the methods and contributions of the manuscript. We also removed or moved to the appendix section some of the citations of the legislation.

 

Thank you for your consideration of this manuscript.

Sincerely,

Reviewer 2 Report

Presentation could improve. Use of tables to summarise some of the literature like administration could have been used. Topic could include further elements such as aspects of sales/profits/operations and how the laws plays part or not.

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers:

 

Thank you for reviewing our manuscript and inviting it for revision and resubmission. We also appreciate the reviewers’ detailed and constructive comments that greatly helped improve our work. Please find attached revised manuscript entitled “A Comparative Study of Digital Government Policies: Focusing on the E-Government Acts in Korea and the United States.” We have made substantial revisions in response to the reviewers’ comments as summarized below.

 

In response to the general comments on the manuscript, we have improved the presentation by standardizing the terminology and references, conducted proofreading to check typos and improve writing style, fully wrote out acronyms/abbreviations when they first appeared in text, and clarified vague terms or expressions.

 

We also revised each section in accordance with the reviewers’ comments. In the introduction section, we added the recommended previous studies and others that were particularly relevant. We also added the definitions for the terms e-government and digital government, an overview of the structure of the rest of the paper, and briefly described the methods and contributions of the manuscript. We also removed or moved to the appendix section some of the citations of the legislation.

 

Thank you for your consideration of this manuscript.

Sincerely,

Reviewer 3 Report

Presentation

The formal presentation of the document should be taken more care. For example, the writing of the different terms should be homogenized (sometimes “e-goverment” -Page 1, line 33- is used, in others it appears as “E - Goverment” -Page 2, line 51- and in others as e-Goverment -Page 2, line 63-).

References
Citations must be complete and presented homogeneously following the guidelines of the journal. For example: in the web references the date on which they have been consulted is missing; some titles are between quotes and others are not -ref. 8-

Introduction
The importance of the subject is justified, but the objectives are not sufficiently detailed, nor is the methodology to be used, the contributions of the work, or the structure of the paper.
There is no adequate review of the scientific literature on the subject on which to support the theoretical framework of the research.

Methodology
The document is absolutely descriptive, only the actions of Korea and the US are listed. No validated technique of comparative analysis of documents (qualitative methodologies) is used. In addition, the consequences of the actions implemented in both countries are not analyzed.
Literal citations of the legislation in both countries are an important percentage of the text (ex: lines 360 to 406; 540 to 574; 642 to 690), it would be sufficient to reference the content and cite the specific article. Likewise, it would be advisable to include tables and / or schemes that systematize the actions analyzed and the comparison between Korea and the USA.

Conclusions and recommendations
Although the conclusions and recommendations may be interesting, progress in scientific knowledge requires that they be based on analysis with solid methodologies.

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers:

 

Thank you for reviewing our manuscript and inviting it for revision and resubmission. We also appreciate the reviewers’ detailed and constructive comments that greatly helped improve our work. Please find attached revised manuscript entitled “A Comparative Study of Digital Government Policies: Focusing on the E-Government Acts in Korea and the United States.” We have made substantial revisions in response to the reviewers’ comments as summarized below.

 

In response to the general comments on the manuscript, we have improved the presentation by standardizing the terminology and references, conducted proofreading to check typos and improve writing style, fully wrote out acronyms/abbreviations when they first appeared in text, and clarified vague terms or expressions.

 

We also revised each section in accordance with the reviewers’ comments. In the introduction section, we added the recommended previous studies and others that were particularly relevant. We also added the definitions for the terms e-government and digital government, an overview of the structure of the rest of the paper, and briefly described the methods and contributions of the manuscript. We also removed or moved to the appendix section some of the citations of the legislation.

 

Thank you for your consideration of this manuscript.

Sincerely,

Reviewer 4 Report

The author proposes an analysis of e-Government enact between the USA and Korea. It is an interesting topic and can be valuable for this field of studies as a case analysis. Following the author can find my comments and suggestions:

1) The manuscript needs proofreading to review problems related to verbal concordance and typos. Example: in the abstract, there is a problem of concordance between the first and second sentences. The first sentence starting with "currently" is conflicted by the second sentence starting with "subsequently" that uses the verb "enacted" in the passed form.

2) The author should introduce every acronym/abbreviation before using it in the manuscript. Example: OMB, UN, and ICT.

3) The author should include the paper's objective and methodology in the abstract.

4) An introduction about the adopted concept of e-government in the manuscript should be done. It could be as a sentence or session.

5) The author needs to expand references to support arguments in his manuscript. Suggestions:

Ebrahim, Zakareya, and Zahir Irani. "E-government adoption: architecture and barriers." Business process management journal 11, no. 5 (2005): 589-611.
LIM, Joon Hyoung. "EMPOWERING CITIZENS' VOICES IN THE ERA OF E-GOVERNMENT: IMPLICATIONS FROM SOUTH KOREAN CASES." Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management 5, no. 7 (16) (2010): 19-31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24872598.
Silcock, Rachel. "What is e-government." Parliamentary affairs 54, no. 1 (2001): 88-101.

6) The conclusion should mention the research limitations and contributions.

7) In the discussion/analysis, consider the possibility to put the articles together side-by-side like in boxes or columns table to facilitate comparison.

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers:

 

Thank you for reviewing our manuscript and inviting it for revision and resubmission. We also appreciate the reviewers’ detailed and constructive comments that greatly helped improve our work. Please find attached revised manuscript entitled “A Comparative Study of Digital Government Policies: Focusing on the E-Government Acts in Korea and the United States.” We have made substantial revisions in response to the reviewers’ comments as summarized below.

 

In response to the general comments on the manuscript, we have improved the presentation by standardizing the terminology and references, conducted proofreading to check typos and improve writing style, fully wrote out acronyms/abbreviations when they first appeared in text, and clarified vague terms or expressions.

 

We also revised each section in accordance with the reviewers’ comments. In the introduction section, we added the recommended previous studies and others that were particularly relevant. We also added the definitions for the terms e-government and digital government, an overview of the structure of the rest of the paper, and briefly described the methods and contributions of the manuscript. We also removed or moved to the appendix section some of the citations of the legislation.

 

Thank you for your consideration of this manuscript.

Sincerely,

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The introduction and review of the literature have improved considerably. However, I think that the research carried out is very descriptive; no validation technique of comparative document analysis (qualitative methodologies) is used. Supporting research in rigorous methodologies provides strength to conclusions.
In the formal aspects it has also been improved, but numerous bibliographical references must be reviewed. In citations 4 and 5 there is no place for editing and the year and there is a comma left over at the end. The place of editing (or web link and download date) is absent in the quotes: 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19 and 20.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers:

Thank you for reviewing our manuscript. We greatly appreciate the reviewers’ detailed and constructive comments that helped further improve our work. Please find attached revised manuscript entitled “A Comparative Study of Digital Government Policies: Focusing on the E-Government Acts in Korea and the United States.” We have made additional revisions in response to the second round of comments as summarized below.

 

A reviewer commented that the research is descriptive and no validation technique of comparative document analysis is used. We agree that the research is descriptive as we took a case study approach and we agree that comparative document analysis and/or content analysis methods would provide testable and validated results that would provide additional evidence to further support the conclusions. However, we weren’t sure if the additional benefits would outweigh the additional effort that is required for these additional analyses.

 

Since the focus of the study was not on the legal documents themselves but on the influence of the documents on national policies, we thought that the context that produced the text was important. Also, the case study approach was based on various sources of information such as documents, observations, and interviews. Not only was the research based on legal documents of both countries but it was also based on the first author’s engagement in the policy making processes in Korea (e.g., drafting the e-government act); hence the analysis and discussions were based on the observation and interaction with various stakeholders from the government, public institutions, and the private sector for the past 20 years. The author also met and conducted interviews with individuals who were involved in the e-government policies of the United States.

 

Since we did not clarify this in the manuscript, we added the following sentence in the introduction: “Despite using a case study approach that is based on various sources of information (e.g., examination of legal documents, engagement in the legislative drafting process, interviews with stakeholders), this study is not without its limitations; similar future studies that examine and compare text documents should employ content analysis or comparative document analysis methods that allow statistical analyses and the use of validation techniques.”

 

We also corrected the errors in the references that were due to technical issues from using the Endnote software. We applied the MDPI style and believe that there are no remaining errors. Lastly, we added the acknowledgment section at the end and doublechecked for typos and errors.

 

Thank you for your consideration of this manuscript. Please address all correspondence concerning this manuscript to me at [email protected]

 

Sincerely,

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors did a significant review and improvement in the manuscript. The final result is a manuscript with more quality and understandable in terms of purpose, research methodology, and contribution. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewers:

 

Thank you for reviewing our manuscript. We greatly appreciate the reviewers’ detailed and constructive comments that helped further improve our work. Please find attached revised manuscript entitled “A Comparative Study of Digital Government Policies: Focusing on the E-Government Acts in Korea and the United States.” We have made additional revisions in response to the second round of comments as summarized below.

 

A reviewer commented that the research is descriptive and no validation technique of comparative document analysis is used. We agree that the research is descriptive as we took a case study approach and we agree that comparative document analysis and/or content analysis methods would provide testable and validated results that would provide additional evidence to further support the conclusions. However, we weren’t sure if the additional benefits would outweigh the additional effort that is required for these additional analyses.

 

Since the focus of the study was not on the legal documents themselves but on the influence of the documents on national policies, we thought that the context that produced the text was important. Also, the case study approach was based on various sources of information such as documents, observations, and interviews. Not only was the research based on legal documents of both countries but it was also based on the first author’s engagement in the policy making processes in Korea (e.g., drafting the e-government act); hence the analysis and discussions were based on the observation and interaction with various stakeholders from the government, public institutions, and the private sector for the past 20 years. The author also met and conducted interviews with individuals who were involved in the e-government policies of the United States.

 

Since we did not clarify this in the manuscript, we added the following sentence in the introduction: “Despite using a case study approach that is based on various sources of information (e.g., examination of legal documents, engagement in the legislative drafting process, interviews with stakeholders), this study is not without its limitations; similar future studies that examine and compare text documents should employ content analysis or comparative document analysis methods that allow statistical analyses and the use of validation techniques.”

 

We also corrected the errors in the references that were due to technical issues from using the Endnote software. We applied the MDPI style and believe that there are no remaining errors. Lastly, we added the acknowledgment section at the end and double checked for typos and errors.

 

Thank you for your consideration of this manuscript. Please address all correspondence concerning this manuscript to me at [email protected]

 

Sincerely,