Citizen Empowerment through e-democracy: Patterns of E-government Adoption for Small-sized Cities in Missouri

E-government is one of the buzzwords in discussing modernizing public administration. Numerous researchers have conducted studies related to the implementation of e-government and e-government 2.0 programs. The main goal of e-government programs is to increase government efficiency and offer benefits to citizens. As the requirements of government transparency changes, e-government tools should be utilized to increase the accessibility of government services and information to citizens. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how municipalities can use present e-democracy adoption patterns in small-sized cities to raise user adoption and citizen empowerment. This research found that local government agencies utilizing companies that specialize in the development of government to citizen applications for the development of their e-democracy services were easier to navigate and offered the most services and were accessible and optimized for use on portable devices. Additionally, less than half of the explored cities had a social media presence, a valuable communication tool that could be used for creating open lines of communication. Recommendations from this study have been made to improve all three benchmark areas of e-democracy services; availability, communication, and transparency. The conclusions drawn from this study extends the body of knowledge on citizen participation through e-democracy services and could provide supporting data for leaders in local small-sized government agencies to advocate for and implement government transparency and citizen empowering e-democracy services as part of an e-government 2.0 program.