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Article Critique: Digital Government and the Digital Divide by Richard Groper

Introduction
The article subject of this critique is entitled “ Digital Government and the Digital Divide”, written by Professor Richard Groper of California State University (CSU) in Fullerton, California, United States (US), and published as a chapter of a book entitled “ Digital Government: Principles and Best Practices” edited by Alexei Pavlichev and G. David Garson. The book serves as a compilation of articles on e-governance, with most being in the form of research endeavors on certain questions on the subject matter and case studies that sought to resolve relevant controversies. Groper, for his article, has posited his thesis on questioning race as a major influence on Internet access in California (Groper, 2004).

Summary

Groper tackles digital divide as the main controversy characterizing his research. Limiting respondents to residents of the state of California, Groper specifically targeted African-Americans and Latinos as the main subjects of his study, in which he hypothesized that race plays a crucial factor in determining access to the Internet. The observation that African-Americans and Latinos lack Internet access, as projected by common perceptions on the E-Rate program, influenced Groper in his hypothesis, with the intent of resolving such matter by contributing to the literature on the digital divide, alongside the formation of possible recommendations to resolve said problem. Yet, through a qualitative study, Groper found that the digital divide in California does not necessarily deem race as a factor. Rather, education and income disparities allude to the digital divide problem. It just so happened that many of those disparaged in terms of education and income belong to racial minorities, although it does not necessarily follow that those from said factions suffer from traditional deprivation of Internet access (Groper, 2004).

Conclusion
The inherent costliness of Internet usage roots from the fact that it requires sophisticated infrastructural developments supporting users en masse. Whereas most social disparities in the US derive historical basis on racial disputes, the case at hand is undoubtedly more of a costs-related issue, therefore alluding to issues related to education and income. It is from the assertion of the foregoing statements in which I indicate the position set by Groper as an amenable one, in my view. Technological developments such as the Internet are definitely resource-intensive and thus, costly in terms of usage. As a costs-related issue, the digital divide on the Internet attributes more to problems on education and income disparities rather than that of race. The evidence gathered by Groper does not show any disputes referring to race. Rather, Groper saw race as a generalized observation due to the involvement of many African-Americans and Latinos as those disparaged in terms of education and income in relation to their lack of Internet access. Groper shifted the focus from race to the more compelling problems of education and income disparities (Groper, 2004).

References

Groper, R. (2004). Digital government and the digital divide. In A. Pavlichev & G. Garson (Eds.), Digital government: Principles and best practices (291-305). Hershey, PA: Idea Group, Inc.