Tony Cresswell, interim director of CTG, Sharon Dawes, senior fellow, and Lei Zheng, CTG graduate assistant and Ph.D. student at Rockefeller College, recently extended CTG’s relationship with Chinese government organizations and universities during a 12-day trip that included Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming, and Hangzhou. Valerie Gregg, our international digital government research partner from USC, completed the team. This was CTG’s third trip to China, as part of our ongoing effort to build international collaborations with both government agencies and universities.

The trip continued to strengthen existing relationships between CTG and Chinese partners from government agencies and universities, and also initiated new opportunities for collaboration. Two major achievements of the trip are the signing of an agreement with the China State Information Center for translating and publishing CTG publications and an agreement with the China National School of Administration to provide executive education to Chinese officials in e-Government. In addition, Tony, Sharon and deputy director Theresa Pardo (who represented CTG during an April 2007 trip to China) were all named senior overseas advisors by the China State Information Center.

The visit began at the southwest sub-forum of the 2007 China e-Government Forum held in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, where Tony presented Assessing Public Returns on Government IT Investment and Sharon gave a talk on Making Smart IT Choices in Government.

Later, in Beijing, they visited the campus of the China National School of Administration guided by the leaders of the e-Government Research Center of the School, and attended the seminar on Building an e-Government Knowledge System at the China State Information Center. The seminar participants were mainly professors in the field of e-government from a number of top universities in China along with relevant Chinese government officials. During the seminar, Tony introduced the audience to CTG and its applied research approach, which was followed by Sharon’s talk on Competencies for Government Information Strategy and Management, one of the two keynotes at the event.

They also visited the campuses and met with faculty at Fudan University and Jiaotong University in Shanghai, and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. During the visit to Fudan, Tony, Sharon, and Val taught an undergraduate public administration class on e-government including a lively Q&A session.

In addition, the delegation visited four e-government field sites including the Kunming Municipal One-stop Shop Public Service Center, the Kunming Mayor’s Hotline, Changning District Urban Grid Management Center in Shanghai, and Shanghai Jiangsu Road Community Service Center.