Abstract: INTRODUCTION This article provides a brief discussion on the philosophy of information management as seen through the lens of the reinvention of government initiatives. There follows an examination of several federal agency attempts to address information management through directives and assessments. Two issues are clear: there exists no theoretical underpinning for the use of information technologies as an agent of change in the service and, two, at the federal level, technology itself is regarded as a positive investment while human capital is not. In 1948, MIT's Claude Shannon foresaw an age of computer applications beyond complex computations and toward the management of information (Moravec, 1988). In June 2000, President Clinton announced the creation of a new government web site called firstgo that would serve as the anchor for the approximately 25,000 independent federal web pages, allowing citizens to launch a search for information as personal as social security accounts to the myriad of arcane federal reports.1 The firstgo web site putatively eliminates the need to print and mail federal documents to libraries around the country. If Shannon's work serves to conveniently mark a beginning in the search for an information paradigm that links the power of the computer to the complexities of organizational behavior, then firstgo marks a maturity into which information technology commentator Moschella (1997) calls the centrix age of computing. With content as the focus of computing, technology itself has stabilized. Surely this transformation in information processing and access is nothing short of amazing. Can our enchantment with technology embrace our agencies' historic orientation to mission? What can we expect? Primarily, that electronic ideas are mutable, capturing the nuances of today without anchoring to the organization as a enterprise. We want our databases to absorb new ways of seeing data and attach to their meanings variances associated with the values of those seeking to use this information. We want our data to reflect emphases. We want data to empower policy-makers in novel directions, to enrich the decisional context. While this is the ideal, structural realities are not framing this outcome. There are two opposing forces countering the drive toward technological perfection. The first force is captured by the market imperative which reinforces the belief that new technologies are desirable commodities. On the hardware/software side of the balance sheet, historically agencies have purchased technologies and then searched for applications. The second force frames the intent of Congress and the Executive to foster an environment of rational, strategic, mission driven, policy formulation. Technology then becomes a justification for manpower decisions. Let it be said, however, that neither Congress nor the Executive can purchase a revolution. Citizens must regard these changes as beneficial to their vision of a government in service to its people. Such benefits must include the improved ability to access this information over the traditional techniques, cost efficiencies over traditional processing techniques, and information quality that is consistent. Simultaneously, this information revolution portends continuous evolution in the structure and function of government. Over the past few years, we have witnessed tremendous federal initiatives, first with the National Performance Review and the National Information Infrastructure Initiative, then with creation of a network of chief information officers (CIOs) through the 1996 Information Technology Management Reform Act (ITMRA), hereafter the Clinger-Cohen Act) which took effect on August 10, 1996. Following the advent of CIOs, these professionals are collectively represented through the Chief Information Officers Council. Their web site provides a portal to their public activities. …
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
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