Public Information Technology: Policy and Management Issues

Citation

Ferguson, S. (2007), "Public Information Technology: Policy and Management Issues", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 5, pp. 440-441. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710750734

In his preface, David Garson describes this collection as “a survey of many of the most important dimensions of managing information technology in the public sector”. It updates an earlier work: Information Technology and Computer Applications in Public Administration (Idea Group, 1999). There are two sets of papers – those dealing with general policy and administrative issues and those which cover computer applications and the IT skills required by public managers.

That there is a need for such a collection appears to be borne out by Alana Northrop's opening chapter, which suggests relative neglect of computing education in PA, although it should be added that her main finding is based largely on a study of leading general PA journals and six textbooks used in MPA programs and is therefore not convincing. The remaining papers in Part 1 cover topics such as the importance of political issues to information managers; the evolution of IT management in US federal government; the US Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995; “digital government” and the tension between privacy and information access; and e‐government (a term largely preferred over digital government).

Part 2 covers the penetration and impact of leading‐edge IT in American local government (nothing remarkable, it seems); the role of IT in support of the “results‐based” management model (seen here as synonymous with strategic management or performance management); computer tools used in PA, such as spreadsheets, DBMS and graphics packages; the integration of computing into survey research and focus groups in PA research and practice; geographic information systems in the public sector, including evaluation issues for managers; privacy and disclosure as these issues relate to workplace email; and the design of web applications in local government – particularly bulletin boards, promotion applications, service delivery applications and citizen input applications – including sample “information gathering sheets” and a glossary.

The final chapter, by David Garson himself, outlines a possible IT research agenda for the field. This is supplemented by a substantial appendix on conducting online research in PA (much of it webliography). There is also an index but it is appalling – results‐based management is not indexed, for example, yet terrorist attacks are.

Contributors come largely from the fields of PA and/or political science. The collection will be of most interest to PA educators, students and researchers, although there are clearly topics covered that will be relevant to others. Readers of this journal, for instance, will find points of interest in Bruce Rocheleau's chapter, “Politics, Accountability, and Governmental Information Systems” – especially in terms of organizational theory and the impact of ITs such as email on organizational communication – and in Stephen Holden's account of the evolution of IT management, as it relates to the broader development of information management. Coverage largely concerns the USA although the discussion of data protection (unindexed), for instance, does contain a substantial section on European Union legislation. For those interested in the “knowledge society” there is some discussion of political issues – social and organizational – with little of the over‐heated hyperbole that plagues some of the literature.