Social Work and the New Semantic Information Revolution

Abstract

ABSTRACT While Internet-based information technology (IT) has certainly affected the field of human services, observation suggests that the impact has been relatively less powerful than in other fields of endeavor. In other fields of endeavor, information technologies have been applied to whole-system transformations, involving process re-engineering, job and task restructuring, expert system support, customer management, and the emergence of matrix, network, and virtual organizational designs. Far fewer of such changes have occurred as a result of the introduction of IT into organizations dominated by professional social workers. In this essay we attempt to: (1) explain why the field of social work has been relatively immune to IT-supported transformations by outlining the organizational, administrative, policy, and technical barriers to such transformations in the social services domain; (2) identify the important emerging information technologies (agents, the Semantic Web, and machine learning) that could help to overcome the barriers to organizational transformation; (3) delineate the steps that social services organizations and professionals will need to take in order to capitalize on these emerging technologies.