THE ORGANIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR'S INFORMATION SERVICES IN A NETWORK SOCIETY

Abstract

AbstractUntil now, the organization of information services within the public sector has reflected the original function of ICT within organizations: support for operational management. This is clear from the fact that the ICT function often forms part of the operations organization, or even technical services. That distances it from the strategic function. As a result, only limited use can be made of ICT's innovations and it is difficult to predict accurately what the repercussions of that are for the business. To enable better use of ICT, investigation is needed into how the ICT function within the public sector should be organized.To investigate that, we opted to take a small section of reality and look at how the information services related to it are organized. As a result of that study, the research objective was defined in greater detail. We then turned our attention to twelve different programs and projects at Dutch departments of state, clustered to form three case studies, to see how they draw upon ICT's power to innovate in their own organization. In virtually none of the cases studied does the ICT function occupy a meaningful position. To change this, improvements must be made to the organization of information services in such a way that it becomes possible to conduct programs and projects in a more coordinated, multidimensional way and so allow the ICT function to assume a position of greater significance. To test this approach, we applied it at three pilot organizations. It can be stated that none of these had reached a stable final situation at the end of the work. All have made a start on the change, but none have completed it.The approach developed thus seems to be inadequate as a solution to the research question. This may be caused by the fact that the organization of the information services should also be changed by the innovative power of ICT; improved products and processes alone are not enough. Nor is it sufficient to develop and produce a new blueprint. Rather, the right institutional conditions have to be created to enable the necessary improvements.