#3 - Thoughts for Wednesday 4/16

Here is a research paper that might shed some light on our question for Wednesday - http://www.crito.uci.edu/research-archives/pdf/toulouse.pdf

I think the hope is that people can use IT to better distribute and share power - that in some way information technology has an inherent capacity to foster more equitable power relationships.

Our question is this - does information technology have a tendency to reinforce existing power structures, and more specifically that computing reinforces central control

Is there any evidence to show that?

Kraemer, Dedrick, and King (1995) answer the question this way:

"The empirical research has indicated that IT per se is neither a centralizing or decentralizing influence. The context in which IT is used is a much stronger influence on whether organizations centralize or decentralize than is the technology, which can support either type of arrangement. In general, IT tends to reinforce existing tendencies and by itself is not likely to affect organization structure in significant ways."

THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON CITY GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
Kenneth L. Kraemer; Jason Dedrick; John Leslie King
Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations
University of California, Irvine
320 Berkeley Place
Irvine, CA 92717, USA
Prepared for the Conference: "Urban Governments", Universite de Toulouse-Le Mirail, Toulouse, France. June 7, 8, and 9, 1995



These folks put a finer point on the problems that IT can cause:
The Disappearance of Technology: Toward an Ecological Model of Literacy
http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~chip/pubs/disappearance.shtml
Bertram C. Bruce (Chip)
Library and Information Science
501 East Daniel St., mc 493
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, IL 61820
217-244-3576; 217-333-3280
fax: 217-244-3302
chip@uiuc.edu
www.uiuc.edu/~chip

Maureen P. Hogan
University of Alaska at Fairbanks In D. Reinking, M. McKenna, L. Labbo, and R. Kieffer (Eds.) (1998). Handbook of literacy and technology: Transformations in a post-typographic world (pp. 269-281). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

"More cautious observers warn that technologies can be used to reinscribe existing inequitable power relations. They see technology implicated in the loss of jobs, and poor working conditions (see Mikulecky & Kirkley, chap. 18, this volume), surveillance, and regimentation, and caution us about censorship and unequal access. They note that even well-intentioned tools can be used to forward an antidemocratic agenda and that some new technologies support abuses by their very design."


Kreamer and King (2005) http://www.si.umich.edu/~jlking/IJEGR-Final.pdf felt a little differently 10 years later. They conclude that "that information technology has never been an instrument of administrative reform; rather it has been used to reinforce existing administrative and political arrangements" for these reasons:

• Fountain (2002) concluded that “innovative uses of IT ... leave the deep structure of political relationships intact.”
• "Computerization in city manager governments reinforces the power and control of the professional manager; in strong mayor governments it reinforces the elected mayor; in commission governments it reinforces the power of individual commissioners."

As an example, consider what Santa Monica did with their PEN system. This is what Kraemer and King (2005) have to say:
"There have been relatively few examples of IT applications aimed at broader, more liberal citizen service provision. An interesting example is Santa Monica, California’s PEN system -- a public information utility designed to provide information, electronic mail, and conferencing among citizens and the city government through networked microcomputers located in public places and via remote links from people in their workplaces and homes. In many ways, the PEN system did achieve its goals, but it did so in the context of a city with legendary biases of political liberalism. In their case study of the PEN system, Dutton and Guthrie (1991) describe it as "reinforcing the values and interests of a liberal democratic community supportive of citizen participation." The technology was used to reinforce community values – in this case liberal democratic values – not to reform them. Once again, the empirical evidence suggests that those who control IT deployment and application determine whose interests are served by the technology."

My summary of the above quote: Santa Monica, a liberal city government, used a public information network to connect citizens with government and reinforce the existing liberal democratic values of the community.

My conclusion: people can use IT to better distribute and share power, but only if they already want to or have the structures in place to share power. Information technology has no inherent capacity to foster more equitable power relationships. It's more like water than it is like an organism - IT takes the shape of the power container in which its owner places it.


INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM: WILL E-GOVERNMENT BE DIFFERENT?
http://www.si.umich.edu/~jlking/IJEGR-Final.pdf
Kenneth L. Kraemer
Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO),
The Paul Merage School of Business, and
The Bren School of Information and Computer Science
University of California, Irvine
kkraemer@uci.edu
And
John Leslie King
School of Information
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
jlking@umich.edu
August 2005