REVIEW OF IT SYSTEMS AT THE LOCAL LEVEL: THE DATA WAREHOUSE

It is common for textbooks to distinguish between data and information. Data is generally unanalysed facts and figures that concern the present and past. Management information is data that has been analysed and made meaningful for managers; it is often more future-oriented. The comments of many managers within the public sector suggest that the existing information systems that

■ The establishment of a government-wide information management bureaucracy that, despite the best intentions of dedicated individuals, has become trapped in paperwork, minutiae, and procedural red tape—with the odds stacked against innovation.

■ A government-wide information technology planning and budgeting process that, despite recent efforts to accommodate service to the citizen, is still not keeping pace with changes in technology and applications.

■ A massive challenge in retraining many technical staff to think more cre- atively about electronic delivery opportunities, better understand and stay abreast of breaking technology developments, and reach out more aggress- ively to state/local, grassroots and private sector partners in the electronic delivery of services.

■ Continuing confusion or conflict over the roles of agency IT program staff, headquarters and field staff, in electronic delivery initiatives.

■ A strong tendency among national agency managers to develop plans and make decisions without adequate involvement of the field managers and other users responsible for implementing technology and delivering services.

■ Lack of technology integration and coordination across agency, program and service lines (the ‘smoke-stack’ syndrome).

■ A continuing lack of adequate consultation with end-users—despite an improving trend—when designing and testing electronic delivery systems.

Source: Earl and Feeney, 1994.

EXHIBIT 10.4

Problems in managing IT

support their activities are not always as useful as they would like. This may be because systems primarily designed for one purpose (such as financial accounting) have been only partly adapted to meet other purposes (financial management planning, such as five-year estimates). Where systems are criticised, it is likely that they fail to meet the requirements of useful information; that is, the information they provide should be:

■ timely—the information being available in time for it to be acted upon;

■ appropriate to the manager’s needs (both present and future);

■ accurate and adequately detailed;

■ understandable to the user; and

■ properly secure.

Ideally, an information system should start from the basis of storing data and information which meet operational needs. If those systems working at the local operational level are considered to be useful, they are more likely to ensure that the data entered is accurate and timely. Such a starting point is appropriate, because management information is often a summary of operational information that is analysed for specific purposes, including strategic planning.

A good information system should identify points where action is required. It should also identify problems by highlighting where the data collected indicates which activities have fallen outside acceptable performance param- eters. It will then help to develop routines that ensure that information about potential problems is communicated to the appropriate person.

What information is communicated to whom is likely to vary according to their level in the management hierarchy, with front-line managers requiring detailed, current and mainly operational information, while more senior managers might need summarised, medium-term and strategic information. Exhibit 10.5 illustrates this by considering the monitoring information needed by managers at different levels within the organisation. The information that is communicated is also likely to vary according to whether it is directly accessible to the individual, or whether it is provided to them (and hence filtered) by another person.

Purpose of data Type of data Frequency of data

Top management Review of overall performance

Key indicators Annual reports Senior management Monitor, intervene

if necessary

Summarised data Quarterly operating statements

Front-line management

Take immediate action

Operational data Weekly or daily information

Source: Adapted from Audit Commission, 1988, p. 6.

Exhibit 10.5 The way in which different managers use different performance information

It is useful to make a distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ information. Hard information might be the facts and figures available about service users (such as their age, gender and usage rates). Soft information may be the knowledge that a certain day centre is the pet project of the chair of the committee which oversees the work of one unit in an organisation. While information technology has been important in the development of ‘hard’ data and information systems, there remains a definite role for ‘soft’/manual systems.

As we have seen in earlier sections of this chapter, ICT systems increasingly not only serve managers’ needs for information, but also provide information to consumers and citizens. The proprietorial data held within public databases constitutes a topic of growing commercial importance: the era of the public- to-private ‘data warehouse’ already exists.

10.7 CONCLUSION

Developments in ICTs present many opportunities to ‘reinvent government’ (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992), but public sector organisations are embedded in an existing pattern of institutional relationships and business processes. These existing institutional patterns are highly resistant to change, and the process of transformation is often more gradual than the rhetoric would have us believe. The United Kingdom example in Exhibit 10.6 helps to illustrate the point that new methods of communication can founder when having to interface with existing administrative operations.

There is always the danger that in thinking about ICTs we focus too much on the technical aspects of this technology and, in doing so, pay insufficient attention to the way in which it interfaces with people and organisations. Little wonder, then, that ICT innovations can often fail to deliver all that was expected of them (Menzel, 1998).

An equally worrying possibility is that ICTs might encourage us to amass ever-increasing amounts of quantitative data, just because the technology enables us to collect, store and process such data in ways that were previously impossible. To a large extent this would be a distraction. Good government and good public service management certainly benefit from having access to good information systems, but these systems need to include ‘soft’ as well as

Points for reflection

1 What strategic and operational information systems are available within your organisation (or one with which you are familiar)?

2 How does your organisation make use of them? 3 How useful do you find them?

4 Consider how you could improve the quality of computer-based data systems concerning routine functions.

‘hard’ data and information. The agenda for the future needs to exploit the potential of ICTs to capture more qualitative information on public sector performance and consumer/citizen preferences. Furthermore, this agenda needs to consider how such outputs and outcomes provide data for more effective governmental ‘learning’ to enhance democratic processes.

FURTHER READING

Clients First: The Challenge for Government Information Technology1995 Report of Minister of Finance’s Information Technology Review Group, 1 March at www.dofa.gov.au/pubs/itrg/itrg-tc.html

Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts 2000 Gov-

ernment Online: The Commonwealth Government’s Strategy, Commonwealth of

Australia at www.govonline.gov.au/projects/strategy/GovOnlineStrategy.htm

Office for Government Online: www.govonline.gov.au

When in April 1995 the Minister for the Office of Public Service and Science (OPSS) publicly announced his electronic mail address, a journalist sent perhaps the first electronic mail message to a UK minister from a member of the public. At a PICT/ESRC conference on Information Technology and Social Change two months later, he asked the head of the CCTA, Roy Dibble, why he had not had a reply. Now that citizens were talking to governments, when were governments going to talk to citizens? Dribble replied that the journalist’s questions were currently sitting on his desk. When the minister received the electronic message, it had been printed off and sent to Dribble by post. One of his staff had written to the relevant agency heads with a request for information; their staff would prepare this information and send it back to Dribble’s office where it would be collated and returned to the minister’s office. He would check the information and one of his staff would type it on to electronic mail and transmit it to the journalist.

Source: Margetts, 1995.

EXHIBIT 10.6

Case study: old habits

11