Across boundaries of influence and accountability: the multiple scales of public sector information systems

The use of ICTs in the public sector has long been touted for its potential to transform the institutions that govern and provide social services. The focus, however, has largely been on systems that are used within particular scales of the public sector, such as at the scale of state or national government, the scale of regional or municipal entity, or at the scale of local service providers. The work presented here takes aim at examining ICT use that crosses these scales of influence and accountability. We report on a year long ethnographic investigation conducted at a variety of social service outlets to understand how a shared information system crosses the boundaries of these very distinct organizations. We put forward that such systems are central to the work done in the public sector and represent a class of collaborative work that has gone understudied. Author Keywords Cooperative Work, Public Sector, Organizational Boundaries, Field Study ACM Classification Keywords K.4.3 Org...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Christopher A. Le Dantec, W. Keith Edwards
• Keywords: CHI 2010, Human Computer Interaction, Keywords Cooperative Work, Public Sector, Social Service