An informal requirements analysis of Norwegian public administration relative to CSCW

By Pål Sørgaard

Abstract

There is a rich potential for exploiting CSCW in public administration. CSCW does, however, sometimes provide possibilities for administrative work that do not necessarily fit with the laws and rules for how public administration is supposed to perform its duties. There are issues related to public access to documents produced or stored by the administration, privacy, security and political control.

The technology must of course be adopted to the context of public administration, but this requirement does not have infinite validity. A situation where public administration lags significantly behind in the use of technology is not sustainable. We should therefore expect conflicts to pop up, and there are reasons to expect adjustments to the laws and rules regulating the work of public administration.

Introduction
Goals and needs
Inter-authority co-ordination
Flexibility
Efficiency and effectiveness
Improved service to customers
Legal issues
Problems
Support for informal communication
Interorganisational CSCW
Reuse of data
Privacy
Quality of data
Incentives
Security and authorisation
Control over DP
Political control
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
References

Introduction

Work on Computer-Supported Co-operative Work (CSCW) addresses ways of supporting group work through the use of computers. Electronic mail has become an archetypical example, but there are numerous other examples. The diffusion of CSCW into actual use is still in its infancy. There are some examples of unsuccessful applications (8,14). Studies of the introduction of applications of CSCW are beginning to appear: one example being Orlikowski' s study of the introduction of Lotus Notes in a consultancy company (21). Although some results are available, we still have a major job in finding out what kinds of CSCW are 'useful' as well as to what contexts they appropriately fit.

Computing in public administration has been studied quite extensively. Kraemer at al. have made longitudinal studies of use of computing in American local governments (18), addressing managerial action as a key factor for explaining differences in use of technology. Danziger points out that the potential for supporting interorganisational co-ordination and decision making has not been realised (7), a point actually mentioned by Galbraith as early as 1973 (12). Levinson argues that information technology has been used more to achieve efficiency than effectiveness (20). Willcocks draws on experience from several research projects in the UK, showing how an alarming percentage of IT projects fail and how managers now increasingly ask for return from IT investments in public administration (30).

This paper is based on investigations of computing needs in Norwegian public administration (4, 26). The term public administration always refers to Norwegian public administration, and many of the results are specific to Norwegian or Scandinavian public administrations. The paper is based on investigations into computing needs and trends in Norwegian public administration. In a now completed project the R&D needs related to IT use in public administration were investigated (26). Later a pilot study on teletechnology in public administration was conducted, and a proposal for a larger project, Otello, was made (4). Otello is now an active project, being funded by the Research Council of Norway (Culture and Society) and by the six participating public authorities. In these projects a series of qualitative, semi-structured interviews with managers and case handlers in public administration have been performed. In Otello, working groups have been established in the participating authorities. The overall aim with this work is to answer questions like:

How should the work with such changes and such technology be performed in order to be as effective as possible?

The purpose of the paper is to go close to a specific, concrete context, and investigate the possibilities for IT in general and CSCW in particular within that specific context. Doing so, we will slowly learn what impact local conditions have on the requirements for and deployment strategies of CSCW. It is assumed that national and cultural differences may have an impact on what is appropriate computer-support. Attempts to draw conclusions on a more general level will be made.

The use of computers has proliferated in Norwegian public administration. Heretofore the predominant form of computing in public administration has been large information systems supporting the core activity of various authorities. Central examples are systems for the revenue authorities and the social security system. Recently, personal computing has spread quickly. Most clerks now have access to text-processing and, quite often, other applications like drawing tools, spreadsheets, etc.

Within Norwegian public administration there is no strong standardisation on hardware or software. There are therefore many technical obstacles to integration between users and between applications. Moreover, many authorities struggle with outdated architectures and spend most of their development resources finding ways to convert to more modern systems.

This paper focuses on applications of CSCW which support informal group organisation. Attempts have been made to apply transaction costs theory to characterise work in CSCW along these lines; see, for example, Ciborra and Olson (5) and Sørgaard (25). This focus has been chosen because it addresses the kinds of computer support which are called for by public administration and by authors like Danziger (7). Moreover, the focus on support for informal group organisation will highlight areas where there is a possible conflict between what is technologically feasible and the rules and traditions of public administration.

Goals and needs

Public administration is subject to politically defined goals. In Norway some of these goals have been formulated by the Ministry of Administration:

Other generally accepted goals are (26):

Currently there are some political trends that will have consequences for public administration. Firstly the EEA will have a strong impact on many parts of public administration (10), and this impact will become even stronger should Norway join the European Community. Contrary to what one might think, these trends include consequences for municipalities and not only for central government. The municipalities are going to handle most of the issues related to free movement of people under maintenance of various social rights. Secondly, after many years of increased budgets, there is little room for expansion in public budgets, and hence there will be little room for increased employment in public administration.

Within this context there is a rich set of possible applications of CSCW, especially if CSCW can contribute to improved inter-authority co-ordination, better flexibility, efficiency and effectiveness, and improved service to customers. Ways of achieving these goals will be discussed below.

Inter-authority co-ordination

Different authorities often have partially overlapping jurisdictions. A central example is the way transportation and agriculture interfere with environmental interests. There are of course administrative units responsible for the solution of conflicts that may arise, but typically these units are top-level administrative positions or politically elected councils which already have a lot to do. It is be desirable that a larger number of possible conflicts be solved between the authorities involved, and that political bodies focus on formulating general guidelines for how to find compromises between the conflicting interests. This is in many ways the problem of handling task uncertainty (as described by Galbraith (12)), and the solutions called for are those based on lateral processes rather than on vertical information systems.

This is an area where there is a multitude of possibilities for CSCW. Communication can be supported by electronic mail and conferencing systems, but lack of integration with different text processors may reduce the benefits of communication between different authorities. Sharing of tasks can be supported by electronic archives with suitable multi-user functionality or by specialised facilities as proposed by Kreifelts et al. (19).

The costs and effort associated with meetings may be reduced by videoconferencing, as different authorities often are located in different parts of the country. Sweden relocated several public authorities in the beginning of the 70s. It was expected that teletechnology would prevent an increase in travel. In an evaluation of the relocation it was concluded that this expectation did not hold (28). We should therefore be critical to assumptions that travel costs can easily be reduced through use of telecommunications.

Conventional meetings (i.e. face-to-face) can be supported by electronic meeting support systems. Such systems are not considered in this paper.

Improving inter-authority co-ordination is not, however, an easy game. It is often in conflict with the classical culture in public administration, where people focus more on following the rules and staying within budget than on solving the case at hand or on achieving something with the money spent. Many initiatives by the Norwegian Government can be seen as attempts to deal with this culture; see, for example (2).

Flexibility

Lack of flexibility is a 'classical' property of public administration and other large bureaucracies. The Norwegian Government is trying to deal with this through new kinds of management (goal-directed and less rule-based), more flexible budgeting, etc. There is thus a trend towards more autonomy at lower levels. We may therefore expect issues to be handled at the level and location where they arise (or are received), but perhaps in co-operation between various case-handlers with different experience and competence.

CSCW could support this trend by facilities which strengthen the groups at various levels in the bureaucracy. Support for group communication and task sharing will clearly be important. As cases are handled locally according to their specific nature, rather than strictly according to set rules, there will be a need for support for problem solving in groups. Ways of 'distributing expertise' will also be needed. One way of supporting this could be facilities for window-sharing or screen-sharing (6, 13, 16). Such facilities make it possible for a clerk to seek advice from an 'expert' in handling cases represented within a conventional computer system.

Efficiency and effectiveness

Efficiency is an explicitly stated goal for public administration. The number of tasks is growing, but the supply of resources will not grow at the same speed, if at all. Classically efficiency has been sought through rationalisation and large information systems, and there is general agreement that for example the Norwegian social security system simply would not work without the use of information systems. In later years the social security administration, the customs authority, and the revenue authorities have introduced new systems and as a part of that process achieved documented increases in efficiency. In all of these three cases the theoretical gain in efficiency was reduced by two factors: Firstly, the high number of small service points made it hard to implement a marginal increase in efficiency. Secondly, some of the resources were fed back to the authority in terms of new positions at higher levels of qualifications than the jobs made obsolete. The high number of service points arises because the social security system and the revenue authorities have offices in each municipality. There are approx. 450 municipalities in Norway, half of which have less than 5000 inhabitants. Changes in the municipal structure are hard to achieve, and technological alternatives to such changes are very interesting.

CSCW is not a technology for classical rationalisation, but support for communication, access to experts and advisors, videoconferencing, task-sharing and several other kinds of CSCW may contribute to increased efficiency by letting cases be handled where they are instead of being passed upwards in the hierarchy.

The focus on efficiency will remain strong. As stated by Willcocks and as our own ongoing research confirms, managers in public administration want return on investments (30). However, it is being increasingly recognised that efficiency alone is not a satisfactory measure for the performance of a public authority. Taking the revenue authorities as an example, it is extremely easy to reduce resource consumption in handling tax returns; the problem is to do it while maintaining quality and improving quality where there are possible gains to be found. A 1 % increase in tax received (effectiveness) is far more important than a 5 % reduction in resources spent by the revenue authority (efficiency).

The trend towards increased focus on effectiveness and quality may open up for increased use of CSCW in public administration. In the revenue authorities there is a large potential for increased effectiveness in implementing so-called 'value-oriented case handling', a strategy where effort in focused on tax returns where there is a high potential for increasing tax received. Such a strategy requires changes in work organisation. In order to work in a network of many small service points, it is not possible to rely only on expertise in the local office. Cases should be transferred to or advice should be sought from other case-handlers in the network. CSCW may contribute to this by facilities for transferring cases, locating people with appropriate expertise, providing facilities like bulletin-boards for the description of problems and expertise, etc.

Improved service to customers

Improved service is of course a very general goal. Public administration is seldom associated with service, we often see it as a source of trouble (e.g., paying taxes). In spite of this difficult starting point, several authorities are working on improving their service to customers. Improved service is important for those who are dependent upon public administration, be they clients of the social security system or companies which want to invest in a new production plant.

To the extent that CSCW contributes to inter-authority co-ordination, flexibility, and efficiency and effectiveness, it may also support improved customer service. We may also think of computer-support for front line clerks, i.e. those who provide the 'visible' service. This is, however, a situation which is difficult to support: Turner provides an example of an on-line system which results in more stress for the front line clerks than a batch system of low quality and reliability (29).

Legal issues

Work in Norwegian public administration is supposed to be performed in accordance with relevant laws, rules and regulations. Two essential laws are 'Forvaltningsloven' (the law on public administration, laying down principles for how to deal with 'cases', how to justify decisions, etc.) and 'Offentlighetsloven' (freedom of information act, determining who in the public has access to what documents, etc.). The latter law declares all documents in public administration to be public unless otherwise stated (the 'unless' part is, of course, quite large).

Members of the public have a general right to search for and obtain information about the work of the administration. This right is typically exercised by the press. Members of the public, companies, and other legal subjects who have a case in an administrative body (like an application for permission to do something) have additional rights. They have the right of party-access to the documents pertaining to their case (the case-documents). This right of access applies under certain circumstances to correspondence between the relevant administrative body and other administrative bodies, but it does not apply to internal documents nor to documents made by subordinate bodies (these are considered internal). When a document is not per se subject to party-access, the factual information in the document should be made available to the party (15). Inter-ministry and inter-authority communication is normally written.

Rules regarding access have strong implications for how information is gathered and for how letters and other documents are archived. Informal communication, like phone-calls, is not subject to public- or party-access, but notes from such communication is. It is considered good practice to make such notes, and to file them in the case-folder. The introduction, or rather the proliferation, of telefax-devices in public administration has resulted in practices which are on the limit of what can be considered correct. In public administration ordinary mail is normally opened, entered in the mail log, and archived by clerks in the mail reception before the mail is distributed to the case-handlers. Telefax documents, however, arrive directly in the office or section of the case-handlers. Telefax documents will thus only be logged and archived if the case-handler sees to it. Experience has shown that the judgements of clerks in the mail receptions and of case-handlers are not the same, and hence we already have a situation where modern technology has had an impact on practice in public administration.

Were the rules regarding access to be obeyed strictly in design and use of electronic media the implications would be strong. The legal state of these affairs is, however, not entirely clear, since tapes, films, other audio-visual media, and electronic files are not included in the concept of case-document, and hence cannot be made subject to party-access (15). In a situation where computers proliferate, such limitations in party-access to documents cannot persist. In a set of general requirements specifications for computer-support for case-handling and management in government, attempts have been made to deal with this and related problems, and it is required that (24):

This requirement may, however, have strong and unintended consequences, see section 4.1 below.

Problems

As argued above, there are many possible applications of CSCW in public administration, but there are also many reasons to be careful when expectations are stated. Several potential problems related to the application of CSCW in public administration are discussed below.

Support for informal communication

In a study of the use of e-mail, the Swedish linguist Kerstin Severinson Eklundh studied the language used and classified it as a kind of 'oral' language (9). Feldman argues that an important characteristic of electronic mail is the low threshold for sending a message, and that distributions lists make it easy to send messages to a whole community of receivers, the sender need not know who is on the distribution list (11). Feldman uses this to argue that electronic mail provides support for the exchange of weak-tie messages: messages which would not have been sent if there were no electronic mail, which are between people which do not know each other beforehand, which are between people who have communicated more than once, and which are between people that are not physically proximate (11). Another consequence of the same property of the medium is the tendency to be informal and even oral, as found by Eklundh. Sproull and Kiesler argue that the reduced social context cues associated with electronic mail contribute to use of the medium for messages which otherwise would not be sent (27).

Pickering and King investigate the issue of weak-tie communication further, arguing that there are great differences between different organisations as to the perceived benefit of increased weak-tie communication (22). They argue that universities have very high benefit from electronic messaging systems, since a university department needs to cover a broad set of specialities while research requires critical mass within very small specialities. These two concerns are very hard to combine unless there are other means for the researchers to be part of a scientific community. Electronic mail, they argue, provide appropriate support for this communication need. The same argument goes for research labs with large international co-operation, as exemplified by the high-energy physics community. Using this argument we can find potential benefits for authorities with decentralised and dispersed service points. This does require, however, that it is acceptable to share tasks and distribute problems in a wider community of case-handlers than what is the case today. Such facilities could potentially compromise privacy, as is also argued by Berg (3).

Taken together these findings confirm the widespread impression that electronic mail is well suited for, and in fact encourages, informal communication, and hence also is important as support for informal organisation. Electronic mail is very suited for the exchange of small, informal messages, and they are often written in a very informal style.

Informal communication may, however, be in conflict with the rights of the public to be informed and to have access to documents in cases in which they are a part. Since electronic mail can also be used to transfer reports and documents, this medium may tend to blur the distinction between informal communication (by, for example, telephone) and formal communication (letters).

The rules regarding party-access and general public access and the requirements put down in the general requirements specifications (see section 3 and (23, 24)) imply that there must be made a very clear distinction between informal electronic mail that is not subject to party or public access, and formal electronic mail that goes via the archives and is subject to the same rules as written letters. Such a distinction may, however, be quite artificial, since we know that people mix different issues in the same message (observed by, for example, Feldman (11)) and that there is a continuum of message-types and not two clearly distinct classes. Enforcing the distinction between formal and informal communication may thus prevent many natural uses of electronic mail, and as a consequence slow down or prevent effective use of electronic mail in inter-authority communication. Any implementation of this distinction must force the users to make up their minds every time they are going to send a message. To equip a messaging system with the appropriate facilities is not hard, but to make this work in practice will be difficult. We will either see practice that deviates from the intentions of the requirement or practice that suffers from a drastic and to some extent artificial distinction.

The quoted distinction between formal and informal electronic mail is therefore a too narrow reimplementation of the procedures with paper-based communication, and serves as an illustration that administrative procedures will not remain unchanged by technology.

Interorganisational CSCW

The problems related to support for informal communication are especially severe when considering interorganisational CSCW. Exchanges between different administrative bodies should normally be written, entered in the mail log and archived, etc. Thus such exchanges should be formal, irrespective of medium.

At the same time, much of the need for CSCW in public administration has to do with improved inter-authority co-ordination. This calls for better ways of co-operating across organisational boundaries, creating projects and relations of co-operation between people in different organisations. This will in many ways require a more informal style of work in inter-authority co-operation, as is customary in project-groups.

Within Norwegian public administration there is therefore a challenge in striking the right balance between adherence to formal rules for inter-authority communication and organising inter-authority co-operation in a sufficiently problem-oriented way. Traditionally physical distance and other context cues (like the cost of arranging a meeting) have kept the volume of close inter-authority co-operation down. Attempts to introduce CSCW in public administration will inevitably face this conflict. This may lead to requirements that are hard to meet (like the quoted requirement from (23, 24)). Another possible consequence is that the technical changes and derived reduction in the costs of inter-authority communication and co-operation will highlight various other kinds of resistance to such changes. We may thus experience that some actors start pursuing counterimplementation strategies (17) because they fear that the proposed technology changes 'territories' and power bases.

Members of inter-authority committees whom I have interviewed have stated that a major problem has been the lacking willingness of some committee members to go beyond the scope of their own administrative body in dealing with the problem at hand. Computer support for committees and projects may remove location and travel as practical obstacles to this kind of work, only to disclose that there are other and deeper problems in making the co-operation go smoothly.

Reuse of data

One important area of possible gains of inter-organisational computing in public administration is the exchange and reuse of data. This can be done independently of CSCW, but CSCW across organisational boundaries will create a push for general exchange of data, since it will make differences in data, definitions and interpretations more visible.

Privacy

The privacy of individuals can be compromised by such exchanges of information. There are therefore strict rules for such exchanges, and these rules can conceivably come in conflict with many obvious uses of CSCW (for example an electronic letter from one authority to another containing extracts of information from internal databases, or a desktop conference where participants from several authorities sit in their own offices and share applications belonging to one authority). Thus CSCW use may be seen as a threat to privacy.

Quality of data

Moreover, the differences in data-definitions, meaning of data, quality of data, and reasons for collecting data will pose strong limitations for how data can be reused. This will be felt in many kinds of inter-authority CSCW, and this will create a 'need' for stronger standardisation of the use of data, thus mixing CSCW up with large-scale attempts at streamlining public administration.

Incentives

In her study of the introduction of Lotus Notes, Orlikowski discusses several issues, one of them the lack of incentives to share data in the organisation she studied (21). In that organisation these problems were rooted in high competitiveness between the consultants and in lack of control of who uses the information made available to others. The latter point has to do with social context of passing a report onto somebody else. When that context is removed, there is an increased risk that the information is misinterpreted in an unfortunate way.

In public administration there is a need to be able to document the reasons for decisions. The use of shared documents and data in making decisions may therefore pose problems in terms of who is accountable for the decision. If we were to experience that a case-handler who had made some document available to others was made responsible for a decision he or she otherwise had no control of, the incentives for sharing data would clearly diminish drastically.

Security and authorisation

Today, the protection mechanisms in networks and systems are considered unsatisfactory by authorities possessing data of high sensitivity (health) or which could be subject to fraud (the revenue authorities). Such authorities are therefore inclined to refuse to connect to the same networks as other authorities, clearly making inter-authority CSCW hard.

The solution will have to be found in providing higher levels of security and authorisation, thus making many kinds of interconnection subject to control, logging, authorisation by password and other mechanisms, etc. This may, through this process of formalisation, result in obstacles for the use of CSCW to support informal organisation, simply because the informal contacts must be materialised in access rights and other explicit expressions.

Control over DP

Today, control over data processing (DP) in Norwegian public administration has been delegated to the different authorities. It is up to each authority to find solutions which fit its specific needs. This delegation of responsibility has also been seen as desirable for the successful uptake of IT: the different authorities should see DP as a part of their ordinary work. As an unfortunate result, co-located branches of different authorities may have totally incompatible solutions. Such incompatibilities may make even the simplest kind of inter-authority CSCW hard.

As a result, the dissemination of CSCW gets mixed up in a discussion of where the locus of control over DP should be. This is a highly political game, with many actors and many interests involved. One issue is the establishment of a common infrastructure. Such an infrastructure is about to be defined ('Infrastrukturprogrammet'), but to get it implemented requires sufficient authority at a central, co-ordinating level. Moreover, there is a need to find ways to pay for this infrastructure. Until now each authority has paid its own DP-expenses. It will be hard to reach agreement about how to split the costs of a common infrastructure. This can possibly be dealt with by central subsidies to such infrastructure, so that each authority will have economic incentives for adherence to established standards.

Political control

In a democracy, political control over public administration is a central objective. One way to achieve this is the use of a strong hierarchy within each authority. CSCW is associated with autonomy and a focus on lateral instead of vertical integration, which may lead to the development of subcultures and informal networks that are hard to manage. Management by formulating goals is one solution to this problem, but this solution may in many cases conflict with political desires to be able to dictate solutions in specific cases.

Conclusion

The exploitation of CSCW in public administration will not be easy. The implications and assumptions of CSCW may be in conflict with the tradition and context of public administration in several ways. Most of these problems are related to the use of CSCW for the support of co-operation between different authorities.

These problems are not created by CSCW, they are problems in the structure of public administration itself, where some goals call for strict hierarchical control (i.e. political control, equality before the law), while others call for distribution and delegation of power (i.e. inter-authority co-ordination, effectiveness, flexibility). In this way CSCW highlights the contradictions in sticking to traditional rules and values of public administration on the one hand and the need to exploit technology effectively and efficiently on the other hand. The case has been made that CSCW technology is associated with assumptions about organisational practice, and that the validity of these assumptions differs between sectors and countries.

It is not obvious how one should handle the contradiction between CSCW-possibilities (and other possibilities) and administrative practices. One position is that technology should not be allowed to influence administrative practice, and that the adoption of technology should be entirely demand driven. The strength of such a position is that it emphasises that politics comes before technology, and that there is no technological determinism for the development of public administration.

I claim that this position is not sustainable for two reasons:

For these reasons I claim that public administration is subject to a limited kind of technological determinism, that technologies which enable radically better or cheaper ways of organising the administration will win through. The associated changes in practice will not be without conflict, and we will probably observe that changes in practice will transpire faster than changes in corresponding laws, rules and regulations.

Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Research Council of Norway (Culture and Society) through the Otello-project (4). Valuable comments were received from David Hakken, Peter Holmes and Anatol Holt.

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