Computers, Communications, and Public Policy Report of a Workshop at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, August 14-18, 1978 (1981) / Chapter Skim
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SOME KEY ISSUES IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
SOME KEY ISSUES IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
Pages 78-97
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From page 78... ...
Although the federal government is the nation's largest consumer of computing and telecommunications equipment and services, the level and proficiency of use by individual agencies varies enormously. A recent study by the President's Reorganization Project during the Carter Administration cites many examples of obsolete and unnecessarily costly data processing operations,1 and other related studies have pointed to major deficiencies in facilities planning and procurement.
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From page 79... ...
As to the first, both the President's Reorganization Project and the House Appropriations Committee investigative staff have recently evaluated the processes by which the federal government acquires computer-based information technology. Their reports are in substantial agreement with concerns expressed by the General Accounting Office in reports issued over the past few years.1*
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From page 80... ...
As to management education, the second area in which improvements are needed, common sense suggests that key decisions affecting an agency's acquisition and use of computer-based information technology should be made by senior managers with a broad view of organizational objectives and needs. Such decisions should be made in close association with the agency's other management planning decisions and should be systematically evaluated with a view to reducing costs, countering the effects of inflation, increasing productivity, and improving services.
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From page 81... ...
In recent years, moreover, the legal and social policy issues surrounding efforts to prevent unwarranted intrusions on personal privacy have had an especially strong influence on agency acquisition and utilization practices and, in fact, have stymied, for good or ill, a great number of proposed system procurements. THE AUTHORITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY DIMENSIONS OF THE PERSONAL PRIVACY ISSUE As indicated in Chapter I, applications of computer-based information technology are believed by some to be capable of changing the balance of power both between organizations and individuals and among organizations themselves.
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From page 82... ...
Although there are many situations in which this could conceivably occur, one need not look beyond the "McCarthy" era and the "Watergate" years, for worrisome real-life examples. In the Tax Reform Act of 1976,10 some of these disclosure policy issues were squarely addressed with respect to the information individuals divulge about themselves to the Internal Revenue Services (IRS)
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From page 83... ...
As indicated, these concerns about mission expansion are also believed to have some potentially important structural and managerial dimensions. In the law enforcement area, for example, there is concern about whether a Federally sponsored or managed system for the exchange of criminal history information among federal, state, and local law enforcement entities will, in undesirable ways, augment the federal government's ability to influence the way law enforcement missions are performed at the regional, state, and local levels.11 Then, too, there are those who believe that giving any federal agency effective control over an information system essential to the states is a potentially undesirable step toward augmenting unnecessarily the power of the national government.
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From page 84... ...
The state agency, before issuing the license, uses the technology to query a data bank maintained by a federal agency to which other states regularly contribute information about license applicants. The query produces a "hit"; that is, a message from the federal agency that the applicant previously applied in another state and was rejected for some specified reason.
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From page 85... ...
How might a nationwide network of automated record keeping systems to support the administration of federal and state social welfare programs be designed so as to assure that an individual's record is maintained according to fair information practices and its confidentiality is well protected? Does it make any difference whether the records pertaining to identifiable individuals in such a network are maintained locally or centrally, and, in either case, are there special kinds of accountability safeguards that should be considered indispensable?
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From page 86... ...
Overlap among agency programs suggests a need for much more interagency information sharing than occurs today. This is particularly true where agencies could benefit from evaluating related statistical data about the same populations, the same geographic areas, the same products, or the same industries.
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From page 87... ...
Should the government, in effect, compete with private industry in developing information gathering and retrieval services? As indicated in Chapter IV, the federal government's failure to develop a firm policy about commercial versus publicly funded services has adversely affected its relation with other countries.15 Domestically, however, one can also identify similarly attractive opportunities that are being foregone for want of a clear understanding as to whether privately developed and marketed information gathering and retrieval services will end up competing with ones government establishes.
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From page 88... ...
The President's Reorganization Project concluded that the acquisition process has a number of deficiencies.16 Some of its conclusions would benefit from more in-depth study and independent validation. In addition, a study should be inaugurated to determine whether the current procedures for procuring computer-based information technology are an impediment to improving agency effectiveness and to assess the potential impact of the changes called for in the Reorganization Project's reports and related reports.
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From page 89... ...
Thus, to facilitate the interchange of knowledge and experience between federal agencies and their state and local counterparts, public-sector managers with adequate background to make good decisions will be essential.17 Policy Research Focussed on Assuring High-Quality Technical Support In addition to management competence, technical support competence is much needed. The areas in which much stronger technical support seems to be called for include: • Application modelling and evaluation; • Analysis of system costs and benefits; • Data management: provision for interchange and shared usage; • Networking and control of distributed applications; • Software development and test techniques; • System performance description, monitoring, and analysis; • Evaluation of technical trends and costs associated with policies (on standards and leasing, for example)
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From page 90... ...
One of the more familiar ones is the "federal-state information system" in which users in different political jurisdictions share access to a centrally managed repository of records or data. Another is the conventional data processing service bureau in which public and private organizations share centrally managed computing capacity.
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From page 91... ...
Documenting, analyzing, and evaluating, through a series of case studies, the ways in which existing and proposed networking applications of computerbased information technology have altered or been deemed capable of altering established patterns of institutional authority and accountability; (2) Documenting, analyzing, and evaluating, through a series of case studies, the kinds of institutional objectives, concerns, and conflicts that shape the ways networking applications of computer-based information technology are proposed, developed, and implemented in the public sector; (3)
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From page 92... ...
In addition, the issue of whether or how the federal government and the private sector might divide or otherwise share responsibility for making the federal government's information resources more readily accessible to users at state and local levels of government, in the private sector and among the public generally, deserves to be thoroughly explored. Plainly, a key question to be considered is whether any new arrangement to encourage interagency sharing of information should be designed so as to make the shared information also available to users outside the government.
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From page 93... ...
Government Printing Office, 1977; GAO Report No. FGMSD-77-14 and reports of several other studies carried out by the Automatic Data Processing group of GAO's Financial
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From page 94... ...
Department of Commerce) , 1979, which presents statistical data on the numbers of computers installed in the Federal government and in specific federal agencies; the dollar values of computers installed; federal ADP costs by agencies; federal computers by acquisition date; and federal ADP work years.
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From page 95... ...
16. President's Reorganization Project, Federal Data Processing Reorganization Study: Harris G
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From page 96... ...
Privacy Protection Study Commission, Personal Privacy in an Information Society, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office)
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