Making IT Better Expanding Information Technology Research to Meet Society's Needs (2000) / Chapter Skim
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Research Motivated by Social Applications of Information Technology
Research Motivated by Social Applications of Information Technology
Pages 142-194
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From page 142... ...
As IT continues to move from the relatively simple realm of back-office transactions processing and personal productivity-enhancement tools into less specialized, mass-market contexts that support electronic commerce (e-commerce) , delivery of government services, and personal interactions, the set of problems that motivates IT research is continuing to change.
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From page 143... ...
The third section discusses ways in which interdisciplinary research can play an important role in this arena and identifies some initial steps in this direction. lust as scientific computing has benefited from closer interaction between technologists and natural scientists, so can the more-social applications of IT deployed today benefit from collaboration between technologists and social scientists (including experts in law and business as well as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics)
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From page 144... ...
With continued research, development, and deployment, IT systems could enable users to routinely access information of many types (text, images, video, etc.) from any location, participate in continuing education programs from the home or office, shop at their convenience, work from home rather than commute to a central office, consult with medical practitioners remotely, or access government services and receive government benefits electronically.
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Consider, for example, the systems used in e-commerce or air traffic control. In both of these cases, the interactions among IT, people, and organizational structures are fundamental to system performance.
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Another example is air traffic control. Advances in technology have produced a fundamental change in the way these systems are conceptualized and designed, moving away from a centralized command-and-control model that controls all aspects of an aircraft's flight plan to a system known as free flight, which will give individual pilots greater autonomyand more information on which to base judgments (Wald, 2000~.
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From page 147... ...
that could be used on individual computers without networking or pursued independently of other applications have had important interactions with job definitions and human relationships within organizations.3 Social scientists studying such applications have reported on changes in status, hierarchy, work flow, job design, job satisfaction, productivity, and so on, all of which have contributed to ideas for enhancing early applications and evolving new ones.4 Some of these ideas have contributed to computer science in arenas such as human-computer interaction (MCI, which includes the design of interfaces between people and systems and the design of systems for computer-supported cooperative work) , but compared to the opportunities emerging now, those instances of interdisciplinary research are too few and too isolated.5 The evolution of HCI is a promising indicator that progress is possible if social applications are addressed through IT research that draws on multiple disciplines: the subdisciplines "form intertwined roots in computer graphics, operating systems, human factors, ergonomics, industrial engineering, cognitive psychology, and the systems part of computer science" and draw from "supporting knowledge on both the machine and the human side" (ACM, 1992~.
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From page 148... ...
Both processes focus on the role of individual users and organizations as major players in social applications. RESEARCH CHALLENGES IN SOCIAL APPLICATIONS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Social applications of IT can motivate research on a range of questions as broad as the applications themselves, with the questions reflecting the particular circumstances in which specific applications are deployed.
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RESEARCH MOTIVATED BY SOCIAL APPLICATIONS 149 that could be addressed if social applications were to play a more significant role in motivating IT research. Group Applications An important feature of social applications and their context is that they involve people as members of groups.
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As the nation shifts from an industrial to an information economy (Shapiro and Varian, 1998) , the role of physical assets as a source of competitive advantage is diminishing.
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From page 151... ...
and supply chain management (integration of business processes across businesses with supplier/customer relationships)
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One certain result would be a further change in the nature and impact of government, which like businesses and other organizations is itself affected by the use of IT. Finally, e-commerce is redefining the business processes that span traditional administrative and organizational boundaries (Davenport, 1993)
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From page 153... ...
For example, security practices limiting access to a system may need to incorporate different override features depending, for example, on whether the system is being used to transfer funds between banks or to allow a doctor emergency access to a patient's medical record. Common Challenges Despite the diversity in social applications and the IT systems that support them, there are common elements, and they can motivate research that could inform the development of all such systems.
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From page 154... ...
System-Specific Research In addition to research in generic areas of concern such as those listed above, IT research can address more specific application contexts as well. The purpose, again, is to inform the research on IT by considering realistic needs and contexts, with the goal of molding the technology to be more powerful, effective, and secure.~3 There are important reasons for doing this.
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To what extent is the definition of flexibility itself flexible? By examining particular application domains, researchers can answer such questions with greater specificity, and the results may be more immediately useful.
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Generic research addresses issues such as group dynamics, decision making, collaboration, enjoyment and satisfaction, and competition and looks at how they apply to and can be mediated in social applications. Generic research could also address how technology can be molded to help in balancing economic benefits to organizations against the rights or quality of life of individuals.
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From page 157... ...
New Research Teams The tight linkages between the technical and nontechnical components of sociotechnical systems mean that effective research will have to draw on a broad range of constituencies, much as work in civil engineering is influenced by architects, urban planners, and transportation engineers (Box 4.2~. Technology researchers, social scientists, and domain experts will have to work together to identify and solve problems related to the social applications of IT.
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Clearly, a great deal of valuable research can be performed in these four categories. Much of the research agenda discussed in Chapter 3 can be cast into the first category, as can the research into component technologies that can and should be pursued (discussed in Chapter 1~.
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Research that examines the impact of IT on society and the economy is certainly needed, but equally important is research on the impact that application contexts have on IT development and software development methodologies as a part of the larger process of application conceptualization and refinement. New science and engineering may arise from such research.
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by collaborating with researchers who have the appropriate domain expertise or expertise in disciplines directly relevant to the domain. Where the goal is to advance both the technologies and the ways of addressing application domain challenges, interdisciplinary research collaboration is generally needed.
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Such an expansion is necessary if research motivated by social applications is to grow without crowding out existing research on components. The well-publicized and expensive failures of IT in end-user organizations also make a compelling case for the expansion of research funding from all sources, including the government.
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DIG 1T BETTER attention on social applications of I1 to a much greater extent Man would o~er~1se be expected. Engaging end users more direcHy in I1 research MU not be easy.
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Professor Wes Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University has referred to this characteristic as "absorptive capacity." Consortia in e-commerce or medical informatics, for example, would not succeed if banks or health maintenance organizations did not have their own internal research operations under way. Accordingly, one element of a larger strategy would be to try to increase the amount of direct R&D conducted by firms that use IT systems.
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64 MAKING IT BETTER nal problems and challenges worthy of research, and also in identifying individuals who can convey those challenges to external researchers. In other words, they are matchmakers, putting together internal and external resources and facilitating access to internal facilities for empirical research activities.
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From page 165... ...
The Digital Government program, for example, uses the NSF as an intermediary to fund IT research addressing the medium- to long-term R&D and experimental deployment needs of federal agencies. The program requires at least one government agency to be "significantly involved in defining and executing the research" and requires recipients of grants to integrate into their projects experts in domains that are primarily or exclusively associated with government.
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Industry Internships and Sabbaticals Another means of increasing the linkages between industry end users and academic researchers is industry internships and sabbaticals. Such programs can help ensure that academic researchers develop an understanding of the challenges faced by end-user organizations (and vendors)
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Because few end-user organizations (or systems integrators) have large research operations, they do not have a tradition of supporting interns in IT, nor do students view internships with such organizations as furthering their research careers.
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Nontraditional research mechanisms may be needed that will encourage the participation of enduser organizations in research, broaden the outlook of IT researchers, and/or overcome disciplinary boundaries in universities. The management of interdisciplinary research collaborations generates its own set of issues: technologists and social scientists have different vocabularies, methodologies, time perspectives, standards of evidence, and so on.
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RE=~^ ~~D By SOC6[ IS 169 ~sues. Each of these approaches has its avenges and Weaknesses.
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In addition, an increasing number of faculty members with computer science degrees are appearing in other departments across campuses, particularly in information sciences and business. They are involving themselves in application areas such as digital libraries and e-commerce, focusing on both the social and technical aspects and collaborating with economists and legal specialists.
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By creating institutions with permanently assigned faculty, these schools and departments can develop curricula and teach classes more effectively than is generally possible if faculty are scattered throughout multiple academic departments. Limited funding is another obstacle to greater interdisciplinary work at universities on the social applications of IT.
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, information policy and public policy Community technology, information economy, electronic work, digital libraries, archives and record management, human-computer interaction, information economics, management, and policy, library and information science social applications) has come largely from NSF.
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As a result, only a small subset of the issues that need to be addressed is represented in ongoing research projects, and the technological aspects of the program are directed at component technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence and agents) rather than the large-scale social applications.
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, a bold experiment in fostering cross-disciplinary research inspired by social applications of IT that originated within the CISE directorate and the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) directorate.
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The NSF's Information Technology Research (ITR) initiative calls for research in several areas of IT that could be relevant to the problems identified in this chapter, including human-computer interfaces, information management, and the social and economic implications of IT.25 Its budget for the initiative was $90 million in FYOO, to be used to support a mix of small (about $150,000 per year)
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Xerox Corporation, for example, has long kept social science researchers on the staff of its Palo Alto Research Center to help understand how people interact with IT systems in a variety of organizational settings. The work of the social scientists has been credited with improving the usability of Xerox copiers and streamlining internal processes for disseminating the knowledge of field service technicians (Bell et al., 1997~.
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Time must pass before the program's effectiveness can be more rigorously evaluated. Multidisciplinary Research Centers The notion of interdisciplinary academic departments is realistic in the sense that similar organizations already exist, in the form of multidisciplinary research centers that involve technologists, social scientists, and end users.
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A previous report by the National Academy of Sciences (1987) describes the benefits of the center mode of research as follows: Centers contribute to science by enabling researchers to accomplish challenging, longer term projects that they could not undertake at all or as efficiently as individual investigators because of the need for stable support, large facilities or support teams, or simply the need to bring together diverse experiences and expertise.
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In addition to those factors, multidisciplinary research centers for the social applications of IT might want to consider the following: · Focus A center might need to focus on a particular application domain or a particular set of generic problems, such as e-commerce, medical informatics, or privacy. · Broad range of participants To ensure that the centers conduct research motivated by social and economic needs as well as a desire for fundamental advances, they may need to link researchers from universities with industry vendors and experts from user organizations, including both companies and government agencies.
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. or more applied fields" (NAS-NAEIOM, 1996~.29 Others have noted that the center mode of research is necessary to conduct large-scale, complex, interdisciplinary research such as that of an STC, and that the universities hosting STCs are removing traditional barriers between academic disciplines and are combating the biases against interdisciplinary work.
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Collaboration is an integral part of the center mode of research, but it must be nurtured, because most academic researchers are accustomed to working individually or in small teams.32 Lack of suitable leadership can undermine the value of a center. Embedding Information Technology Research in Other Disciplines As computing and communications have become embedded in many social applications, the role of computing in some disciplines other than computer science and engineering has changed and expanded.
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From page 186... ...
· lust as they have added expertise in mathematics and economics to other disciplines, universities could hire faculty members with strong backgrounds in computing for other departments, in part so that they could develop discipline-specific courses and teaching materials in the application of IT. Initially, many of these faculty members would probably have computer science degrees and work experience in a particular application domain; typical combinations might include business and transportation IT, computing embedded in mechanical systems, and so on.
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From page 187... ...
Unfortunately, such growth often comes at the expense of other engineering disciplines, even though many of those disciplines continue to be vibrant and challenging and offer excellent job opportunities. EXPANDING THE SCOPE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH The research programs described in this chapter are initial forays into the social applications of IT.
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1999. Summary of a Workshop on Information Technology Research for Crisis Management.
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1995. National Science Foundation's Science and Technology Centers: Building an Interdisciplinary Research Paradigm.
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One example is remote conferencing, which is intended to reproduce and improve on face-to-face meetings or voice-only teleconferencing as a means for group interaction. In business, enterprise resource planning applications are intended to improve standard business processes such as human resources, finance, and sales, building on a history of more focused multifaceted systems for manufacturing resource planning.
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Some of the problems and solutions were common to those found elsewhere, but even some of those had domainspecific requirements, as evidenced by a project participant's observation that some of crisis management technology was like "digital libraries with deadlines." 14. It must be emphasized that social applications research is about technology as well as social, economic, and political systems.
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16. The Digital Government program is administered by the Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering (CISE)
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25. Indeed, the purpose of NSF's ITR program is to "enhance the value of information technology for everyone." The complete list of areas in which NSF is soliciting proposals under the ITR program is as follows: software, IT education and workforce, humancomputer interface, information management, advanced computational science, scalable information infrastructure, social and economic implications of IT, and revolutionary computing.
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32. The Abt Associates evaluation of the STC program was even more favorable than the COSEPUP report.
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