Implementation in a Wired World: Obstacles to Facilitating Information-Sharing Procedures in North-Central Alabama

ABSTRACT Information Sharing (IS) among public and nonprofit organizations is quintessential for making meaningful decisions that serve the greater needs of 21st Century citizens. Unlike more traditional areas of public activity, IS does not constitute a public policy enacted by elected leaders. Rather, IS represents an inter-agency agreement over information technology (IT) procedure and processes. Consequently this makes the implementation of IS somewhat unique yet increasingly common in the new century. Based on examination of 35 agencies in north central Alabama, this study examines factors which tend to facilitate and hinder the implementation of IS procedures. INTRODUCTION Manual Castells' (1996) identifies 'informationalism' as the new form of social organization in which information generation, processing and transmission become the fundamental resources of productivity and power in society. The proliferation of public sector information technology (IT) gives new insights to Castell's thesis; linking information management, access and dissemination directly to public managers' decision-making processes. Perhaps the most important aspect of the IT movement has been the renewed interest in sharing information among public agencies (Dawes, 1996; Dawes, et. al., 1999; Landsbergen and Wolken, 2001; Haque, 2001). This interest is sparked by high-speed information technologies, and is predicated on the promise of better decision-making through sharing of information and data beyond individual agency jurisdiction. Given the differences among agencies, however, it is unclear as to how information sharing (IS) procedures can have a meaningful impact on the lives of citizens. The so-called "fourth generation technologies" (Landsbergen and Wolken, 2001) offer greater capacity to improve governmental decision-making by incorporating discrete data and information into one comprehensive form. While these innovations provide much hope for IS, they do so not without the prospect of challenges surfacing during the implementation stage of the procedures (Haque, 2001). The purpose of this study is to assess the implementation of information sharing procedures, using agencies in north central Alabama as a case study. INTERGOVERNMENTAL INFORMATION SHARING PROCEDURES While most governmental agencies were created to respond to particular crisis, new policy approaches are quite complex and require coordinated efforts across multiple agency jurisdictions. Information residing in one agency could be critical for another agency's decision-making -a fact that has been greatly acknowledged in recent times after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C. (Schwartz, 2001; Stahl, 2001). As envisioned by Lawrence O'Toole, "successful policy execution must incorporate joint or shared decision making among formally independent organizational units" (1993, p. 234). Effective governance requires the capacity of the public service to leverage information (Kraemer and King, 1986), knowledge and technology across jurisdictions to provide integrated responses to complex social problems (Dawes, 1996). Information sharing (IS) avoids duplicate data collection, processing and storage, and thereby increases productivity and reduces the overall cost of operating cost. On an organizational level, cooperative IS arrangements improve the quality of decision- making and increases the quantity and availability of data. IS procedures depend upon the establishment of a central data repository (Dawes, 1999; Landsbergen and Wolken, 2001) which functions as a traditional clearinghouse and a catalyst in attracting agencies and citizens into one single IT arena where they can converse with one another through the use of a common and integrated language. Unlike more traditional areas of public activity, IS does not constitute a formal public policy enacted by elected officials and implemented by third-party bureaucrats. …