Decision Support in Public Administration

The vast flow of information to be considered by policy and decision makers in national and local governments is continuing to expand during the 1990s, whilst budgets for staff to process the information are being tightened. This publication provides a forum for the examination of the problem. It aims to focus the efforts of researchers and practitioners more effectively in applying information technology to increase the performance of decision makers in public administration despite the limited resources. Topics explored include the following: design considerations and approaches for, and practical experiences with, communication and information processing infrastructure and applications at the workplace level; the design and implementation of support systems for individual or group decision making in governmental and municipal settings; modelling and model management techniques, based on case reports of successful and unsuccessful modelling efforts; concepts, approaches and models for re-designing tasks and processes in public administration; issues and challenges in integrating the information systems of several governmental bodies. The book is divided into two parts for the discussion of these themes - the first section deals primarily with theoretical and conceptual issues; the second part contains papers with a stronger emphasis on systems, their functionality and experiences in their development and application. The authors' affiliations (17 organizations from 8 different countries) indicates the international nature of the contributions. The ideas put forward in their papers show that research into supporting decision making in public administration is well on its way but that the research area is vast, with yet many hills to scale.