Blurred partitions but thicker walls

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 1: 277-293, 1993. �9 1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 277

Blurred Partitions but Thicker Walls Involving Citizens in Computer Supported Cooperative Work for Public Administration

I. S N E L L E N I & S. W Y A T T 2. I Erasmus University/Universily of Leiden, Vakgroep Bestuurskunde, PB 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands; 2 Department of lnnovation Studies, University of East London, Maryland House, Manbey Park Road, London El5 1EY, United Kingdom.* author for correspondence

Abstract . In this paper, we explore public administration as a site of use for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) applications, and outline the particular opportunities and challenges that CSCW and public administration pose for each other. We argue that public administrations in modern democratic societies are in both their organizational structures and their activities subservient to legal and political norms in a way that is different from private organizations; therefore, public administration cannot slavishly emulate CSCW applications that have proven themselves in a private context. Public administrations have to assess forms of CSCW in the light of the normative structure that is specific for them.

We argue that "the introduction of CSCW will further the tendencies to bureaucratisation and skew power biases towards public administration and away from the citizen. We give evidence for this contention on the basis of a comparison of different national attempts to introduce CSCW in Social Security offices in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden. Although each of these countries is inspired by different ideals about the relationship between state and citizen in the social security sector, the influence of CSCW in all three cases goes in the same direction.

Key words. CSCW, public sector, social security, the Netherlands, UK, Sweden, bureaucracy, citizen participation

1. Introduction

Modern public administrations are still structured according to the principles of differentiation and integration of functions as Max Weber worked out in the ideal-type of bureaucracry. The massive introduction of information technology has strengthened these ideal-typical characteristics of bureaucracy in public administrations as Frissen (1989) made clear and has fortified existing dominant power relationships (Kraemer and King 1976).

An important question is whether Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) will further the tendencies to bureaucratisation and skew power biases and whether such tendencies require specific measures to counterbalance such one-sidedness of CSCW. Our contention is that this is indeed the case. We shall try to give evidence for this contention on the basis of a comparison of different national attempts to introduce CSCW in Social Security offices in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden. Although each of these countries is inspired by different ideals about the relationship between state and citizen in the social security sector, the influence of CSCW in all three cases goes in the

278 L SNELLEN & S. WYATT

same direction. The consequences of CSCW for public administration need to be considered more carefully.

Until now, however, CSCW has been studied primarily in the context of production and service organizations. For many people the main attraction of CSCW studies is simply that the monopoly of technical approaches to designing and understanding computer applications for work situations is being challenged by social scientific approaches. As a result, some expect a better understanding of the social influences of applications which may facilitate or hinder the effectiveness and efficiency of computerized organizational arrangements. They focus their attention on social constructionist dimensions of CSCW realisations: on cognitive aspects of cooperation and of human-machine interactions in a social context; on interdependency in work flow processes and functional chains within and between productive organisations; on the tension between local autonomy and shared work (Stasz and Bikson 1986). Schmidt (1991) identifies the issues explored by CSCW as follows: 'How can computer systems assist cooperating ensembles in developing and exercising horizontal coordination, local control, mutual adjustment, critique and debate, self organization?' (p. 5) This could be termed an 'insider' approach to CSCW, where design and development of viable socio-tecbnical systems for cooperation occupy the terrain.

In this paper, we attempt to develop an 'outsider' approach to CSCW. (We recognise that this attempt will not necessarily be greeted with great acclaim by the CSCW community.) We argue that CSCW studies fail in two respects. First, they do not take into account the nature of the organisations in which CSCW applications have to find their place. A review of the papers presented at recent CSCW conferences in Europe and North America indicates that the specific nature of an organization in which CSCW has to be realized is rarely explored in any systematic or critical way.

Secondly, they focus exclusively on the possibilities of using CSCW for improving cooperation within organisations. But such improved cooperation internally may impair cooperative and co-productive relationships with stake- holders outside the organisation, such as clients.

For the purposes of our argument, specific CSCW applications such as Coor- dinator and Chaos (cited in de Cindio et al. 1986), Cognoter (Foster and Stefik 1986), Domino (Kreifelts et al. 1991) and Object Lens (Lai and Malone 1988) do not need to be discussed in detail. All of them represent an insider perspective and raise issues and problems of an internal cognitive, organisational and technological nature.

In this paper, we explore public administration as a site of use for CSCW applications, and outline the particular opportunities and challenges that CSCW and public administration pose for each other. We argue that public administrations in modern democratic societies are in both their organizational structures and their activities subservient to legal and political norms in a way that is different from private organizations; therefore, public administration cannot slavishly

INVOLVING CITIZENS IN COMPUTER SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK 279

emulate CSCW applications that have proven themselves in a private context. Public administrations have to assess forms of CSCW in the light of the normative structure that is specific for them.

Public administrations are defined as those bureaucracies, authorities, agencies or, in general, those administrative apparatuses based on constitutional principles and which consist of bureaucratic officials, including the political heads under whom and for the purpose of whom they function. In this definition, the legal and political normative aspects of public administration come clearly to the fore.

We have defined CSCW rather loosely. In the CSCW research community, there is no consensus about its content or definition. A strict definition requires multiple human agents and system agents working together with a high level of interdependence, without fixed hierarchical positions. (De Greef et al. 1991, p. 1) The requirement for system agents suggests a level of autonomy on the part of the technology that could only be realised with the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Such a strict definition would reduce the field of application of CSCW in public administration (and in other areas) to a few exceptional cases. AI applications in public administration are still rare. Examples of such AI applications are limited to some so-called expert systems, or knowledge based systems, which are mainly used to assess and process allowances, benefits and taxes. These systems are more characterized by the expert system technology that is used in their production than by the expert knowledge and expert ways of reasoning implied in them. In previous work, we did not come across examples of AI support of cooperative work in these so-called expert systems. (see Snellen, van de Donk, Baquiast 1989; Snellen 1991). For the purposes of this paper, therefore, a broader definition of CSCW is most appropriate. Such a definition would contain the following elements: - - work by multiple active subjects, - - sharing a common object, and - - supported by information technology (Kuutti 1991). As a field of study, CSCW may be characterised as Hughes et al. (1991) have done: - - it involves a setting where two or more people interact with each other via a

computer - - it is to do with a particular class of system to service such settings - - it is interdisciplinary. The authors stress the interesting problems posed for sociological participation which, as we stated above, is for many people the attraction of challenging the technical monopoly in this field.

2. C S C W a n e s s e n t i a l n e e d o f p u b l i c a d m i n i s t r a t i o n n e t w o r k s

Public administration does not exist for itself. It exists to prepare and execute the policies of its political masters. During a long process of modernization, public

2 8 0 I. SNELLEN & S. WYATT

administrations have obtained a certain kind and degree of independence with respect both to their political masters as well as to their client populations. The term "bureaucracy" itself implies such a kind and degree of independence, meaning literally "governance by bureaus of officials".

Between each other, however, public administrations have a high degree of dependence. As welfare states have become active in more and more sectors of society, they are confronted by the interdependencies of those sectors. A policy developed for one sector, for example recreation, will have echo-effects in other sectors, such as the industrial, educational, environmental, agricultural and cultural sectors. A government that takes care of all these sectors ideally will try to maintain a certain consistency in all relevant policies. To do so requires much coordination and heightens the interdependencies between public authorities.

Normally, councils of ministers and government programmes, agreed upon before or after elections, are the integrating frameworks for the diverse perspec- tives of contending public authorities. Notwithstanding such integrating frameworks, public administration as such is neither an hierarchical structure nor is it a unified whole. Different semi-autonomous authorities at the same layer of government have to come to terms with each other by "horizontal agreement". Vertical agreements between layers of government may also be necessary, especially where local authorities play an important role in the implementation of central policies. Even within authorities (quasi) agreements between departments or bureaux may be required to achieve a common policy result.

The semi-autonomy of the different parts of public administration must be emphasized. Public administration is not a unified whole; not even in a country like Japan which in the West we have a tendency to speak of as "Japan Incor- porated". Many authorities have their own democratic foundation in elections, their own legally attributed powers, their own view on the requirements of general well being; cooperation is therefore not a matter of course.

Hierarchical models of policy formation are in most situations of public policy not applicable because most authorities rely on their own democratic legitimation (elections and political programs) and their own constituencies. Computer support by common information systems or telematic data exchange may therefore require explicit legal regulations or political agreements.

In view of these circumstances, a wider definition of CSCW as referred to above is especially apt for public administrations. A multiplicity of active agents sharing at least a partly common object is a normal feature in public administration. As the next section illustrates, the agents can be supported in their common endeavour by different kinds of information technology (IT) applications.

The different agents that have to work together may be located at different layers of government (national, state or provincial, local), in different ministries or agencies and even within the same public authority (as departments or bureaus). The norms that at one and the same time have to be taken into account


in reaching a cooperative result will be political, legal, economic (budgetary) and professional. In fully fledged public bureaucracies the guarding of these norms will be functionally divided between different interdependent bureaus. Through a complex system of putting "initials" on documents, bureaucratic consensus formation and cooperation are sealed. Computer applications have been developed to guide this process.

The cases we shall examine in this paper correspond to the essential characteristics of cooperative work as identified by Bannon and Schmidt (1989): - - a more or less shared information space - - shared responsibilities - - work processes that are related in content - - diverse modes of interaction, indirect as well as direct and distributed as well

as collective. We avoid a technological bias in our approach through our emphasis on specific CSCW realisations. The cases which are discussed below are not simple instances of shared databases. The database users in our examples do have a common object of work, such as a client in need of subsistence benefits. They participate in a shared community with its own rules, regulations and culture and its own division of labour (Kuutti 1991).

3. C S C W i n c o r p o r a t e d in IT S y s t e m s

Cooperation is a basic necessity in most policy making and policy implementation activities of public administration. IT applications play an important role in this cooperation. In public administration the following categories of IT applications can be distinguished: 1. Basic registration of demographic, economic and other social data in data-

bases, which have a general purpose function for the different parts of public administration (and sometimes also for the public at large).

2. Basic registration of developments within organizations which are (subsidized) clients of any public authority, such as educational establishments, welfare organizations, homes for the elderly, public building societies, hospitals, etc.

3. Transaction registratiori of clients or client groups of public organizations or publicly subsidized private organizations. Although most of the registered data is privacy-sensitive data, exchange may take place for purposes of fraud detection or improved customer service.

4. Knowledge-based systems such as processing systems, advisory systems and expert systems which are developed for the execution of policies. Quite likely these knowledge based systems will expand enormously in future public administration. Many policy implementations require massive amounts of decisions based on complex reasoning combined with tedious calculations.

282 I. SNELLEN & & W Y A T T

With the development of networks such as the US FTS2000, the UK Government Data Network and the "European Nervous System", public administration could become much more dispersed geographically, as databases can be accessed and communication more generally can be conducted over large distances.

4. Specific requirements for CSCW in public administration

The new forms of cooperation which are inspired or facilitated by these IT applications generally improve the quality of work and working conditions of the officials who make use of them. Boundaries between organizations may become permeable, partitions between departments and bureaus within public authorities may be razed, highly differentiated and fragmented tasks may be replaced by enriched and more integrated tasks.

The focus of CSCW research has tended to be mainly on intra- and inter- organizational cooperation. The advantages for the organizations and the officials are emphasized or assumed. This is in itself inadequate, as too little attention has been paid to the social relations of production into which CSCW is being introduced. It is certainly too narrow and ill-guided a focus for public administration.

Especially for public administrative purposes, computer support has to be aimed at cooperation between public official and client to achieve a result that is desirable from a political, legal and/or policy point of view. Public administration has to avoid forms of computer supported cooperative work within and between public offices that are harmful for computer supported cooperation between official and client. It may, on the contrary, aim to stimulate those forms which favor the "co-production" between official and client. Our contention is that CSCW as an academic and practical effort has to broaden its scope beyond the working environment, especially when relationships between the public administration and the citizen are at stake.

For example, until now, the discussion about Robinson's (1989) 'double level languages' centres upon the need for a separate language through which task allocations and articulations can be negotiated. To create facilities for co-production between officials and citizens, the latter have to be co-opted within a second language community in which negotiations relevant to them can take place. For the citizen, the situation of being excluded from the first level language of bureaucratic forms and governmental databasess is aggravated by the exclusion from or even absence of a second level language community between the public administration and the citizen. In this respect, CSCW runs counter to modem attempts in public administration to improve the conditions for citizenship by adaptation of public practices and procedures.

Through the following examples, which are based on secondary analysis, we shall try to substantiate the claim that the emphasis on the relationship between


forms of intra- and inter-organizational CSCW has ignored and reduced the potential for clients to play a productive role. The first example is based on 1the doctoral dissertation of A. Scheepers (1991) on "Informatization and the Bureaucratic Competence of the Citizen". The second example is based on a paper entitled, "The Whole Person as legal, bureaucratic and I.T. concept" (Snellen and Wyatt 1990). The third example is provided by a recent article about the social security system in Sweden (Ingelstam and Palmlund 199 I). All three are concerned with the provision of social security benefits: where relationships between citizens and public administrations are integral to the process.

4.1. CSCW IN DUTCH SOCIAL SECURITY OFFICES

Social security offices in the Netherlands are branches of the municipal public authorities. They provide a.o. subsistence benefits. With respect to this subsistence provision, the offices implement the process outlined below: a) Intake: reception of the client, collection of personal

information from the client and providing of general information to the client about the process and about rights and duties;

b) Investigation: collection and checking of information from sources outside the client; reporting, dossier- handling, proposal advise for decision

c) Decision: testing with legal regulations and final decision about entitlement, amount of money involved, date of entry, period, etc.

d) Administration: administrative processing of decision, execution of decision, announcement to client, payment, etc.

These steps are usually executed in separate bureaus. Automation of this process began in the back office, in the final financial links,

at the end of the 'administrative chain'. Initially no IT supported cooperation with other links in the chain took place. During recent years, however, automation has crept along the chain to the front office. More and more integrated systems are becoming available that automate the intake and investigation procedures as well as the decision support with respect to applicable rules and regulations. Even automatic creation of client dossiers is feasible.

In addition, links to outside sources of information (eg. statistical bureaus, tax offices, population registers) are features of the newer systems. Both internal integration and automated links to outside sources of information are forms of computer supported cooperative work as defined above: multiple active agents are involved who share a common object (a legally substantiated grant to the client) and who are supported by information technology.

284 I. SNELLEN & &WYATT

The cooperation consists mainly in the creation of a common database by the different active agents inside the social security agency for use throughout the whole process. The common databases function as the foundation for the decisions taken with respect to the client. File-sharing between the steps described above as intake, investigation, decision and administration is thus by far the most interesting form of computer supported cooperative work.

In his recent research, Scheepers (1991; Scheepers and Snellen 1989) found that higher degrees of informatization in street level bureaucracies led to: - - strengthened hierarchical control and internal transparency of departments; - - a perception on the part of the officials that their street-level work was better

structured, clearer and more lucid; and, - - a perception on the part of clients that officials became more elaborate and

explicit and took more initiative in their responses towards clients. These results suggest that both workers and clients equally profit from informatization and computer supported cooperative work in street level bureaucracies. However, results confirm, what is hinted above, "that with a higher level of informatization, case workers and clients move further apart in their perception of the situation". It means that in highly informatized SSDs the discrepancy in the ways in which both parties define aspects of the bureaucratic situation is high. This affects the effectiveness and success of the bureaucratic encounter between official and citizen. The more the "definition of the situation" of clients differs from that of the street level bureaucrat, the less bureaucratically competent are

the former. The conclusion of Scheepers' study is highly relevant for computer supported

cooperative work in public administration:

The influence of ]nformatization on bureaucratic competence is of a paradoxical nature. Informatization of street-level organizations such as social service departments seems to stress the direct, physical, contacts between street-level officials and citizens. The distance between government and citizen seems therefore to diminish. It is, however, paradoxical that at the same time the accessibility seems to decrease. Because the position and the functioning of the street-level worker is more explicitly embedded in the organizational system with increasing informatization, it gets more and more difficult for the citizen to put his or her own individual situation in the foreground. There is less room qor the client's perspective. The citizen has increasingly less influence on the image the public administrative agency forms of him or her and is therefore less able to manifest bureaucratic competent behavior.

Within Dutch social security offices, the use of IT to support greater integration of the internal work processes has made contacts between citizens and these offices more formalised; leaving the individual with fewer opportunities to


discuss her/his needs. As we shall see in the next section, something similar has happened in the United Kingdom, but starting from a very different position.

4.2. CSCW AS 'OPERATIONAL STRATEGY'

During the late 1970s, the UK Department of Social Security (DSS) decided to install a new computerised system to replace the old fragmented (mainly manual) systems through which 45 benefits were administered. The fragmentation of the old system meant that, on average, local offices held individual information in fivefold duplication. (Dyerson and Roper 1991). The new system aimed to inte- grate assessment, calculation, data-storage and payment of various different benefits. Under the old regime no official in the system was responsible for ensuring that a claimant would receive all the benefits to which he/she was entitled, although often the amount one received of one benefit was affected by one's eligibility for or receipt of other benefits.

Against this background a new computerization plan was discussed. In 1982 this plan was published as the "Social Security Operational Strategy: A Framework for the Future". The fundamental objectives of the Operational Strategy were: 1. to improve efficiency in operations 2. to modernize and improve the working conditions of staff 3. to improve the quality of service to the public by the introduction of the

'whole person concept'. An ambitious element of the plan is captured in the third objective, namely the "whole person concept". By this is meant that the citizen/claimant of a benefit is not viewed through the keyhole of the specific benefit for which he/she applies but from the viewpoint of the DSS system as a whole. One approach to the DSS triggers off claims for all benefits to which one may be entitled. Thus to speak of a "whole claimant" would be more apt than to speak of a "whole person", as the DSS will only have access to that information about an individual relevant for assessing her/his social security status. Human beings possess many other attrib- utes. (Snellen and Wyatt 199 I).

To implement the Operational Strategy, a central referencing system had to be developed in order to connect the rules and procedures for assessing all of the different benefits, both contributory (such as unemployment benefits) and non- contributory (such as child benefit). Other common databases had to be created; including one to hold the National Insurance and benefit information for 60 million UK residents. The result is a huge system of computer supported cooperative work: multiple active agents working together towards a common objective, supported by information technology. Due to this cooperation supported by computers one member of staff can work through different entitlements; information received at one part of the system will be distributed through the whole system

286 I. SNELLEN & S. WYATT

and will not need to be provided repeatedly by claimants. This also saves tedious work for the officials. Thus, both officials and clients seem to profit.

The more computers support cooperation between individual staff and departments in order to make it possible to approach clients in an integrated way, the more those legal qualities of the constitutional states are threatened, and the more seriously the rights of clients have to be taken into account. In other words, the implementation of the Operational Strategy, particularly of the 'whole person concept' blurs the internal DSS distinctions between benefits but, paradoxically, makes it more difficult for the client to present her/his situation: increasingly, the DSS will be in a position to assume it has all it needs to know in order to process an individual's claim for social security benefits. This is what already exists in Sweden.

However, these gains in efficiency, level of service and quality of working life for DSS staff have to be considered against negative effects in terms of loss of privacy, threats to data security and integrity for clients and loss of discretion for individual officials, who are increasingly guided by a rules-based system.

To clarify the meaning of the whole person approach, within public administration, it is illuminating to make a comparison with integrated approaches in the private sphere, e.g. by banks, insurance companies and travel agencies. These companies try to sell the client a complete package (travel ticket, foreign money, car rental, hotel accommodation, accident and sickness insurance, etc.). They will use any information about the specific client they have available to target their message, products and services as precisely as possible. As private entrepreneurs they are completely free to sample their clientele as they wish and frame their offers according to their own risk assessments. When a client is dis- satisfied with the~way in which he/she is approached, he/she can shift to another provider. Mistakes in private databases which have as a result that a client is not approached or approached wrongly may be irritating but of no great import. Generally there is no need for a right to redress the mistake.

In public administration: - -authori t ies are not free to determine the way in which they approach

citizens/clients who have a rightful claim; - - they are not allowed to differentiate between clients but are legally bound to

give them equal treatment; - - clients are entitled to present their case, to be heard and to be listened to; - - clients do not have the option of moving to another service provider if they

are not satisfied.

4.3. SOCIAL SECURITY 1N SWEDEN: A CAUTIONARY TALE

The Swedish social security system started from a very different position both to the Dutch system and to that which existed in the United Kingdom prior to the


introduction of the Operational Strategy. In the UK, citizens/claimants are sup- posed to be very active and to be prepared to go from pillar to post to receive their due. In Sweden, as Ingelstam and Palmlund (1991) state:

All residents in the country receive assistance from the social security system during some part of their lives. Most of them never have to visit a social welfare agency to apply and plead personally for this assistance. One of the aims in building the welfare state has been to ensure by law that individuals in the course of normal life should receive from the State or the', municipalities the financial support they are entitled to at the time when they need it. Only extremely vulnerable groups or groups in need of physical aids get involved in personal interaction with the local social welfare agencies. (p. 7)

As can be imagined, computer support for the administration of social security in Sweden is considerable. It is one of the major computerized service productions in the country. Not only calculations but also mailings are fully automated. The responsibility for initiating communication between authorities and clients rests with the former. The information flow from citizens to the administrations is minimal (Ingelstam and Palmlund 1991). The Swedish system is, as Ingelstam and Palmlund point out, based on a deep seated trust in the benevolence of the state on the part of Swedish citizens. This trust forms the foundation of computer supported cooperative work between officials and between agencies.

As more functions such as prevention and rehabilitation are ascribed to the social security system, the information systems occupy a more central place in the cooperation between the different officials and administrative agencies. This development is strengthened by efforts to prevent fraud.

Until recently the focus of computer support was oriented on support for the officials as users.

[L]ittle attention is paid to the individual's needs and interests in relation to the computer support used by the public administration. The administration of social insurance has largely been regarded as an issue of technique and efficiency. The official investigations . . . dealt more with expectations inside the bureaucracy about how computers should be used in the social insurance administration than with how the services to the citizens should be improved. Very little effort was devoted to investigating what different changes in the computer support in the administration of social security might mean for individuals receiving the benefits. (Ingelstam and Palmlund 1991, p. 17)

The Swedish case clearly illustrates how information and communication flows that are relevant for the cooperating officials are not necessarily understandable for the clients. (Anybody who has ever tried to read his/her salary slip might have


discovered this.) The more that informatization in public administration is focussed on computer supported cooperation between officials, even if this cooperation is aiming at an integrated approach for citizens, the more citizens themselves will find themselves on the sidelines as passive recipients of benefits and care.

Sweden has, at least implicitly, been following a 'whole person approach' in the treatment of its citizens. There do not appear to be many barriers within public administration to using computers to support the work of officials. But there is no element of co-production, such as the Dutch are committed to, and the system is almost completely impenetrable for Swedish citizens.

5. Some research directions

Different forms of Computer Supported Cooperative Work are visible in public administration. We have identified three forms. Inter-official forms such as the sharing of computerised personal files, diary systems and other applications may be linked by a local area network within a group or office. Intra-organisational forms are described in the work of Scheepers regarding Dutch social security. These first two forms of CSCW may lead to intra-organisational change - to reintegration of functions, to re-allocation of tasks between offices a.s.o. Public administration abounds with examples of such consequences of computer supported cooperative work between departments. The third form is interorganisational, such as the matching of databases by public authorities responsible for social security, education allowances, population registration, taxation, etc.

The distinction between these forms of CSCW is important because they are likely to influence the position of the citizen, customer or client in different ways. In the examples given in this paper, the inter-official form of CSCW stood at the foreground, although the 'whole person' concept in the UK has also intra- and inter-organisational ramifications. In general, we could say, that the more CSCW shifts toward interorganisational cooperation, the more opaque public administration is becoming not only for the individual citizen, but also for the official and the public at large. Timely research is badly needed to establish how the norms of public administration - not only those of effectiveness and efficiency - are affected by the forms of CSCW we have distinguished and how negative consequences might be prevented.

Does existing research in CSCW point a way out of this situation. Our response to this question is guarded. Even the theoretically sophisticated CSCW studies such as Robinson's 'double level language approach' and Kuutti's 'activity theory' are characterised by an insider perspective as analysed above. This insider perspective is deeply engrained in their conceptual frameworks. Therefore, they do not lead to counterbalancing the negative consequences of general CSCW efforts within public administration. The more these efforts make


it possible to delgate case handling of street level bureaucracies to down-graded officials, the less room there will be for the development of a relevant 'second level language' between official and citizen.

Kuutti's activity theory is, in our opinion, even less promising because the work community is the only community recognised in his basic structure of an activity (see Fig. 1).

tool

subject object

rules division values community of labour

Fig. l. Basic structure of an activity Source: Kuutti (1991), p. 257

Only if the role of the citizen is redefined from object to co-producing subject might this approach open up new avenues for citizenship. Instead of considering

rules/values (political, legal, economic, etc.)

symbolic interactionist tools

/ subject

language community

\ subject

division of labour (shared

responsibilities)

Fig. 2. Revised structure of an activity

290 I. S N E L L E N & S. W Y A T T

the situation of the client as an object for interpretation by the official, the official has to see the client in her/his situation as a subject in a reciprocal interaction. From this starting point, we can begin to develop an alternative use of activity theory (see Fig. 2).

Tools to make the interaction between official and citizens as subjects possible will have a (symbolic) interactionist function. Many devices using information technology could be applied in this respect. Official and citizen will form their own language community. There will be a division of labour such that citizens can articulate their own interests and carry responsibility for them.

The guide below could help as an heuristic to determine which aspects of CSCW are relevant for public administration. The norms and values that are essential in the functioning of public administration could be categorised as follows: 1. professional norms related to the technical and social scientific dimensions of

the activities in a sector of society. 2. legal norms related to a balancing of the power position between the state and

the citizen, as a dependent client or customer. 3. political norms related to the primacy of democratic/representative decision-

making bodies, and to opportunities for citizen participation. 4. economic norms related to the scarcity of funds and budgets, to efficiency and

effectiveness on micro and macro levels. This leads to the following framework (see Figure 3) for organising research questions regarding the different forms of Computer Supported Cooperative Work in public administration:

Official Cit izen Inter-Off icial ln t ra -Organ i sa t iona l ln te r -Organ isa t iona l

Professional Norms - exper t i se

- responsibi l i ty

- r e spons iveness

Legal Norms - equa l i ty be fo re law

- legal secur i ty

- rules o f e v i d e n c e

- t r anspa rency

Political Norms - poli t ical p r i m a c y

- f lexibil i ty

- par t ic ipat ion

Economic Norms - e f f ic iency (macro )

- e f f ic iency (mic ro )

Fig. 3. Resea rch a g e n d a for C S C W in publ ic adminis t ra t ion .


We have not tried to specify all the possible entries that might be relevant for the different normative angles. There is prima facie evidence that professional norms will be more and more negatively affected as the intensity of computer supported cooperation increases at an interorganisational level. The position of the official will become more and more 'decentered'. This will affect their expertise (e.g. downgrading and deskilling of jobs) as well as their responsibility and respon- siveness. The accessibility of public administration authorities will decrease, not only for the citizen but also for public and political bodies. The partition walls within public administrations may become more permeable, but the outer walls may become thicker and more massive.

With respect to the economic area, the opposite might be true. There is prima facie evidence that the efficiency of work will be furthered substantially - at least at the macro level - through forms of inter-organisational computer supported cooperation. Not only will duplicative and tedious work be done away with, but fraud detection will save money. Whether the micro-efficiency will be positively affected may depend on which organisation is bearing the brunt of the computer support for the cooperation with the other organisations. The micro-efficiency of the citizen might just as well be furthered as hampered by CSCW between organisations.

6. Conclusion

Computer support in public administration tends to be directed primarily at improving the efficiency, expediency and quality of cooperation within the bureaucracies. Integrated approaches on the basis of file-sharlng tend to raze the partitions between departments and bureaus within public organizations. The client may experience positive results of the growing cooperation and integration through speedier, better targeted service. From a legal, political and professional point of view, however, cooperation between public official and client, in which the client is assigned an active role, is no less important.

Computer supported types of cooperative work within public administrations tend to structure more tightly, not to say to ossify, the internal work procedures and the information and communication foundations of the organization. The citizen tends to become more of an outsider for whom the organization is less penetrable. The interior partitions may be razed, but the exterior walls are fortified. For the maintenance of a constitutional state, the development of responsible citizenship and the prevention of a growing gap between computer literates and computer illiterates in society this is a dangerous situation. And what is said here about the influence of CSCW on the relationship between bureaucracy and citizen is also true for the relationship between public bureaucracies and political organisations and political authorities.

Computer support will have to be developed to strengthen the role of the citizen as co-producer in his/her relation with the state. For citizens to perform


well in their contacts with public administration, the co-production components of administrative decisions have to be emphasised in CSCW-applications. For example, experiments such as the one abandoned by the British Department of Social Security in the mid-1980s to develop expert systems to be used by claimants prior to their meetings with officials need to be resuscitated. CSCW- applications in the provision of social security in three countries, which start from different ideological, legal and professional viewpoints, make this clear. The social welfare approaches of these three countries can be positioned on a continuum from personal to a-personal. The Dutch approach is probably the most personalized, the Swedish the most a-personalized and the United Kingdom occupies a shifting middle-ground.

In all three circumstances we have seen that CSCW can play a pivotal role. In all three, the citizen/client/claimant tends to be placed in a passive role. The whole person tends to function as a technical and bureaucratic concept and not as a legal one. In order to maintain citizens' rights to be heard, the bureaucatized CSCW concept has to be broadened to include rightful cooperation with the citizen. Let us return to the definition of CSCW given in the introduction: CSCW is work by multiple active subjects, sharing a common object, and which is supported by information technology. Within the context of public administration, citizens should be considered as active subjects and not as part of the common object.

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Documents

Blurred partitions but thicker walls