Information Technology Reference
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(1994) notes that the informatization process in the public sector reflects diminish-
ing uncertainty and tighter control of public sector staff discretions. For the delivery
of social services, Zuurmond argues that “Checking information, previously an exclu-
sive task of professional staff, is increasingly replaced by IT” and “Information sys-
tems not only ensure control over the actions of employees, but they also put limits on
their thoughts. Through this electronic control, the 'masters' of an organization can
determine what is seen as fact (as data) and what is not seen at all” (translated from
Dutch). In line with these observations, van de Donk (1997) states that street-level
bureaucrats find increasingly regulatory constraints in their discretions arising from
ICT. Informatization in this case does not generate operational uncertainty but reduces
this operational uncertainty and limits the discretions of individual servicing staff.
Similarly, Jorna and Wagenaar (2007) argue that the relationship with the role of ICT
tends to delete discretions at operational levels. Despite this apparent decrease, Jorna
(2009) remarks that the informatization process in a number of Dutch cases did not
exactly destroy operational discretion but instead obscured operational discretion. As
operational staff may often not be entirely aware of the norms underlying the ICT sys-
tems, they have to define their own norms. These shape their personal discretions. It is
therefore necessary to research the role of discretions at different levels.
This article zooms in to discretions in a specific subset of ICT projects, namely,
those involving “geoICT.” GeoICT refers to the “collection of ICT based systems
allowing the study of natural and man-made phenomena with an explicit bearing
in space” (de By, 2004, p. 15). Specific to geoICT is that it creates and manipulates
“geospatial data.” Similarly to other types of ICT, “Geo-ICT has the potential to
influence the public organisation beyond the operational core of public administra-
tion” (Zouridis & Thaens, 2005). GeoICT has a relatively confined set of profes-
sionals; hence, the potential that professional discretions occur, which may not be
remarkable beyond the professional field, is larger than in projects with widely used
ICT applications. Furthermore, it makes public sector managers, in particular, vul-
nerable to such uncontrollable discretions and makes them even more dependent
on such discretions than any other ICT application. Most geoICT-related proj-
ects also exhibit relatively high uncertainties, which affect potential discretions (de
Vries, Crompvoets, Stoter, & VandenBerghe, 2011). An effect of having to work
with various types of uncertainties is that individual actors create a certain degree
of freedom to handle these uncertainties or to deal with the internal restrictions
needed to combat uncertainty. As a result, discretions are assumed to emerge.
The specific research problem thus can be summarized as follows: How can
one recognize discretionary actions and behavior in interorganizational geoICT
projects (shortened by the term
geoG2Gs
) and how can emerging discretions be
explained?
This problem is dealt with through an explorative research aimed at synthe-
sizing theory and deriving a research strategy. The next section relates discretions
to (geoICT) coordination. Second, because individual staff members operate in a
context of both internal working relation and external networks of peers, possible
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