Information Technology Reference
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decisions and actions undertaken by government,
of which legislation is the most formal manifes-
tation of policy. There is no clear cut definition
of what is considered “social policy” in contrast
to the more encompassing term “public policy”.
However, welfare, social security, immigration,
education and health are clear examples of so-
cial policy as are all human services. Taxation,
economic and transportation policy involve as-
pects of social policy, such as tax benefits, labor
market regulation and access to public transport
respectively.
Until recently, the role of ICTs in government
and more particularly in public policy processes
has been poorly studied. ICTs have been given
some attention by academics in the discipline of
information technology, public administration and
political science (e.g. Bellamy and Taylor, 1998;
Griffin et al, 2007; Frissen, 1999; Heeks, 1999;
Heeks, 2006), but virtually no consideration in
public policy and social policy. The major excep-
tion is the long-standing concern about privacy
and data protection, which has generated consid-
erable debate and policy formation. The relative
absence of ICTs from understanding government
and public/social policy is largely a result of the
view that ICTs are mundane technologies that
are simply tools to implement government policy
decisions. This also reflects a widely held view
that policy making and policy administration are
two distinct domains, with ICTs being relegated
to the domain of public administration. A second
reason for the limited consideration of ICTs in
social policy and particularly human services has
been the traditionally low tech nature of many
human service organizations in which consider-
able professional discretion is involved and where
services are delivered by small-scale, voluntary,
non-government organizations.
It has been the advent and rapid development
of the internet over the past decade that has gen-
erated interest in the role of ICTs in government.
In particular, such networked ICTs have been
linked with public administration reform agendas
to “modernize government” and to provide more
“joined-up”, individualized and responsive gov-
ernment service delivery. For example, in the UK
the link between government reform and ICTs has
been made quite explicit in former Prime Minister
Blair's modernization agenda (UK 1999) and in
the transformational government agenda through
shared service delivery (UK 2005). Definitions
of “e-government” (also called “electronic gov-
ernment” or “digital government”) by national
governments and international governmental
organizations similarly make the link between
ICTs and transformation of government opera-
tions, as the following example from the United
Nations illustrates:
We put '
e'
in front of '
government
' to recognize
that a public administration is in the process of
transforming its internal and external relation-
ships with the use of modern information and com-
munication technology (ICT) …
E-government
is a government that applies ICT to transform
its internal and external relations.
Through the
application of ICT to its operations,
a govern-
ment does not alter its functions or its obligations
to remain useful, legitimate, transparent and
accountable. If anything, this application raises
society's expectations about the performance of
government, in all respects, to a much higher level
(UN, 2003, pp. 1-2, emphasis in original).
Of the entire and very broad range of ICTs,
internet technologies have come to define the lens
of much recent consideration of the use of ICTs
in government. Indeed, national governments
are now annually benchmarked on the extent to
which they use and develop internet technologies.
National comparisons of e-government are regu-
larly published by the United Nations Division
of Public Economics and Public Administration
(www.unpan.org/DPADM/MajorPublications/
UNEGovernmentSurvey/tabid/600/Default.aspx)
and the Institute of E-government at the Waseda
University in Japan (www.obi.giti.waseda.ac.jp/).
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