Information technology and administrative reform: will e-government be different?

Focussing on the use of information technology (IT) in the US, this paper argues that IT remains a useful instrument of incremental administrative change, but it is no more likely to bring about administrative reforms today than it was two decades ago. It takes a look at the findings from research about the use and impacts of IT from the time of mainframe computer through personal computer revolution to the current era of the Internet and e-government.

The paper examines four key components of the reform hypothesis and provides contrasting results of research that call those components into question as follows:

• IT is useful in the cases of administrative reform where expectations of reform are already well established. IT application does not cause reform and cannot encourage it where political will to pursue the reform does not exist
  
• IT application brings relatively little change to organisation structures and seems to reinforce existing structures
  
• the benefits of information technology have not been evenly distributed within government organisational functions. The primary beneficiaries have been functions favoured by the dominant political administrative coalitions in public administration, not those of technical elites, middle managers, clerical staff or ordinary citizens
  
• government managers have a good sense of the potential uses of IT in their own interests, and in cases where their interests coincide with government interest they push IT applications aggressively.
  

In sum, the authors argue that IT is a general-purpose engine that can enable reform efforts, but unless other factors required for reform are in place, the role of IT is immaterial. IT has also been used to thwart reform efforts, a fact that many who support the reform hypothesis overlook. True reform begins and ends with political will, and along the way IT can play myriad roles.