Wiring Governments

Much current thinking about information technology in the public sector emerges from private sector experiences. While much can be transferred from sector to sector, much cannot. O'Looney provides a rare understanding of what transfers best, and the difference a good transfer can make in establishing a successfully wired government. O'Looney provides an overall strategic orientation to the challenges that public managers will face in the new age of cyberspace. He helps decision makers and executives understand what it takes to transform an agency or organization into a model of electronic government. He includes the policies, practices, technologies, and operating tactics one needs to do it. Especially important, he helps public managers find the best fit between new technologies, their current operating practices, and the special characteristics and goals of their organizations.

Wiring Governments will help public managers with little technical background to navigate the IT terrain by identifying its key characteristics and explaining how to use them, not only to reform jobs but also to reinvent organizations. It explores how a fairly simple technology in the private sector—knowledge management—presents many policy and practical dilemmas in the public sector. O'Looney shows how IT systems stress existing organizational cultures. With this as a basis, he gives managers the practical advice they need to make better IT system choices, ones that match the current realities of organizational cultures as well as realistic expectations for performance gains. The book even outlines key architectural alternatives that public managers must know about when they embark on the task of building new electronic public meeting spaces.

JOHN A. O'LOONEY is a Public Service Associate at the Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia. He has worked with local and state government officials as an adviser, consultant, and program evaluator, and is director of the Internet Education Project. Among his many publications are three earlier books with Quorum: Economic Development and Environmental Control (1995), Redesigning the Work of Human Services (1996), and Outsourcing State and Local Government Services (1998).