Information Systems and Public Planning

Persuaded that management information systems will help them achieve efficiency of operation and attain organizational goals, public planners, like those in the private sector, are eagerly embarking on ambitious feasibility studies and contracting for elaborate hardware and software systems. Since this effort is being undertaken in the service of the public, it is important to assess the social costs and benefits. The research focus of the work on which this paper is based is on information systems as entities in themselves and as components of a larger systems design. After analyzing the three discretely defined but operationally joined concepts, information, system, and the information system, we examine the four assumptions underlying the general acceptance of the information system as a management tool: (1) that more information leads to better plans or decisions; (2) that more and faster-moving information necessarily enhances "efficiency" of operation; (3) that greater "efficiency" is identical with better public service; and (4) that information systems are best conceived, designed, and controlled by "information experts," whose talents are movable and ubiquitous. Information systems in public welfare, criminal justice, and land use are reviewed as cases in point, and the conclusion drawn that while there is no gainsaying the fact that in each area a body of organized information is essential to systematic analysis and planning, there exists considerable confusion between quantity and quality, between the necessary and the busy. So far, there is a lack of clarification not only as to the proper constitution of the information system but also about the qualifications of the "experts" designing them. Unfortunate as these matters are in raising the costs and lowering the benefits (economic and social, as well), they have ominous implications when viewed in the light of the many-fronted encroachments by computerized information systems on individuals' right to privacy. The data bank and the dossier may be rationalized as means to efficiency, but they cannot be reconciled with democratic process and freedom from cradle-to-grave surveillance.