Anthony Cresswell - US grants

This study examines the formation and operation of Knowledge Networks (KNs) in the public sector. The study describes, evaluates, and compares several empirical cases involving groups of agencies in New York State engaged in programmatic or administrative innovations that depend on the sharing of knowledge and information across multiple organizations. The investigators identify the dimensions of success and evaluate how organizational, technological, and political factors influence results. The study produces and enhanced model of KN formation and operation in the public sector as well as recommendations to practitioners about planning and implementing knowledge networks.

The three-year study addresses the following research questions:
- what are the defining characteristics of successful knowledge networks in the public sector?
- what activities comprise the processes of planning and implementing these networks? How does the order or combination of activities affect results?
- what organizational, technological, and political factors influence public sector knowledge networks and how can they be measured? What is their relative importance at each stage of the planning and implementing process? How sensitive are they to different environmental conditions?

The review of existing research on these questions establishes that previous researchers have applied a number of disciplinary lenses and identified an abundance of characteristics, activities, factors, and conditions as relevant to effective KNs. The complexity of the environment in which KNs develop is mirrored in the complexity of the research insights, yielding an understanding of this phenomenon that is both confusing and incomplete. This complexity is especially unsatisfying for practitioners, who have little guidance from the research literature that would help them maximize their chances for developing successful knowledge networks.

The study addresses these questions through an in-vivo examination of actual public sector initiatives as they are being developed, together with a study of one successful benchmark initiative. Each of the seven initiatives is studied as a distinct case, using a comparative case study design. Because of the Center for Technology in Government's (CTG's) unique project based collaboration with New York State government agencies, the researchers in this study have exceptional access to these organizations, their staffs, their partners, and their customers.

For the purpose of this investigation the researchers define a knowledge network as a combination of inter-organizational relationships, policies, information content, work processes and technology tools and architectures brought together to achieve collectively defined purposes. This definition is reflected in a preliminary framework that guides the data collection and analysis. A subsequent revised framework forms the basis for further research and serves as guidance for building and operating future KNs in the public sector.

EIA-0109049
Sharon Dawes
SUNY @ Albany

Digital Government: Proposal to investigate e-business transformation at the National Science Foundation


This workshop will examine today's information technology resarch status and products, and the variety of ways research granting institutions currently accomplish their missions. That examination will support an extrapolation of technology and organizational practices 5-7 years into the future, to consider how those coming technologies and practices might be employed in a granting institution's mission. Of interest also will be how the organization of such an institution might be constructed to best take advantage of those technologies and to ensure the appropriate injection of new technologies in achieving high effectiveness in the furtherance of its mission.

EIA- 0205152
Sharon Dawes
SUNY Albany

Modeling the Social and Technical Processes of Interorganizational Information Integration

This grant will develop and test dynamic models of information integration in multi-organizational government settings. Three questions will be addressed: 1) What are the critical factors and processes involved in integrating information across levels and agencies in government? 2) How do the factors and processes vary for different types and degrees of integration? and 3) Can the process of integration be modeled in ways that improve understanding of information system development and of inter-organizational collaboration? Two policy areas in particular will be featured; law enforcement and environmental protection. Both areas include a full range of functions across Federal-State-Local levels of government and both areas have efforts underway to bridge those levels. The project will combine perspectives from organizational behavior, computer and information science, and political science, and will use system dynamics modeling and social processes modeling.

Both the need and the opportunities for governments to understand and respond to citizens expectations have grown enormously. Technical innovation and social forces are creating a kind of perfect storm of new data for government agencies to cope with, coming from a convergence of rapidly expanding web-based service delivery, exploding capability of social media and mobile devices for network-based citizen feedback, and policy initiatives promoting greater use of network-based applications and infrastructure to promote transparency and citizen engagement. Government agencies are thus challenged with gathering, integrating, and interpreting rapidly growing, diverse data flows both to and from citizens across the knowledge life cycle, and using the results to improve performance.

It is not clear what computational, analytical, and organizational capabilities agencies will need to cope with this expanding scale of citizen engagement, or what theory and research methods are most appropriate to understand the information received. The complexity of shifting interactions among technical and social developments requires understanding and strategies somewhat beyond our existing knowledge base. Service providers will need improved computational and analytical skills, strategies, and assessment methods, in short a new set of integrated computational and organizational capabilities. Researchers will need new frameworks to guide inquiry.

The purpose of this project is therefore to build out the knowledge base available to government agencies and researchers. This will be done by assembling and reviewing existing research and best practices, building a research agenda for future work, and developing methods to enhance agency capabilities to conduct citizen research programs. The research team will collaborate with a Federal agency (General Services Administration - Office of Citizen Services) to identify the goals and capability issues from the agency perspective, and to develop the research agenda for building agency capabilities. This includes conducting pilot-type scale research with OSC to build capacity and test methods.

Intellectual Merit
This research addresses a critical problem that extend across information systems and organizational studies: How to gather, integrate, and interpret complex, dynamic data flows in ways that lead to enhanced organizational capabilities and improved performance. Theory that treats organizational capability and performance improvement recognizes the importance of information, but does not deal adequately with the capability or design of systems supplying the information. The wide range of technical challenges to integrating information across diverse sources are well recognized but the path to interoperable and adaptive systems remains largely unmapped. The research in these areas crosses organizational studies, computer and information science, and public administration.

Broader Impact
Government agencies face an information environment that is vital to the success of their programs and at the same time challenges their capacity to cope with the volume and diversity of flows. They are expected to provide ever greater information to the public and at the same time seek and respond to ever greater levels of public engagement and feedback. There is a real prospect of rapidly growing public demand for both engagement and access, spurred by improved communication capability and stimulated by more responsive agency behavior. New information system strategies are needed to cope with such increases in scale and complexity. This research will respond to this need by treating the information systems themselves as integrated organizational and computational entities. This approach will provide an enhanced knowledge base for developing these improved systems as well as the capabilities for information gathering and integration strategies in the organizations themselves.

The governments of the world are evolving toward a more complex global network of political, societal, and economic dependencies, driven in large part by the expanding capabilities of information and communication technologies (ICT). ICT has become so ubiquitous and integrated with social behavior that the distinction between social and technical interactions becomes arbitrary at best. A street protester who snaps a camera phone picture and emails it instantly across the world may not be thinking about computers, but is using an enormous computing system nonetheless. The potential of these social and technical interactions and relationships has the potential to transform political (witness Iran), economic (witness eBay) and organizational behavior (witness AirNow). These new capabilities support highly computing-based social systems that must work within the evolving global network of dependencies. Governments strive to combat terrorism, manage air quality, and promote international commerce by jointly constructing new knowledge sharing systems. The transnational effects of these new forms of computing based social systems remain poorly understood, as do the related threats and opportunities. The US and others must produce scholars trained in methodological tools to work effectively on research questions associated directly with international computing-based social systems. International engagement demands deep understanding of how these new systems affect the way nations and cultures respond to public needs and engage one another in response to transnational problems, like air pollution. This grant will begin to develop new social ICT models and tools for computing-based knowledge sharing across geographic and political boundaries focused on air pollution. This will be based on study of current and proposed international efforts at collaboration on air quality monitoring and reporting systems. It encompasses both comparative and transnational work in the domain of air quality monitoring and reporting systems in the US, Mexico, and China.

The following research questions will guide the work:
o How do participants in different countries perceive the dimensions, stakeholders, benefits, and risks of engaging in intergovernmental systems for information and knowledge sharing?
o What are the similarities and differences in these perceptions? What cultural, political, economic, and social factors might account for them?
o How do the participants attempt to create shared understanding of technologies, context, terms, processes, and contingencies that generate capabilities for effective action?
o Which strategies, tools, and behaviors are more likely to lead to successful international knowledge networks that benefit individuals, organizations, and communities?
o What preparation, methods and tools are best suited for research on these questions?

Intellectual merit
This proposal begins to build a knowledge base of cross-cultural investigations and empirical case studies of how new social ICT systems can be used on information-intensive international problems. The case studies and cross-case analyses will provide new comparative material and contribute to improved methodologies for cross-cultural research. The case analyses will lead to new testable models of information flow that accompany interactions and dependencies that cross national boundaries and cultures, as well as a future research agenda to refine both models and the methodologies.

Broader Impacts
This work extends information sharing and integration research to cross-national settings in which two or more countries share responsibility for a common problem, need, or initiative. In addition, the program will enlarge a collegial network and equip faculty and students to conduct research on problems of international or global import with deeper understanding of cultural factors and with the application of rigorous methodologies. This capacity-building feature will have long-lasting effects in the form of international science partnerships. Links to government officials as research hosts and advisors will provide not only research context and venues, but also opportunities to share findings that inform more culturally-aware public policies and government practices. The project will also lay the groundwork for teaching cases, course modules, and other curricular material.