Digital Era Governance: IT Corporations, the State, and e-Government
Patrick Dunleavy, Helen Margetts, Simon Bastow, and Jane Tinkler
Abstract
Government information systems are big business (costing over 1% of GDP a year). They are critical to all aspects of public policy and governmental operations. Governments spend billions on them — for instance, the United Kingdom alone commits £14 billion a year to public sector information technology (IT) operations. Yet governments do not generally develop or run their own systems, instead relying on private sector computer services providers to run large, long-run contracts to provide IT. Some of the biggest companies in the world (IBM, EDS, Lockheed Martin, etc.) have made this a core mark ... More
Government information systems are big business (costing over 1% of GDP a year). They are critical to all aspects of public policy and governmental operations. Governments spend billions on them — for instance, the United Kingdom alone commits £14 billion a year to public sector information technology (IT) operations. Yet governments do not generally develop or run their own systems, instead relying on private sector computer services providers to run large, long-run contracts to provide IT. Some of the biggest companies in the world (IBM, EDS, Lockheed Martin, etc.) have made this a core market. This book shows how governments in some countries (the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands) have maintained much more effective policies than others (in the United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia). It shows how public managers need to retain and develop their own IT expertise and to carefully maintain well-contested markets if they are to deliver value for money in their dealings with the very powerful global IT industry. This book describes how a critical aspect of the modern state is managed, or in some cases mismanaged.
Keywords:
information technology,
government information systems,
private sector,
IBM,
EDS,
Lockheed Martin,
United States,
Canada,
Netherlands,
United Kingdom
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2006 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199296194 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199296194.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Patrick Dunleavy, author
Professor, Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science
Author Webpage
Helen Margetts, author
Professor, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
Author Webpage
Simon Bastow, author
Senior Research Fellow, LSE Public Policy Group, London School of Economics and Political Science
Jane Tinkler, author
Researcher, LSE Public Policy Group, London School of Economics and Political Science
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