ABSTRACT
In our discussions of issues around the theories and applications associated with information and knowledge management, the role of information and communications technologies, together with the associated misunderstandings, have been referred to with some regularity. However, despite some of the problems of emphasis that have been identified and discussed, in essence it is possible to argue that issues of IKM and indeed, more fundamentally, of focusing upon the dynamic for change in a public sector context, have been driven forward to a very great extent by the emergence of new ‘enabling’ technologies. The momentum for organisational change, charted from the emergence of the first widespread adoption of ICTs for information storage and processing in the late 1970s, has resulted in a fundamental reconceptualisation of what it means to be a service-orientated organisation. If we were to look back from a perspective of some three decades hence, it would be possible to chart pressures for change in public sector structures emerging from the wider societal impact of technologies where, for a majority of populations in developed economies, these had served to alter what was understood by space and time.
