ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief overview of the growth of information technology with an examination of only the public sector developments. Information technology is increasingly used in decision making itself, not only through simulating various scenarios but through creating situations in which indicators become trigger or threshold variables to decisions. The government investment in information technology is almost entirely devoted to facilitating management's control of the bureaucracies and their external environments. In other words, this technology has been adopted for purposes of social control. The chapter discusses the four dimensions of compatibility between information technology and bureaucracy: routine, information, cost, and interdependence. Bureaucracies certainly have used information technology to their advantage in developing a separate management component, in controlling their environments, and in creating rational operating procedures that increase their power. The chapter also discusses the political costs of unifying bureaucracy and information technology.
