ABSTRACT
The first computers were designed to perform mathematical calculations with great speed and nothing more. Fundamentally today's computers still do nothing more than solve complex mathematical equations, but they do it in a way that supports a wide range of government and business applications that enhance decision making. This chapter presents those applications within a framework of the types of decisions found at various levels within a public agency. The earliest information systems for government and commercial uses featured batch and transaction processing systems and were available only on mainframes. These systems are still in use today on mainframe, mini, and networked terminal or PC-based client/server technology environments. Decision support systems (DSSs) are notoriously difficult to define precisely. They can range from simple spreadsheets to complex systems comprising their own databases and mathematical modeling software for statistical analysis, linear programming, goal programming, and a host of other more specialized modeling techniques.
