King, John Leslie

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Association for Information SystemsAIS Electronic Library (AISeL)ICIS 1987 Proceedings International Conference on Information Systems(ICIS)1987PANEL 2 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYAND THE FUTURE OF DEMIOCRATICGOVERMMEMT IM THE UMITED STATESJohn Leslie KingUniversity of CaliforniaFollow this and additional works at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis1987This material is brought to you by the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) at AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). It has been acceptedfor inclusion in ICIS 1987 Proceedings by an authorized administrator of AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). For more information, please contactelibrary@aisnet.org.Recommended CitationKing, John Leslie, "PANEL 2 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF DEMIOCRATIC GOVERMMEMT IMTHE UMITED STATES" (1987). ICIS 1987 Proceedings. 16.http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis1987/16PANEL 2INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF DEMIOCRATICGOVERMMEMT IM THE UMITED STATESChair. John Leslie KingUniversity of California, IrvinePanelists: Mary Culnan, American UniversityKenneth Laudon, New York UniversityKenneth Kraemer, University of California, IrvineTheodore Sterling, Simon Fraser UniversityDuring 1987, the United States has celebrated the two-hundredth anniversary of its Constitution. Thisremarkable document has provided the United States with a foundation for government that has survivednot only the test of time, but two major epochal transitions as well. An agricultural nation at its birth,the United States became a preeminent industrial power, and now is emerging as a leading force in thedeveloping service and information economy. The Constitution unites the people of the United States asthe country's most powerful "boundary object" -- an object that brings together people with fundamentallydifferent points of view so they can communicate on common ground. It provides the basic design forbringing information to bear on issues basic to the collective fortunes of over two hundred million people.As the United States enters its third century of constitutional government, we pause to ask whether thepowerful new technologies for the management of information might alter the form or function of ourconstitutional, democratic government.This panel will address three basic issues of constitutional government related to information teChnology:public surveillance and control of the government; government surveillance and control over citizens; andthe effect of increased use of information technology on the function of our democratic government.Theodore Sterling points out the critical role of public oversight of government decision making in ademocracy, especially at a time when public policy decisions are increasingly based on scientific studies.Important decisions by government agencies are often rationalized by appeal to results of studies whicheither have been initiated and executed by the agency or done under contract (such as on theeffectiveness of certain armaments, hazards of certain occupations, impacts of certain economic policies).The review of these studies therefore should be part of the process by which citizens maintain surveillanceover government agencies.Several critics have voiced concern that the government's substantial control over the kinds of studiesused in decision making could effectively preclude public oversight to these key inputs to the decisionprocess. Sterling argues that, in fact, appropriate exploitation of information teChnology could enhancethe public's ability to examine such studies. Where data are in machine readable form (and few data filesare not), it may be possible to obtain actual copies of the data and reanalyze them. Given the complexityof a problem, the number of variables that may enter into adjusting data for or coefficients of an analysisand the inventiveness of the analyst to come up with desired results, a conflict situation may arisebetween results obtained by the original investigators and by the reanalysts. Differences in results may beshown to be due to: (1) errors in data handling. (2) incompetent or incorrect application of mathematicaland statistical techniques, (3) bias, and (4) outright fraud.There are instances when data were obtained and reanalyzed and found to differ with original officialresults. However, the demonstration of differences between results and secondary analysis does notnecessarily lead to correction or public discussion. For example, recent reanalysis of three NationalCancer Institute studies found large scale programming errors, incompetent data analysis and attempts to459hide effects of occupational factors. The relevant government agency was reluctant to either admit toerrors or correct them, or even to permit the dispute over the analyses go public, despite intervention bynational professional associations.Although some agencies may be aware of possible conflicts, and therefore decline access to their datafiles, direct executive orders, court orders, legislative acts or access through freedom of information actscan reduce the effect of such evasions. The ability of citizens to reanalyze data files, and the responseto this opportunity by government, will play an important role in the maintenance of sound publicsurveillance over agencies.Mary Culnan also addresses the key theme of public surveillance over government, but raises an ominousdevelopment taken from recent efforts by the Office of Management and Budget to restrict access topublic information, and in some cases, to preclude the collection of such information in the first place.Public access to public information is essential to the functioning of a democracy. The federal governmentmandates the collection and dissemination of information such as demographic data from the census, frombusiness statistics assembled by the Department of Commerce, from the publications of government-supported research, and from corporate financial information collected by the SEC. These and other formsof government information, in turn, play a key role in the planning and decision-making activities ofcorporate America. It is often in the public interest for the government to restrict data collection andlimit access to collected data in the case of information on individuals in the interests of privacy. But forpublic information generally, the public benefits by wide access to such information.Information technologies have greatly facilitated public access to public information. Commercial on-linedatabases, for example, have empowered users to locate information that usually has not been retrievableusing manual searches because of the difficulties of combining large numbers of search terms in a printedindex. As noted by Sterling, electronic access to public data could prove to be a boon to public access togovernment information. However, an alternative view of public access held by the current Administrationhas prompted efforts to restrict such access on the grounds that increased public access to evenunclassified public information constitutes a threat to national security. The Administration has tried,unsuccessfully thus far, to limit the unclassified information that might be accessed through commercialsystems, ignoring the counter-argument that overemphasis on secrecy reduces the United States ability togain collective experience and promote innovation.The Administration has also attempted to restrict the amount of public information that is collected.Under the rubric of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, and usually with the stated aim of achievingeconomy in government, the Administration's Office of Management and Budget has attempted to restrictdata collection in a number of important scientific and public policy studies, including the U. S. Census.This effort to limit the amount of data collected is ironic at a time when technological advances incomputers and storage devices (e.g., optical disks) make possible wider, and more economical, use of publicinformation than ever before.Kenneth Laudon turns the tables on the issue and raises the question of what kinds of data thegovernment is collecting, and for what purposes. According to Laudon, we all are becoming part of theDossier Society, in which the cornucopia of goods and services promised as part of the "informationeconomy" will come at the price of personal privacy for most citizens. The Dossier Society has fourfeatures: a rapid growth in power and scope of federal government information systems; a growing mergerof public and private data and information systems; a decline in the status of privacy as a constitutionalvalue; and a breakdown in historic barriers to the flow of information introduced by the Founders toprevent the society we are building from ever occurring.The technical features of this society do not sound frightening: mainly the increasing integration andcentratization of heretofore distinct files at all levels of government. The social consequences are causefor much greater concern. More and more decisions about individuals will be made on the basis of a dataimage -- and regardless of whether the data are right or wrong -- than on face-to-face interaction. This460will bring unprecedented powers to the Federal government to conduct surveillance on individuals bylinking together previously unconnected records. For example, we should expect that in the near futurethe FBI will obtain access to credit data records to investigate "suspicious" people. We can expect to seegrowing social surveillance, enabled by information technology, producing a "macro village." The socialsurveillance now being mounted with respect to drug use and AIDS can easily be extended to otherdemographic facts, such as what magazines one reads. In the Dossier Society we will all come to knowthe power of the "official life" of recorded acts about our pasts dogging us forever. For the first time inour history as a nation, the frontier will be closed and new starts for one's life prevented.The causes of the movement towards the Dossier Society are complex. Technology plays a role, but thatrole is less important than many think. One incentive for the movement is the money to be made (orsaved) by ignoring or reducing restrictions on the flow of information. For example, the surveillancedangers inherent in linking governmental and non-governmental databases have already been subsumed anddismissed by the Reagan Administration's matching programs to catch welfare cheats. Another incentive isthe political capital to be gained by trouncing privacy in the quest of a larger social vision, regardless ofhow ill-conceived. The construction of really powerful national information systems has often arisen as aproposal to solve social problems -- lagging national productivity, crime, terrorism, espionage, poor readingscores, worse math scores, absconding fathers, welfare cheats, deadbeats, AIDS, and drugs, to name a few-- when more direct and obvious solutions are not close at hand.According to Laudon, these powerful forces, acting in concert, make the prospects for protecting orenlarging on privacy in the United States seem remote. Yet some policy changes could help. Support forthese policy changes will require a much greater information systems literacy among the general populationat present.Kenneth Kraemer addresses the processes of government itself, noting that the Constitution serves as a setof rules for the brokering and exchange of information in the shaping of the commonweal. Informationtechnology can affect these processes by altering the balance of power between the branches of thefederal government, and the processes by which constitutional officers are elected and appointed by theConstitution.There has been considerable speculation that the Executive Branch's dominant use of computers in thefederal government system has put Congress and the Judiciary at a disadvantage. The Executive, accordingto this argument, has at its disposal much more comprehensive information than do the other branches,and this information can be used by the Executive to mislead the other branches (and the citizenry) wholack the means to check on the Executive's actions. In a limited sense, it is true that the ExecutiveBranch has gained some political power from its rapid automation of the budget process and otherimportant functions of government policy making. But this advantage has been short-lived. The genius ofthe Constitution transcends even the information revolution by dividing up the most fundamental featuresof control among the branches. Congress, with its power of the purse and its right of oversight, has themeans to build its own information systems capabilities, which it has done in recent years. It also canliterally strangle Executive Branch computerization efforts at will by denying appropriations. Similarly, itcan demand access to Executive Branch information necessary for its oversight function, and has provensuccessful at obtaining such information regardless of the form of the information. The Judiciary has aneven more basic right to grant or deny standing of parties and the materiality of information to issues.In a profound sense, the Judiciary holds the right to determine what information is information. It isextremely unlikely that information technology per se will alter the interbranch relations of the UnitedStates constitutional system.A more serious matter arises with respect to the election and appointment of constitutional officers.Information technology in the form of broadcast media, especially television, has already changed foreverthe way campaigns are waged. Many otherwise excellent candidates are now summarily written off as"television losers" simply because their presence on TV is not sufficiently charming. Computerization ofcampaigns, particularly direct mail advertising, has contributed greatly to the emergence of the "single-461issue campaign," in which targeted campaigning to individuals on narrow but strongly held issues influencesthe outcomes of elections. These systems also have dramatically changed the financing of campaigns,especially after the passage of restrictions on contributions of institutions that made small individualcontributions more important. Finally, experiments with on-line plebiscites in so-called "wired cities" likeColumbus, Ohio have demonstrated the possibility for bypassing formal elections in favor of running publicopinion polls on major issues. Certainly national polls have already taken a key place in the formation ofnational policy. It is difficult to tell whether these effects of information technology are short-liveddisequilibria that soon will be smoothed out in the course of politics-as-usual. However we have seen thatinformation technology has had substantial and apparently lasting effects on other complex social systemssuch as the stock market that are dependent on the informed actions of large numbers of individualdecision makers. It is possible that the politics of the bicentennial of the Constitution will bear littleresemblance to the politics practiced even twenty years hence.462

PANEL 2 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF DEMIOCRATIC GOVERMMEMT IM THE UMITED STATES

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PANEL 2 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF DEMIOCRATIC GOVERMMEMT IM THE UMITED STATES

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