e-governance and citizen information - Universitat Oberta de ...

E-governance and Citizen Information 92 Structure and Organisationdepartments: “a moment comes when it costs the departments less to purchase fromthe private sector” (P32). But, more recently, the increase in the importance of the CitizenInformation Department has gone hand in hand with the growth of both its areas ofresponsibility (de facto) and the central position that has been acquired by the Telecommunicationsand Information Technology Centre within the whole Generalitat. Thus thedepartments continue to have power and decision-making capacity with respect to informationmanagement; however, progressively these questions have been delegated tothe Telecommunications and Information Technology Centre. In this way, “if somebodyis opposed to the recommendations of the Telecommunications and Information TechnologyCentre, they don't have the ability to veto them, however, they can certainly putobstacles in their path” (P10). As in the case of the Citizen Information Department, thisstrategy has also led, amongst other actions, to the considerable increase in the numberof people in this unit.The centralisation of Telecommunications and Information Technology Centre decisionmaking has translated, principally, into the adoption of common technological solutions forthe whole Autonomous Administration, but also with respect to information organisation.One of the main consequences of compartmentalisation in information policy is the redundancyof workers' tasks. In parallel with this, technological and organisational difficultieshave made the integration of databases very difficult (with different and normally non interoperablestandards). There has also been an effort in this direction to overcome the situation:“the current situation is that each department has its sources of information andputs them in its portal; that's how it's worked until now. The idea is to create a commoninformation deposit where there is global access to the entire contents. In this way thecontents will be shared and it will give them a general coherence” (P72).The centralisation of information, apart from the rationalisation of finances and efforts,should permit improved information organisation towards the exterior. In some cases, however,the situation in which information is found in the departments does not allow one toconsider even actions of this scope: “we are not even trying, for the moment, to integrate thedatabases and connect them. The current priority is to normalise them, for example, establishingformats and applications, types of common data, etc.” (P60). We will come back tothis question later on.The situation outlined above presents, then, a substantial change as far as the structureof function and access, and the treatment of information is concerned. It is not simply acase of the transfer of areas of responsibility between units. Rather what we observe is atendency towards cooperative working, but marked by greater control based on the centralisationof decision-making in specific units. The horizontalisation that in this sense wehave observed in other spheres, does not, then, take place.http://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic