Handbook of Research on Public Information Technology

Citation

Anh Tran, L. (2008), "Handbook of Research on Public Information Technology", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 26 No. 3, pp. 492-495. https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830810903427

Information technology (IT) has come to play an essential role in the operations and service delivery of both government and the public sector in the last three decades. As a result, new and evolving ITs have significant consequences for both small local governments and the largest nation‐states. IT applications and their impacts on governments and society have been associated with a series of research investigations around the world. This handbook seeks to answer a key question in this field: to what extent are the transformations caused by technological change similar among organisations that differ in size and culture? The answer is contained in this collection of 76 research papers by 120 experts on a wide variety of IT‐topics, including e‐government and e‐commerce, project management and IT evaluation, system designs and data processing, security and protection, access, and ethics of public IT, etc. The 76 chapters are divided quite unevenly into six sections (23 chapters in Section 1, 12 chapters in Section 2, etc.) across two volumes (totalling 924 pages). Somewhat oddly, pagination is continuous across the two volumes, and the index (in both volumes) covers the content of the entire collection. Both the notes on contributors and the index are paginated separately from the main text, and the final chapter in Part 3 appears in Volume 2 for some reason. The index of only five pages is totally inadequate for a work of this magnitude, making it difficult to locate items of any specificity. This last point is becoming common in IGI works of any size, which is something the publisher should be investigating – it certainly detracts from the usefulness of such works. Given the space constraints of a review, this analysis focuses on the main topics rather than on the specific detail of individual chapters.

Section 1 (23 chapters) focuses on e‐government and e‐commerce. Chapters in this section examine, for example, key issues and limitations of evolutionary approaches to e‐government and e‐business, public administration, and Internet‐based citizen participation. Other chapters focus on the advantages and the challenges that relate to public sector IT adoption. Individual chapters that caught this reviewer's attention include “Community Informatics”, “Digital Libraries”, “The Current State and Future of E‐Participation Research”, “E‐Census 2006 in New Zealand”. In addition to “big picture” and more theoretical chapters, there are of case studies from various countries, including the USA, Italy and New Zealand; the same applies to other sections in this compendium. Looking at the authors in this section, one wonders how they were selected, as many of the expected leaders in their fields are not represented here – as one example, where is Michael Gurstein, a global leader in community informatics? This first section also focuses heavily on e‐government rather than e‐commerce, one possible reason being a lack of research associated with e‐commerce compared with e‐government, although this seems unlikely.

Section 2 (12 chapters) moves to issues associated with privacy, access, ethics and theory from the perspective of public web sites, and in the way government conducts its business online. Here, it emerges that information privacy is one of the most important ethical issues in public web sites. Access and the digital divide are covered in two chapters each, ethics in another two chapters, and theory also in two chapters. Topics that attracted this reviewer's interest include “Privacy Issues in Public Web Sites”, “Open Access to Scholarly Publications” and “The Digital Divide and Social Equity”. Once again the absence of leading experts as contributors is noticeable, and there is some overlap in chapter content (the two digital divide chapters, for instance).

Section 3 (eight chapters) discusses issues related to security and protection. For example, papers examine several dimensions of radio frequency identification (RFID) in the nineteenth century work of Faraday, Maxwell and Marconi, in association with practical applications of RFID technology for commerce and government purposes. Other research reported here has been done on intelligent agents, security protocols and standards for e‐commerce, integrity protection of agent data and information. Furthermore, this section explores the effects of digital convergence on the public sector, and the importance of cyber‐security policy to both private and public sectors, as well as the need for practical measures to secure government networks, and public‐key infrastructure for securing data exchange through non‐secure networks.

Regarding the uses and applications of IT, Section 4 (13 chapters) presents concepts and practices in systems design and data processing, and covers the contributions and improvements of data mining in intrusion detection system (IDS) technology. Other chapters discuss the concepts of knowledge management (KM) and the associated process of managing knowledge and information. A series of case studies examine the framework for the application of KM in e‐government as a basis for further research, a method for planning and evaluating both public and private IT applications, and a strategy for mapping the design of service‐oriented architectures onto the complex patterns of governance.

Section 5 (nine chapters) integrates practice, experience, skills and techniques in project management and IT evaluation. Leadership is considered as one of the key issues in managing people and information in the context of IT‐induced changes in organisational forms and processes. Researchers recommend three leadership models, including networked leadership, organic leadership and gatekeeper leadership. Another important issue includes the human factor affecting changes in the design function for IT systems and products; and IT outsourcing that leads to cost savings, improved disciplines, better services and access to scarce skills. Other research has revealed that there is a need for policy guidelines and standards for safeguarding information resources within organisations, as well as a need to evaluate e‐government and public web sites. Here researchers provide different approaches to evaluating web sites, and identify evaluation issues that are critical in implementing IT projects.

To conclude the handbook, the last section (10 chapters) presents 10 refereed journal articles on improving knowledge in depth of information technology in public sectors. These articles cover innovative IT applications, trends and technologies in e‐government and the public sector, a generic framework for e‐government, digital government worldwide, organisational challenges of implementing e‐business, public acceptance of digital democracy, etc.

This handbook provides wide‐ranging and somewhat eclectic coverage of research associated with global trends in public sector IT applications and uses in the past, at present, and into the future. Applied and theoretical aspects are addressed, and coverage is genuinely global in terms of case study representation and authorship. This last point is a particular strength of the handbook, and indeed of many IGI publications.

However, there are a number of issues that may annoy readers:

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  most papers lack the depth required of a comprehensive handbook;

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  the section introductions do not always reflect the chapter content of the section; and

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  typesetting or proofreading mistakes appear from the beginning of both volumes (the duplication of headings and first four paragraphs in the first two pages of the preface).

Throughout, the handbook would have benefited from more accurate quality control – something that can be said of many IGI publications. Given the somewhat eclectic nature of the content, an apparent lack of close editorial control, overlapping coverage of chapters, missing experts as contributors and the poor indexing, this two‐volume work with a high price is probably not the one we have been waiting for.