CISE-IIS: Creating a Knowledge Foundation for Citizen Services Research Programs in Government

各国政府理解和回应公民期望的需求和机会都有了巨大增长。技术创新和社会力量正在为政府机构创造一种需要应对的新数据的完美风暴，这些数据来自快速扩展的基于网络的服务交付、社交媒体和移动设备对基于网络的公民反馈的爆炸性能力的融合，以及促进更多使用基于网络的应用和基础设施以提高透明度和公民参与度的政策倡议。因此，政府机构面临着在知识生命周期中收集、整合和解释进出公民的快速增长的多样化数据流，并使用结果来提高绩效的挑战。目前尚不清楚各机构将需要哪些计算、分析和组织能力来应对公民参与的这种不断扩大的规模，也不清楚什么理论和研究方法最适合理解收到的信息。技术和社会发展之间相互作用的变化的复杂性要求我们在某种程度上超越我们现有的知识基础的理解和战略。服务提供商将需要改进的计算和分析技能、策略和评估方法，简而言之，需要一套新的集成计算和组织能力。研究人员将需要新的框架来指导调查。因此，该项目的目的是建立可供政府机构和研究人员使用的知识库。为此，将汇集和审查现有的研究和最佳实践，为未来的工作制定研究议程，并制定方法，以增强机构开展公民研究计划的能力。研究小组将与联邦机构(总务管理局-公民服务办公室)合作，从机构的角度确定目标和能力问题，并制定机构能力建设的研究议程。这包括与OSC进行试点规模的研究，以建设能力和测试方法。智力价值这项研究解决了信息系统和组织研究中的一个关键问题：如何以增强组织能力和改进绩效的方式收集、集成和解释复杂的动态数据流。处理组织能力和绩效改进的理论认识到信息的重要性，但没有充分处理提供信息的系统的能力或设计。人们很好地认识到，整合不同来源的信息面临广泛的技术挑战，但通向可互操作和适应性系统的道路在很大程度上仍未确定。这些领域的研究涉及组织研究、计算机和信息科学以及公共管理。广泛的影响政府机构面临着对其计划的成功至关重要的信息环境，同时也挑战着它们应对流动的数量和多样性的能力。预计它们将向公众提供越来越多的信息，同时寻求并回应越来越多的公众参与和反馈。公众对参与和访问的需求确实存在快速增长的前景，这是由于沟通能力的提高和更具响应性的机构行为的刺激。需要新的信息系统战略来应对这种规模和复杂性的增加。这项研究将通过将信息系统本身视为综合的组织和计算实体来回应这一需求。这一方法将为开发这些改进的系统以及各组织本身的信息收集和综合战略能力提供一个增强的知识库。

Both the need and the opportunities for governments to understand and respond to citizens expectations have grown enormously. Technical innovation and social forces are creating a kind of perfect storm of new data for government agencies to cope with, coming from a convergence of rapidly expanding web-based service delivery, exploding capability of social media and mobile devices for network-based citizen feedback, and policy initiatives promoting greater use of network-based applications and infrastructure to promote transparency and citizen engagement. Government agencies are thus challenged with gathering, integrating, and interpreting rapidly growing, diverse data flows both to and from citizens across the knowledge life cycle, and using the results to improve performance.It is not clear what computational, analytical, and organizational capabilities agencies will need to cope with this expanding scale of citizen engagement, or what theory and research methods are most appropriate to understand the information received. The complexity of shifting interactions among technical and social developments requires understanding and strategies somewhat beyond our existing knowledge base. Service providers will need improved computational and analytical skills, strategies, and assessment methods, in short a new set of integrated computational and organizational capabilities. Researchers will need new frameworks to guide inquiry.The purpose of this project is therefore to build out the knowledge base available to government agencies and researchers. This will be done by assembling and reviewing existing research and best practices, building a research agenda for future work, and developing methods to enhance agency capabilities to conduct citizen research programs. The research team will collaborate with a Federal agency (General Services Administration - Office of Citizen Services) to identify the goals and capability issues from the agency perspective, and to develop the research agenda for building agency capabilities. This includes conducting pilot-type scale research with OSC to build capacity and test methods.Intellectual Merit This research addresses a critical problem that extend across information systems and organizational studies: How to gather, integrate, and interpret complex, dynamic data flows in ways that lead to enhanced organizational capabilities and improved performance. Theory that treats organizational capability and performance improvement recognizes the importance of information, but does not deal adequately with the capability or design of systems supplying the information. The wide range of technical challenges to integrating information across diverse sources are well recognized but the path to interoperable and adaptive systems remains largely unmapped. The research in these areas crosses organizational studies, computer and information science, and public administration.Broader ImpactGovernment agencies face an information environment that is vital to the success of their programs and at the same time challenges their capacity to cope with the volume and diversity of flows. They are expected to provide ever greater information to the public and at the same time seek and respond to ever greater levels of public engagement and feedback. There is a real prospect of rapidly growing public demand for both engagement and access, spurred by improved communication capability and stimulated by more responsive agency behavior. New information system strategies are needed to cope with such increases in scale and complexity. This research will respond to this need by treating the information systems themselves as integrated organizational and computational entities. This approach will provide an enhanced knowledge base for developing these improved systems as well as the capabilities for information gathering and integration strategies in the organizations themselves.