Accountability and Mis
Lynn C. Burbridge · Public Performance & Management Review · 2002
Lisa Riordan stared across the table at her supervisor, Daniel Cook. They were discussing the results of her interim report on the possibilities for linking various Management Information Systems (MIS) in their state. The research had been funded by the Department of Human Resources for the state, but there was great interest in this project throughout the bureaucracy and particularly the governor's office. As part of his reinventing government campaign document, the governor promised to integrate and simplify MIS across agencies as a way of serving clients more effectively and as a way of detecting possible welfare fraud. As employees of a university-based research institute, which obtains a large portion of their grants from the state, Lisa and Daniel were concerned about the outcome of Lisa's research. Lisa's research identified three key problems. First, the systems were very different and some were quite old. Integrating them would be very difficult technically, involving significant costs for the staffing needed to do so. would also be significant costs in training state employees on how to use a new system. Second, in interviews with many state employees, Lisa encountered considerable resistance to change. Part of this she attributed to a general hostility toward change. But many state employees were genuinely concerned about making their data easily accessible to other agencies. Those who served the poor and immigrants were concerned that enforcement agencies would use their data to unnecessarily harass their clients, for example. The potential for violations to privacy had also been raised by some advocacy groups, who had been holding press conferences about the Big Brother agenda of the current administration. These political problems could exacerbate the cost issues. In some agencies, there may be only one person who really understands the MIS. There always seems to be one guy who is the gatekeeper, Lisa told Daniel. Without him nobody knows anything. It is important that that one guy buys in to what is going on, or else things will just drag on forever. But these were not Lisa and Daniel's primary concerns. As researchers, they were content to allow the political establishment to decide how they might resolve the bud-