Policymaking in an Information Wired Environment
Arguments build upon the past five years experience gained in participating in the activities undertaken by the Piedmont ICT Observatory ( PICTO ) for accompanying the deployment of the broadband regional program .
The results of these activities show that ICT pervasiveness is progressively creating new types of sociotechnical ( system ) infrastructures 3 which affect both government efficiency and service delivery and have an impact on the whole policy production process as well . The PICTO studies also reveal that for those system infrastructures to deliver their potential , changes are needed in the ways government actors ( at the different institutional levels ) engage into their functioning , and manage the government / governance relationships .
To provide ground to the arguments , in the next section , the problem of overcoming the fragmentation among Piedmont municipalities in order to improve service delivery is mentioned . To sharpen the discussion , some results of the applications of social network analysis are discussed which allow us to get deeper insights into the problems . Then , in Section 3 , the implications of these applications are briefly reviewed , as they illustrate how adopting a complexity thinking perspective could help in realigning the government / governance relationships
In the final section some summarizing remarks are put forward and an effort is made to highlight the main priorities for this realignment .
2 . Reinforcing ICT regional capability : a network approach to the aggregation of municipalities in Piedmont
2.1 Background
www . wi-pie . org ), meant to deliver broadband to rural areas , widespread and interoperable e-Government services , while stimulating participative e-Governance .
Progress in the program implementation has been regularly monitored by PICTO since 2006 , through yearly surveys on broadband coverage and ICT take up by firms , households , and local authorities ( municipalities ) ( see
www . osservatorioict . piemonte . it ). Comparative analyses of regional ICT penetration were also carried out , based on the available national and European statistics about information society .
PICTO studies showed that the broadband program gave a fundamental impulse to the establishment of a sociotechnical infrastructure widely diffused in the sub-regional areas . After the program completion in 2010 , Piedmont was among the most advanced Italian regions for the delivery of digital services 4 .
3
Whereas the notion of Socio Technical Systems ( STS ) has a longstanding tradition in organizational studies , the boost of ICT is stimulating a revival of interest in its application ( see Occelli 2012 ). This is also acknowledged in recent European policy documents , where ICT progress is considered as a main factor for the transformation of the so-called soft infrastructure , i . e . a mix of institutions and services producing those intangible assets which make the social and human capital so important in fueling the socioeconomic resources of an area ( SCF Associated Ltd 2009 ).
4
In spite of the distance which still separates Piedmont from the more advanced northern European regions , advancements are but positive , in particular when regarded against the overall regional profile and the current uncertainties of the economy ( PICTO 2012 ).
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