Towards an Electronic Administration? Local Information Systems, or the Web Modernization of Local Administration
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852302681002 |
| Date | 01 March 2002 |
| Published date | 01 March 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Towards an electronic administration? Local information
systems, or the web modernization of local administration
Lionel Chaty and Carlo Girlanda
The expansion of new information and communication technologies (nicts) is
rapidly and drastically changing the way in which social, commercial and institu-
tional interactions take place. Often described as the ‘information society’, the
society in which we now live is the result of a technological and ideological
evolution which, as a result of information digitization, the development of new
networks such as the internet and far-reaching changes in the way in which work
is organized, has radically changed modes of communication — now based on
globalization and high-speed information flows.
The government action programme for taking France into the information
society1recognizes the importance of nicts in modernizing public services. It
states that such changes ‘make the conditions for France’s entry into the informa-
tion society a decisive issue for the future’. This programme involves ‘access to
knowledge and culture, national planning and development, public participation
in local life’ and of interest to us — the use of nicts to modernize public
services. On this point, the action programme is broadly divided2into two major
projects: ‘networked administration’ (AdER) and ‘local information systems’
(lis).
Networked administration: the administrative intranet
With the declared goal of making the administration’s routine work more
efficient within a context marked by growing interministerial relations,3the spe-
cific aim of the AdER project is to interconnect the ministries’ networks, with the
ministries being responsible for supplying information to the ‘deconcentrated’
services attached to them (services where decision-making powers are transferred
to representatives of the central authorities operating at a local level). Each of the
‘ministerial networks/AdER’ must allow all government employees to communi-
Lionel Chaty is a Doctor of Political Science, a consultant for Algoé Consultants and
lecturer at the University of Picardie and Carlo Girlanda is a former student of the Grande
Ecole of Public Management, ENA, a consultant for Andersen France, Government
Services Department. The authors would like to thank Charlotte Engelstein (Wanadoo SA)
and Michel Blondel (Algoé Consultants) for reading and commenting on this text. CDU:
681.3.352(100)
International Review of Administrative Sciences [0020–8523(200203)68:1]
Copyright © 2002 IIAS. SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New
Delhi), Vol.68 (2002), 25–43; 022636
02_IRAS68/1 articles 8/3/02 10:52 am Page 25
cate with one another by electronic mail under optimum service and security con-
ditions and — subject to specific authorization — to access interministerial work
applications hosted by other ministries or by an ad hoc server. This programme
has been inspired by the desire to decompartmentalize government by equipping
it with the means to network its various components. AdER was also meant to
allow platforms to be created for hosting software concerning, for example,
government work or local information systems (lis). According to the MTIC,4
the administrative intranet is governed by the concept of ‘subsidiarity’: each
ministry retains full charge of its own networks and software, with the intranet
being used to optimize the handling of cross-disciplinary dossiers involving a
number of ministries.5
LIS: systems for modernizing ‘deconcentrated’ government services
Technically speaking, an lis takes the form of an electronic mail system linking
together the various government services in a single French département, with
one or more shared databases used for the local implementation of one or more
interministerial policies.6
Such systems had been in existence prior to the government injunction of
1998, with the first projects for liss emerging in 1995 at the instigation of a
number of pioneering prefects.7The experiments carried out in these pilot
départements were appraised by the state reform authority, the Commissariat à la
Réforme de l’Etat, which was quick to extend the experiments. So, as from 1996,
the state reform fund started financing local projects.8Today, the generalization
and standardization of the lis is seen as both evident and necessary. The inter-
ministerial delegation for state reform supports this development with the aid of
consultancy firms, whose role is to provide local projects with assistance and
support.9The declared aims of the lis are twofold:
•to improve the internal functioning of administrative systems by encourag-
ing the decompartmentalization of local services and the emergence of centres
of excellence by improving horizontal cooperation between services (project
management) and reforming the way in which management local units are man-
aged by means of what is described as a decision-making tool;10
•to optimize relations with users and partners by developing a rapid response
capability, improving local coverage by public services and bringing these public
services closer to the community.
The aim of the public service intranet is to enhance interministerial relations,
the public service partnership and service to users, by two means — AdER
projects and lis. The administration’s zeal for these information channels is
reminiscent of the time when ppbs, a mathematical modelling tool to aid
budget decision-making, was introduced in the late 1960s.11 Beyond the govern-
ment injunction respecting and supporting the socially legitimate ideology of
networking and project-based management,12 how, in practice, does the local
administrative intranet change the internal workings of public services? Since an
26 International Review of Administrative Sciences 68(1)
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