제목: Information Untilization in Government Decisionmaking

저자: 오철호

Until recently, information technology was viewed primarily as a means of helping organizations function more efficiently. However, rapid advances in this area are changing the ways in which governments govern, businesses operate, and individuals conduct their daily lives. Increasingly Korean society is moving into a era when all practitioners of public policy will have an IT component. Thus, understanding, directing, and managing information-related activities within government has become critical to the success of government programs and policies. Despite their importance, however, information related activities have not been systematically examined, not to mention the lack of effort to build a comprehensive theoretical framework. Especially, why and how government officials use information in policymaking still remains open. This study attempts to address a set of issues germane to understanding and improving information utilization in government decision making. First, a so-called knowledge cycle model is briefly presented. This model expects to help readers get a glimpse of how information utilization is related to other activities of information processing. Then, three frequently cited explanations for information use are discussed. In the field of knowledge acquisition, dissemination, and utilization/impact, rational choice theories have been employed as major tool for understanding activities of information utilization in policymaking. Thus, this study first examines the assumptions dealing with information acquisition and processing in rational actor model. It then puts forward an organizational interest and a communications perspective as alternative explanations for information utilization in government agencies. Finally, a set of policy suggestions for improving information use in government will be drawn form the theoretical explanation. Since this study does not include a rigorous empirical test of the three theoretical explanations, policy suggestions seem to be hypothetical. However, they expect to show a direction for how to manage information resource, thus to facilitate use of information by government bureaucrats. In this regard, more rigorous studies are needed to improve the current state of art in the field of information utilization.