Public Administration Evolving: From Foundations to the Future by Mary E. Guy & Marilyn M. Rubin

Author:Mary E. Guy & Marilyn M. Rubin [Guy, Mary E. & Rubin, Marilyn M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Public Affairs & Administration
ISBN: 9780765643261
Google: sZfMoQEACAAJ
Amazon: B00U90ILZW
Barnesnoble: B00U90ILZW
Goodreads: 27885826
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-01-15T12:56:42+00:00

A Brief History of IT Diffusion in the Public Sector

Our focus for this chapter is on IT as it has impacted the field since the 1940s. Obviously, IT goes back as far as BC 3000 with the first written language, and the first numerical systems were developed around 100 CE. The creation of moveable type, slide rules, and other computation tools segued to leaps in the 1800s with the telegraph and Morse code, followed by the telephone. That was followed by electromagnetic computers and punch card systems, followed by desktop computing and floppy disks, and now there is cloud computing.

Much of what we think of today as the emergence of IT forms around World War II. As one author noted:

Techniques … [that] scientists and engineers developed during the war, the techniques for managing large research and development projects, were the most revolutionary wartime technological changes of all because they had such a profound impact on the postwar years.

(Cowan 1997, 258)

Many of the precursors to contemporary IT had their birth during this period, including the ENIAC in the early 1940s and UNIVAC in 1951, which was the first high-speed general purpose computer. Figure 8.2 shows the rapidity with which computer use became a staple in the federal government for the period 1950–1979. The federal government had only two computers in 1950; the numbers increased to 12,190 by 1979.

The federal government was not unique in its widespread adoption of computers. Cross-sectional statistics allow for a snapshot of computer adoption by state and local governments. As of 1960, it was estimated that state and local governments used a total of 250 computers: 163 computers in state governments and 87 computers in local governments, including cities, counties, and school districts (Fite 1965). Table 8.1 shows that a total of 243 computers were used by states in 1963. By then, 40 of 43 reporting states were using at least one computer but three states—Arizona, Rhode Island, and Wyoming—had no computers. Five states used more than ten computers.

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