Institutionalization of an Information System Through the Exercise of Power

This 12-page paper describes a Brazilian study intended to provide a better understanding of the process through which an information system can become institutionalised and, subsequently expanded, as a consequence of the exercise of power.


From the abstract:


"The system reviewed in this study, the Integrated System for State Financial Administration (SIAFEM), is a large governmental system adopted by the State of Sao Paulo as an accounting and cash management system. Once implemented, it became institutionalised and, subsequently, underwent an expansion as a result of new requirements and following the intervention of powerful actors who made use of it as a control and surveillance tool, thus sustaining its expansion. This study intends to provide a better understanding of the process through which an information system can become institutionalised and subsequently expanded as a consequence of the exercise of power."


In analysing the literature on power and information systems, the authors found that information technology (IT) systems can be used to reinforce current power structures or to mould altered structures, and that there is a need to use power to institutionalise new systems, that then can become a source of power. The authors examined the processes and agents that favoured the expansion and sustenance of the SIAFEM IT system. Implementation of this system occurred as an attempt to provide budgetary management and stability to the state government system in São Paulo.


A new state government assigned the task to a financial management team of installing a budgetary management system that had been successfully proven elsewhere, but was not necessarily compatible with the current platform used by the government. The system chosen was not based on the preferred client-server architecture of the state data processing department, PROSEP, which then had the challenge to implement it in a 45-day timeframe. The implementation resulted in subsequent employee changes, and the governor's need for more financial control led to the development of an in-house data base of prices and purchases to control costs, resulting in de-institutionalisation of the old bureaucratic process and practices, disempowering officials whose power was based on former practices. The authors found that in two years there was wide spread use of the new system, including increased surveillance over staff and empowerment of officials knowledgeable in the new system. As a result, the new SIAFEM system was considered stable and institutionalised.

The document concludes that the elements fundamental to the change in systems and the dynamics of power that accompanied the change included the governmental power to use legal mandate to begin the change process, the coercive power to change actors in the bureaucratic structure, the governor's power to expand the system, and the power of knowledgeable agents to sustain the institutionalisation.