The Politics of Information Technology Essay

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Informed decision-making is an integral part of the government. Without informed decision-making, life-changing policies and laws may be enacted that could negatively impact a country, a state, a municipality because of lack of foresight, lack of statistics, and lack of knowledge on a key issue. So how does Information Technology play a role in informed decision-making? Information Technology allows policy makers and politicians to gain a better perspective on issues and assessing effectiveness of policies by allowing them to see the data available in an easy to digest manner. For example, Information Technology allows quantifiable data to be analyzed with results showing either improvement, no change, or negative change.

According to Milkavoich and Gordon, there is an ongoing push for politicians and elected representatives to place their focus on immediate political decisions instead of long-term policies or values that require thoughtful insight to develop and assess like increased productivity (p. 431). Because of this, there is a growing need to get information to politicians as quickly as possible in an easy to absorb manner. That means using Information Technology to collect data through surveys and applying statistical analysis or qualitative analysis to information that will yield results that can be transformed into simple, easy to read information.

An example of this in the private and commercial sector is online reviews. Information Technology has made it easy for people to post their opinion online regarding how good products are. Thanks to the ease and convenience of smart phones where people can take pictures and upload them for product reviews, consumers are able to make informed decisions easily rather than spending time looking for the efficacy of a product. Thanks to consumer reviews, people can make quick and informed decisions. “Along with the growth of Internet and electronic commerce, online consumer reviews have become an important source of information that assists consumers to make purchase decision” (Zhang, Zhao, Cheung, & Lee, 2014, p. 78).

Information Technology has become an integral part of informed decision-making. If one looks to the past, Obama was able to use the power of social media to inform voters of the issues in the United States and how these issues could affect the average American.

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He did this by providing informative posts across various social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, to allow American citizens to be informed from the convenience of their computer. Rather than just relying on speeches to get millions to understand key issues, Former President Obama relied on the then new platform of social media to grab people’s attention and keep them informed.

Qualitative data were collected from social media tools used by the Obama ‘08 campaign (e.g., Obama ‘08 Web site, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, e-mails, iPhone application, and the Change.gov site created by the Obama-Biden Transition Team) and public information. The authors find that the Obama ‘08 campaign created a nationwide virtual organization that motivated 3.1 million individual contributors and mobilized a grassroots movement of more than 5 million volunteers. Clearly, the Obama campaign utilized these tools to go beyond educating the public and raising money to mobilizing the ground game, enhancing political participation, and getting out the vote (Cogburn & Espinoza-Vasquez, 2011, p. 189).

Innovation in information Technology and the use of such innovation to keep people informed has always been part of politics. However, as information Technology has witnessed a steep incline in innovation, politicians need to maintain that same level of use as before to allow for continued improvements in educating political leaders and the American public in issues and efficacy of existing legislation. Without adapting to the new ways of using Information Technology, politicians may not have the same ability to clarify issues and performed needed assessments for efficacy.

Along with the power of social media and elections, Information Technology to help informed decision-making is especially important regarding budget-making decisions and ensuring efficacy of programs and how resources allotted are used (Milakovich & Gordon, 2013, p. 422). Milakovich and Gordon discuss in an earlier chapter, information theory. “information theory is based on the view that organizations require information to prevent them from evolving to a state of chaos or randomness in their operations” (Milakovich & Gordon, 2013, p. 165). If laws and decisions are needed to be made promptly or budgeting decisions, there needs to be a fast and efficient way to….....

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