In the know or out of the loop?

What is it about?

Improving the use of information has to be approached as a project of organizational change. This means that more attention should go to organizational structures, organizational routines, actors’ perceptions of information and of the value of information use, and psychological factors affecting the use of information in decision- making processes. It means looking at information cultures in organizations, and the interpersonal relations affecting information use. Improving information use also means moving beyond performance indicators. The emphasis on performance indicators has started to discredit alternative sources of valuable information. A review of how organizations use information should not just emphasize the information that is currently not used and should perhaps be used. It should also look at the information that is used in decisions and that perhaps shouldn’t be used. And it should certainly look at how actors in a decision- making process define certain information as valuable information.

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Why is it important?

Knowledge about the organization and the people using information is the key to improving information use by local authorities. However, typical analyses of information use (such as the recent Audit Commission report) continue to privilege the information itself—the quality of indicators, the visualization of indicators, the timeliness of information. Ignoring the organizational and interpersonal dynamics of information use and the organizational and personal beliefs about information will continue to lead to same old solutions of improving the data, not the organisation's use of it.

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