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Forschungsprojekt Entscheiden im Informations- zeitalter
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Executive Summary Research Project Prof. Dr. Hermann Hill/Andrea Nesseldreher, Speyer (Germany) The Research Institute for Public Administration at the German Postgraduate School for Administrative Sciences in Speyer (http://www.foev-speyer.de) was founded in 1976. It is an independent scientific institute funded equally by the national government and the state (Länder) governments. The institute has a long tradition of doing research in the field of e-government. Prof. Hill and his team have gathered knowledge for more than 15 years. The close association to the postgraduate school is as helpful as the regular working conferences on the administrative sciences and research seminars involving scientists and civil servants, together with visiting academic speakers from Germany and abroad. They provide a framework for discussing both the findings of recent research and new developments in the principles and practice of information technology in administrative organisations. About the project: The
change from the industrial age into the information age has the distinction of a
modified dealing with knowledge and information. Besides work and capital, they
have become an important resource. Modern information- and
communicationtechnologies allow a fast and worldwide distribution of information
and a global sharing of knowledge. This development leads to an abundance of
information, that makes it almost impossible to find the needed bit of
information among the huge amount of available knowledge. Public
administration itself is a part of the information society and it is especially
concerned by this development, as information and knowledge are of vital
importance for administrative matters. It needs legal, case-specific and
sometimes technical information as a foundation for making “good”, in
essence: rational and legal decisions. Topicality and completeness must be
assumed. Especially
in public administration, decision makers are exposed to a lot of information
out of different channels (for example normal and electronic mail, fax, archives,
files and last but not least the internet). The challenge is, to discover
knowledge which is relevant for a single administrative decision within an
accumulation of data. It takes time and effort. Administration must adapt itself
to these new conditions and keep itself open-minded towards new possibilities of
how to deal with knowledge. The goal of the project is to explore an improved way of administrative decision making. The theory of decision making is dominated by juridical requirements, but it must also include psychological and technical aspects. The research will primarily cover the possibilities of electronical support for decision making with an explicit attention on juridical matters of decision making, such as discretion, judgements and weightings. Although
the imagination of an automatic decision, being spat out by a machine, is far
away from being real, there are different approaches for electronic decision
support.
Using these possibilities, public administration should be able to make "better" decisions , which means more rational, more transparent and more comprehensible decisions. It satisfies the requirements of a constitutional state and makes administrative decisions more acceptable for citizens. The
cognitions of the project shall add new aspects to the law of
administrative proceedings.
Contact: Organization: Postal Address: Telephone Hill: Telephone Nesseldreher: Telefax: Website:
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