Patterns of computer use are studied based on analysis of data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY) in which a cohort of students and their parents were surveyed for five consecutive years. Special attention is given to students who were heavier users of computers. Heavier use is associated with high SES as well as superiority in grades. Heavier use declined as this cohort progressed from the seventh grade to high school despite increasing access to computers at home. Parents with computers at home reported that their children used computers mostly for educational purposes. Males were significantly more likely to be heavier users until the 1992 survey when the gap with females narrowed. A substantial proportion but less than half (42%) of heavier users remained more frequent users from 1988 to 1992. Analysis suggests that computer ownership and parental interest in their children using computers exerted the biggest impacts on the likelihood of being a heavier user.

No abstract

Information systems are becoming more involved in politics due to the growth of the World Wide Web, electronic government, and the increasing digitization of information of all kinds. Many information management specialists lack knowledge and experience about how to deal with political aspects of information management, and consequently they are ineffective. This chapter shows how important political issues are to information managers and illustrates strategies that can be useful in dealing with political issues. I provide several examples of how inattention to the political aspects of managing information systems can result in problems and disasters. The chapter covers both internal and external politics. Information managers have to deal with many internal politically-charged tasks such as the structuring of information management, purchasing information systems, managing personnel in this era of digital communication, and struggles over the sharing of information within organizations. External information management issues are also becoming important such as demands for online accountability information, the development of websites, issues over access to information, and interorganizational issues including disputes over turf.

This article reviews, analyzes, and assesses prescriptions for public-sector management of information technology (IT). It draws on four sources of such prescriptions: (a) the best-practices literature, based primarily on expert opinion and focused on managerial processes; (b) the empirical IT research literature, based primarily on quantitative analyses of the IT function; (c) benchmarks (the attempt to develop objective measures of the success of IT in public-sector organizations); and (d) the problem/disaster literature, based primarily on analyses of problems and disasters that have occurred in public-sector IT systems. The best-practices literature offers guidance, but the prescriptions are too general, and the methods for identifying best practices need expansion. The empirical literature is valuable and can provide prescriptions for specific technological questions, but the body of research is too sparse and offers contradictory prescriptions. Benchmarking has potential, but the approach is very undeveloped and subject to corruption. The problem/disaster literature offers cautionary examples, but its empirical base is unrepresentative of most failures.

No abstract