Reflections on value: policy makers evaluate federal information systems

Information systems produce information which may contribute to collective wisdom. They also produce control over the activities of others, through surveillance, monitoring, persuasion, targeting, and incentives.2 When policy makers evaluate the success of an information system, both products count. Responses to information are shaped by the qualities of the information itself and by the dynamics of the control relationships which surround the information. In this paper, we examine how policy makers evaluate information from mandatory reporting systems installed by the federal government to monitor state and local activity in elementary and secondary education. To explain policy makers' conclusions about the value of these systems, we look at their needs for information to do their jobs and their reactions to the control implied by the systems. We asked 199 federal, state, and local level policy makers to reflect on the value of federal education data. We assume that the value of these data does not reside solely in the quality or quantity of the data. Information which is better by technical standards is not necessarily more valuable information. 3 We assume instead that the value of information to any given policy maker lies in part in the policy maker's location in the policy-making structure, and in part in the causal theories about the policy domain that he or she embraces. Structural location and policy theories, we hypothesize, shape the policy makers' needs for information to do their jobs and their reactions to the control implied by the information system, and in so doing, guide their reflections on the value of information. In this research we attempt to specify which characteristics of policy structures and which policy theories lead policy makers to see more or less value in information.