Ph.D. Thesis KEEPING INFORMATION SYSTEMS ALIVE Participation, work and maintenance-in ...

251 Pages·2012·2.53 MB·English

University of Trento
Faculty of Sociology
Department of Sociology and Social Research
Information Systems and organisation– XXIV cycle

Ph.D. Thesis

KEEPING INFORMATION SYSTEMS ALIVE
Participation, work and maintenance-in-use in a welfare department

* * *

Supervisors:
Prof. Vincenzo D’Andrea
Prof. Lucy Suchman

Ph.D. Candidate:
Mario Marcolin

Academic year 2010-2011

I am not only convinced that what I say is false, but
also that what one might say against it is false. Despite
this, one must begin to talk about it. In such a case the
truth lies not in the middle, but rather all around, like a
sack, which, with each new opinion one stuffs into it,
changes its form, and becomes more and more firm.

Albert Musil, Das Hilflose Europa (1922)

Over the years someone’s gone, some others came.
This work is for those who remained. Me, for instance.

INDEX

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………….. I

Part one: insights on maintenance …………………………………………………………… 1

1. Searching for maintenance in different streams of literature………………………………... 3
1.1. The computer science approach ……………. …………………………………….. 6
1.2. Strategic alignment and managerial accounts ……………………………………... 10
1.3. Design, use and Design-in-use …………………………………………………….. 13
1.4. Resources for a sociological account ……………………………………………… 19

2. Users, Participation and the Information Systems ………………………………………….. 25
2.1. Different classifications of users ………………………………………………….. 25
2.2. Not only end-users ………………………………………………………………… 28
2.3. Forms and models of participation ………………………………………………… 29
2.4. Risks of participation ……………………………………………………………… 31

3. Maintenance-in-use: assembling things in practice ...…………………………………......... 33
3.1. Maintenance-in-use: what does it mean? ………………………………………….. 34
3.2. Looking at maintenance-in-use through a practice lens …………………………… 38
3.2.1. Thinking about practice and its implications …………………………….. 38
3.2.2. Sociomaterial assemblages in an ecology of practices …...……………… 41
3.3. Participation in maintenance-in-use ……………………………………………….. 46
3.1. Redefining users and participation ………………………………………… 46
3.2. Participatory practices, but not just that …………………………………… 50

Part two: research field and methodology …………………………………………………... 55

4. The Italian Information system on Social Services (ISSS) and its regional implementations 59
4.1. ISSS and the architecture of the welfare domain ..……………………………........ 59
4.2. ISSS, a regional matter …………………………………………………………….. 63
4.3. Digital Social Folder: brief story of a long history………………………………… 67

5. Research methodology ………………………………………………………………………. 79

Part three: Empirical findings and analysis ………………………………………………… 91

6. Looking at and through the Digital Social Folder ..…………………………………………. 95
6.1. Digital Social Folder: exploring the system multiple ..…………………………….. 95
6.2. Digital Social Folder at work in a welfare department .…………………………… 103

7. How maintenance unfolds in practice ………………………………………………………. 117
7.1. Group working …………………………………………………………………….. 118
7.2. The daily work on classifications ………………………………………………….. 127
7.3. Being in the middle: users support ....……………………………………………… 142
7.4. Data checking ……………………………………………………………………… 155
7.5. Together with the objects .………………………………………………………… 167
7.6. Some tenets of maintenance-in-use ……………………………………………….. 176

8. Maintain-ing and the assemblages …………...……………………………………………... 183

9. How users matter: participation in maintenance-in-use ……………………………………. 199

Conclusions ……………………………………………………………………………………. 211

Table of abbreviations ………………………………………………………………………….. 222

References ……………………………………………………………………………………… 225
Keeping Information Systems alive Introduction

INTRODUCTION:
DRAWING THINGS TOGETHER1 TO DEVELOP A RESEARCH IDEA

“Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray”
[Sam Redwine]

“Programming would be so much easier without all the users”
[Anonimous]

It has been a while since Barbara Charniawska very effectively defined Information Systems as
‘the embodiment of the spirit of our times’ (2005). This quotation might have multiple
interpretations, but, to a general extent, it gives an idea of the implications of the rise of Information
and Communication technologies (ICTs) on contemporary society.
One may affirm that Information Systems represent kind of frontier field, which is studies by
many different disciplines which analyzed the diverse aspects of human and machine relations:
Computer Science, Organisational Theory, Science and Technology Studies (STS), Human-
Computer Interaction (HCI), Political Science, Management Studies, Information System Design,
Sociology and even Environmental Studies. They all contributed to deepen the understanding of
information systems development from the point of view of specific social groups and the
community which engaged in exploring this multifaceted field.
The direct consequence of this is a broad spectrum of reflections in which one has to find his
way to address specific research questions. Indeed, theoretically, methodologically and practically,
there are so many options among which to choose that the researcher might either get lost in or
benefit from them. Optimally, the researcher should find his own way through the literature and the
empirical evidence combined, assembling a personal understanding of theoretical premises,
personal re-elaboration and the empirical findings out of the field work.
Focusing on my work, I conceived the research idea before entering the Academy, while I was
working as a data analyst in the welfare department of a northern Italian Municipality. There, I was
asked to find new accountability solutions to report social workers work on clients. Hence I
concentrated on their relations with data-recording software in order to understand how to manage

1
The title is borrowed from Ehn (2011)
I
Keeping Information Systems alive Introduction
data and to better address the different information requirements coming from the work
environment. In doing so, I soon realized that keeping an information system workable and useful
for several purposes was evidently not just a matter of software engineering or design, but rather
had much to do with its daily implementation in different settings. Approaching and going deep into
the literature review, I surprisingly found that the contributions about information systems at work
in the domain of social care were fairly scarce. This is particularly evident in the Italian literature,
which has mostly approached Information Systems on Social Services (ISSS) from the point of
view of policy making, management and public policies evaluation (Palumbo, 2001; Sgritta, 2003).
Mauri’s work (2007) constituted at that time the only attempt of deeply scanning ISSS structure in
relation with the welfare organisation hierarchy. However, once again a specific account of such
strategic information systems at work was missing. More recently, some steps towards this area of
research have been taken, looking more specifically at the impact that such information devices
might have on services supply (Carli Sardi & Barneschi, 2009), without addressing it openly,
though. In consideration of this state of the art, the research idea of analyzing ISSS at work seemed
to address a rather virgin sector of enquiry – at least at the national level.
Thanks to my past experience, the specific Italian welfare organisation (see Ch. 4) and the
encouragement provided by the possibility for proposing a brand new perspective, my research
interests – let’s say naturally – settled on the Information System on Social Service of Friuli
Venezia Giulia Region. Indeed, in this Region, a specific software for clients data recording has
been in use for years. Such application, called Digital Social Folder, is managed at the Regional
level and distributed across the whole regional territory, with more or less three hundred access
points corresponding to the number of the social workers employed in the welfare system.
However, to have a definite research field does not imply that the research questions are
exhaustively defined. It would have been much more the case if this was an applied research, which
it is actually not. On the contrary, the aims at exploring the dynamics through which an information
system is kept alive in an organisational context. More specifically, I designed the research so to
observe how maintenance unfolds within and across different settings and workpractices, as I am
persuaded that this phenomenon has much to do with users-technology encounters. To assume such
a perspective permitted me to address the problem of people’s participation in systems evolution,
which is an other rather unexplored aspect in Information systems literature. Hence, the research
project developed from specific questions which can be declined as follow:

II
Keeping Information Systems alive Introduction
What does maintaining a system mean? How is it accomplished in real life? What is to be
maintained? What role do users play in such a process? To which extent, if any, does participation
represent an added-value in keeping systems alive?

To answer to those questions, it can be useful to first define what this research does not focus of.
Once accepted that this is not an applied research (although the findings can contain suggestions
for further implementations), I should highlight that the aim is neither to provide a manual, nor to
indentify ‘best practices’ to be exploited always and wherever (I am rather convinced that best
practices are the ‘best ways for doing something’ in the practitioners’ view). As a consequence, this
research does not dare to provide a general and comprehensive theory which can fit each and every
similar situation across the world, but it rather aims at reconstructing a situated account on which to
build a ‘middle-range’ theoretical structure, useful as it adds an analytical and interpretative
contribution to the already existing body of literature.
On the other hand, I think the research goals can interestingly open new spaces of investigation.
Indeed, there is still disagreement about the discourse on maintenance outside the boundaries of
Computer Science. Anyway, if one turns the attention away from the technical tasks performed in
what is traditionally acknowledged as maintenance, and declines the concept in terms of keeping
systems alive (Riggs, 1969), a brand new space for sociological account opens up and enables a
more complete understanding of this phenomenon.
Through the analysis of how this peculiar process rises, issues of participation might emerge as
well. Once again, we ought to reframe the boundaries of the concept by moving away from the well
established conception of participation as an element which is inherently tied to software design
(Ciborra & Al., 1983; Karenborg e Stahlbrost, 2008), and shift to the analysis of how people
actively take part to the ongoing and emergent developing of systems use. Rather than looking at
the participatory stances embedded in a system’s structure, the research does focus on how people
mobilize their interests in system development (Suchman, 2007; Ch. 15).
To define participation as such, I had to rely on a different conception of the user, too. Whereas
the overwhelmingly majority of the literature on users participation follows the boundaries of
hierarchical conflict and therefore keeps users distinguished from management and programmers,
the field experience suggests that things are much more undefined, showing different commitments
towards technology by people positioned differently in the hierarchical and professional structure.
These subjects, they are all engaged in system’s use and can hence be called – somehow – users.
The argument here is that, in the understanding of the phenomenon under scrutiny, what matters is
not the label ‘user’, but how different people and/or social groups actually use the system.
III
Keeping Information Systems alive Introduction
Hence, systems use is the source of maintenance. Indeed, the use is the ‘place’ in which systems
structures get reiteratively enacted in practice, framing and reframing possibility for further actions.
This means that use is the source of change and therefore of systems tinkering. Maintenance, is the
resulting (and mostly unintended) outcome of enactments combination and interrelations. Such
centrality of use with respect to maintenance is the reason why I declined the phenomenon in terms
of maintenance-in-use. The focus remains on the process of keeping systems integrated in different
work realities, but it is linked to the emergent configurations enacted in the daily use of the system.
To me, it helps to take equally into account the contribution of every involved actor combined with
their interactions with technology. That implies of course to move away from the idea of
maintenance as a matter of mere code-writing, privilege of technicians only –, a concept I found
prevailing in the literature (and mostly intuitive for common people, as well).

Defining the phenomenon in this way means to look at it as it evolves in practice. By moving
away from the strategic and managerial approach of activity planning and by rejecting the structural
accounts, the epistemology of this research is thus situated and practice-based (Suchman, 1987;
Suchman & Al.,1999; Gherardi, 2006). Assuming a practice lens (Corradi & Al., 2009) is therefore
consistent with the search of a deeper understanding of maintenance-in-use in the context of
technologically dense environments2 (Bruni & Gherardi, 2007). To look at the materiality of agency
indeed contributes to acquire a more comprehensive understanding of what is going on within and
across work contexts. Objects, artefacts and narratives are those ‘missing masses’ described by
Latour (1992), constitutive parts of the reality. Hence, assuming an ontological symmetry between
humans and nonhumans puts this research in a new perspective, which addresses the agenda set up
by Suchman (2007): considering agency as an outcome of provisional assemblages of people and
things induces the researcher to account for what happens within such assemblages. In the contests
of my research, this means to analyse how maintenance emerges from the assembling and
reassembling of elements in the contest of those specific activities which appeared to be at the basis
of keeping systems alive (see Chapter 7).
The application of such interpretative concept permitted to adequately take into account the
historical development of maintenance-in-use in the context of a multiple system. With this latter
concept I refer not only to the idea of a system that is composed by different parts (plurality of the

2 Although one might question – as Davide Nicolini pointed out during the EASST conference 2010 (Trento 2-4
September 2010) – whether it is possible to talk about non-technologically dense environments anymore.
IV