Better Tools, Better Workers

Abstract

This article examines one government agency’s experience with a new kind of technology— computerization—andhow that fostered a newoperational rationality that, in turn, permitted significant improvements in the agency’s work. Those improvements were enabled by computerization itself and by a new lateral alignment of technology, policy, labor, and management. That kind of lateral alignment— although often contested—has important implications for public administration, especially for envisioning a world of work that avoids the limits of hierarchical and compartmentalized bureaucratic structures.