Reviews for Diffusion of Information Technology: Experience of Industrial Countries and Lessons for Developing Countries

The average rating for Diffusion of Information Technology: Experience of Industrial Countries and Lessons for Developing Countries based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-09-17 00:00:00 Lonny Edwards This study seems especially relevant today. The book is probably not for a general audience, and reads like an adapted thesis by a new professor, which it was, but it is a goldmine for students of Congress and the federal government. The Office of Technology Assessment was Congress's attempt at creating a scientific Congressional Research Service dedicating to providing analysis of complex issues and appraisals. Opened in the early 1970s, it was eliminated in 1995, almost immediately a victim of the Republican takeover of both houses of Congress the year before. In the conclusion, Bimber writes, "In an era when party unity is extraordinarily difficult to maintain in Congress, it is likely that the parochial interests of legislators will work against centralized Republican control over information." This is not a cheap gibe at the work. Writing in 1996, Bimber could not know what we know now. Which is that the elimination of the OTA was an early and small but nonetheless important signal of Republicans' antipathy to knowledge and information. What may have been merely a modest victim of attempts at budgetary cost-costing at that moment was a canary in the coalmine, a ripple of what was to come in a broader war on facts and towards tearing down respected institutions that might question a larger war against government itself. We saw this most recently in this context in the summer of 2017, when over 100 House Republicans voted to eliminate the Congressional Budget Office for its apostasy of revealing the colossal damage Republican ACA repeal legislation would wreck on the nation. Things have not gotten better, and the germ infecting that party in Congress has worsened. It's a shame Nancy Pelosi did not resurrect the OTA in 2007. That was short-sighted and foolish. But I hope that when Democrats can retake Congress, whoever is in the leadership knows the history here and brings it back, at the same time reinvigorating CRS, GAO, and the CBO. Neutral information laboratories are more critical than they have been in decades, maybe generations, and Democrats must move to shield and bolster them if the GOP does not reform its approach. And it should not end there: committee chairmen should be reempowered, their staffs expanded with more experts and fewer hacks, earmarks must be brought back to help grease the gears of governance, and the notion of government itself as a force for good in Americans' day-to-day lives must become part of the daily lexicon. This is the only way to head off what has become a nihilist war against the nation itself by legislators who, in pursuit of narrow political self-interest, have no idea of the damage they are causing.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-10-22 00:00:00 R. Priest This was intended as supplemental reading for the main course material. It dealt mostly with the UK and was thus not as applicable to the main course content. Overall the text is dense and the small type face further hinders the readability.