Back to the future: digital decision making

Corrigan, Ray (2008). Back to the future: digital decision making. Information & Communications Technology Law, 17(3) pp. 199–220.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13600830802473006

Abstract

The process of making decisions about the conception, design, development, deployment and regulation of complex information and communications technologies (ICT) systems with the potential to effect significant changes in society could be labelled 'digital decision making' (or DDM for short).

DDM is not the rational process that we might assume or wish it to be. It can even be difficult to define the boundaries of the social, political or technical environments to which the process applies. It depends on craft knowledge, power and agenda, politics and situational messiness, personal values, law and environment, and a host of other factors starkly illustrated by cases ranging from the Three Mile Island to the space shuttle Challenger disasters. Too often DDM leads to information systems failures and it is time we started to learn from those past failures.

Viewing alternatives

Metrics

Item Actions

Export

You can export this page using these formats Digital Object Identifier - DOI

About

• Item ORO ID
• 12533
• Item Type
• Journal Item
• ISSN
• 1469-8404; 1360-0834
• Keywords
• decision making; DDM; information systems; Challenger; Three Mile Island; systems thinking; McKie
• Academic Unit or School
• Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) > Computing and Communications
  Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)
• Depositing User
• Ray Corrigan