New information and communications technologies and institutional change: The case of the UK criminal justice system

A major thrust in public service computing in the late 1990s is the building of electronic bridges between the large‐scale computer systems which have been embedded into the complex bureaucratic structures of late twentieth‐century government. This process includes the development of electronic links between government functions, across departmental boundaries and, even, across tiers of government. Increasingly, it also involves electronic data exchange with customers and suppliers. Contextualizes these changes in the managerialist agendas of contemporary government, and explores the significance of informational politics in institutional and managerial change, by examining a particularly ambitious and sensitive case, the co‐ordination of computerization in the criminal justice system. In this way, it contributes to the critique of technicist accounts of technology‐induced change, by proposing and developing a theoretical perspective on the interaction of technology, information and institutional dynamics in the “information polity”.