FOR INFORMATION DISSERTATION PROPOSAL OUTLINE “SPEAKING (OR, MORE

							                            FOR INFORMATION:
                      DISSERTATION PROPOSAL OUTLINE
                                  Justin Longo, Ph.D. Student

        “SPEAKING (OR, MORE ACURATELY, WRITING AND
               DISPLAYING) TRUTH TO POWER”:
       FROM BRIEFINGS TO E-BRIEFINGS IN PURSUIT OF THE
           EFFECTIVE SUPPORT OF DECISION MAKING
                         A PRELIMINARY OUTLINE FOR A
                         PROPOSED RESEARCH DESIGN
                        Full dissertation proposal to be defended in September 2003

Introduction
    Recent heralds of a new age in public sector governance have advanced the concept of e-
governance, voicing great enthusiasm for the potential benefits to be realised from using new
information and communication technologies (ICTs) to address a range of governance
functions, including the use of ICTs to support:
•   e-management, as applied to administrative tasks,
•   e-services, as applied to public service delivery,
•   e-democracy, as applied to communication, deliberation and voting, and
•   e-policymaking, as applied to the policy analysis and formulation process.
     Literature on the use of ICTs in governance has followed the past half-century development
of the field of policy sciences, and has focussed on the public management (e-management) and
democratic (e-democracy) implications of technology. Service delivery applications (e-services)
have been most evident following the widespread use of Internet technology, especially as
graphical multimedia browsers have enabled more citizens to access government services
electronically, prompting many governments to develop an electronic service delivery strategy.
The application of ICTs into the policy process (e-policymaking) also has a long history,
developing through several distinct phases including: computerised analytical techniques such
as linear programming, systems analysis and modelling; widespread access to budget and data
analysis through desktop spreadsheet software; deliberative policy development through group
decision support systems, meeting management systems, decision analysis tools, creativity and
lateral thinking tools, electronic whiteboard packages, electronic brainstorming support systems
and decision conferencing systems; and more recently, knowledge management systems,
integrated assessment models and decisions support systems.
    The focus of this proposed research is most closely identified with the e-policymaking
category, but more precisely identified as centring on the application of ICTs to the act of
communicating policy analysis into the decision realm of the policy-making process – or e-
briefings, to follow the categorisation above. Traditionally, this communication was
accomplished verbally (e.g., through presentations, oral briefings and meetings involving the
decision maker and his or her civil servants) and in writing (e.g., through text briefings
supplemented by data tables and graphics). The development of e-briefings envisages this
communication being enhanced through a multi-media, interactive and dynamic interface.


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    The entrée of ICTs into the briefing arena can be characterised as stalled at a primitive stage,
in the now ubiquitous (an widely-derided) PowerPoint presentation to cabinet or council, which
merges the verbal and written briefing into visual-speech hybrid. It seems safe to assume that
the clear limitations of the current e-briefing technology (and concerns about the effectiveness
of briefing techniques generally), coupled with reasonable assumptions about the advancement
of technology and continued support for e-governance will likely lead to the syllogistic argument
advancing the continued and expanded use of ICTs in the briefing process. However, since these
applications will require non-trivial investments in hardware, software and “wetware” (i.e., the
costs of e-briefings, assumed here to be greater than zero), this research focuses on the
questions of whether e-briefings can more effectively achieve the objective of the briefing
function (i.e., the benefits of e-briefings), specifically: describing what the characteristics of
effective briefings are – in both electronic and traditional mediums; and investigating whether
e-briefings represent an improvement on traditional briefings. Therefore the proposed
dissertation research has two objectives: to synthesise and build upon the very limited existing
research in policy studies that focuses on the briefing function in political decision making
(specifically, the characteristics of effective communication from policy analysis into non-expert
issue conceptualisation and decision making) and to contribute to the advancement of
knowledge in the application of new technologies to that briefing function.
    The first question will be addressed through a review of a diversity of literatures on the
theory of textual and visual communication and the practice of policy briefings, supplemented
by qualitative interviews with current and former political decision makers on their perceptions
about the briefing function and the characteristics of effective decision support. The second
question will be addressed through a controlled experiment in which subjects exposed to one of
two forms of briefing instrument (a traditional text briefing note, and an ICT-based e-briefing)
will be evaluated on their understanding of the policy issue and an appreciation of the
uncertainty associated with the issue. Both questions are of importance – and a mixed
quantitative / qualitative approach is advanced here – because in a culture where political
decision makers have the ultimate say over whether to accept both the form and content of
briefing materials, their perceptions about what constitutes effective communication are as
important as the insights that might be assembled from a controlled experiment.
Literature Review
   The literature review section of the dissertation proposal will attempt to integrate three
parallel literatures into a revised framework for re-conceptualising the research question. The
themes to be discussed will emerge from policy science, effective communication and decision-
making. The literature review framework is covered in greater detail in the candidacy exam
documents. In addition to these combined literature reviews, this section of the dissertation
proposal will review the literature that reports on experiments that can inform the design and
conduct of the research to be conducted in the proposed study.
Context (Under Review)
    The contextualisation of the briefing note, i.e., the issue, environment and audience for the
briefing, revolves around two questions: what level of government is envisioned, and what policy
issue is addressed. While I have previously advanced many arguments in favour of situating the
proposed research in the local government context, recent discussions with local politicians and
academics working in local government studies have led me to abandon that approach in favour
of the traditional Westminster model, specifically using the provincial government context in
British Columbia as the site for this inquiry. The effect of this choice is two-fold: while the
subjects for the research experiment will be drawn from the pool of students at the University of
Victoria (see the following section on research design), the briefing instruments that will be


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introduced will be set in a simulated policy environment specifically identified as being the
British Columbia provincial government, with the scope of jurisdictional responsibilities that
that level of government entails; and in pursuing the qualitative questions in this research, I will
focus on past and present political decision makers with experience in Westminster style
governments (i.e., Canadian and Commonwealth federal and provincial politicians) as potential
research participants, and will orient the survey questions appropriately.
    On the question of the particular policy issue, I am investigating the possibility of
contextualising the briefing note in the current debate in British Columbia surrounding the
exploration and extraction of hydrocarbons from the beneath seafloor offshore of B.C. (i.e., the
B.C. offshore hydrocarbon debate). This issue has several attractive features, including: a strong
measure of issue complexity and uncertainty, timeliness as a current policy issue (thus having
saliency and relevance), and my recent experience in serving as part of the Secretariat to the
British Columbia Scientific Panel on Offshore Hydrocarbon, which has given me a unique
window into the scientific and policy aspects of this question.
Quantitative Research Design
    This section of the proposal will develop the methodological framework required to
effectively assess the question of how a multi-media, dynamic and interactive briefing function
affects the understanding and appreciation of the uncertainty of a complex policy issue by
decision makers. Using an interdisciplinary approach centred on the insights from human-
computer interaction (HCI), an experimental design and statistical analysis necessary to
complete the proposed dissertation research will be developed. This present section briefly
outlines the proposed methods section, to be fully developed in the formal dissertation proposal.
    The research will focus on a controlled experiment in which test participants will be
randomly assigned to one of two groups, each exposed to a briefing instrument (two alternative
briefing instruments will be compared: the traditional text briefing note would exist as a control
instrument; and an ICT-based instrument, using multi-media in a hypertext environment, will
be used as the intervention) following which their understanding and appreciation of the
uncertainty of the policy issue will be measured. Participants will be drawn from the pool of
students at the University of Victoria; participation will, of course, be voluntary and a power
analysis calculation will be done to determine the required number of participants. Care will be
taken to guard against self-selection bias and other sampling problems.
     Participants will be tested individually in perhaps one-hour sessions. After a brief pre-test to
control for learning style and pre-knowledge of the policy issue, they will be asked to study the
briefing instrument for a set period of time. A post-test will then be immediately administered in
an attempt to measure their understanding of the policy issue and their appreciation of the
uncertainty encompassed in the policy issue. The exact construct and operationalisation of the
post-test measurement is yet to be determined. It may also be advantageous to introduce a time-
lagged supplemental post-test to determine whether there is a time-dependent factor to the
participant’s understanding of the issue (e.g., memory retention), though this could prove
difficult to implement.
    In addition to the quantitative methodology briefly describe above, the research will also
include a qualitative element in that it will include interviews with current and former political
decision makers in various provincial and federal governments in Canada and the British
Commonwealth. The insights from these interviews will serve to supplement the literature
review as well as to provide additional insights into the practice of effective communication of
policy analysis into decision-making.




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