Mariagrazia Fugini, Piercarlo Maggiolini and Ramon Salvador Valles
in Administrative IS not only the typical formal and structured services( typically bureaucratic) such as those mentioned, but also the petitions, observations and warnings by citizens, claims, and so on, often as an integral part of mandatory / optional procedures of consultation according to laws, rules and statutes.
As far as the job marketplace, IS managing mandatory communications regarding hiring and forwarded to pension organizations are typical administrative systems.
Statistical IS. These systems have no specific predefined uses / users. They support decision making processes; users are decision makers. Information collection is typically based on census procedures, polls, market and registry analyses, inquiries, and so on. Samples Statistical IS are those on birth / death rates, on demographic movements, and those derived from census. Administrative and Statistical IS are often inter‐related, since their data sources can be used to feed them in one direction or vice versa.
As far as the job marketplace, the statistics – from various sources and under different collection modes – about hiring, resignations / firings, typologies of work contracts, etc. – are fully included in this category.
2.2 A classification of social systems
Considering a PA IS, for instance a Regional IS, the need arises to clarify weather the Region is considered as an Organization( service provisioning and government tasks) or as a Collectivity referring also to the regional territory where it operates. To identify the different ICT strategies in the PAs, we need a classification of social systems interested by the given IS classification.
Social Systems are classified according to integration level parameters as follows: a) Hyper‐integrated Systems, b) Meso‐integrated Systems, and c) Hypo‐integrated Systems.
Hyper‐integrated Systems. These are a family, a group, or a clan. They need no formal or defined IS due to the nature of the links among their members. Political parties( on ‐ but not limited to ‐ a local scale), where clienttype relationships exist between administrators and citizens, represent those social phenomena which, according to our scheme, can be classified as hyper‐integrated systems. As both information exchange and communication are informal( they occur in a context where the relevant aspects are the transmission of traditions, moral values and norms, and a strong personalization of inter‐individual relationships) even the related IS does not need to be formally structured. Traditions represent the memory of the hyper‐integrated organization, which becomes accessible only after a long apprenticeship. A“ clan” is not totally extraneous to PA systems, meant as a political system. In fact, such systems are based on trust, values, and norms through relationship sharing.
The job marketplace surely contains“ clanic” components. The references / recommendations( meant in a positive sense and physiologic and not pathologic, but also those called“ nepotism”), the selections / hiring by cooptation on the basis of the personal acquaintance of individual(“ intuitu personae”) are a typical example.
Meso‐integrated Systems. Organizations in their full meaning, that is, those called bureaucracies, are mesointegrated social systems. An industrial company is typically meso‐integrated: each department produces specific parts of the whole product. The whole company aims at revenues and profit, related to the production and sales of single units. Analogously, a Municipality is a meso‐integrated system: each councillorship provides services to the administered population, and favors its social and economic development.
As far as the job marketplace, we consider as meso‐integrated systems the Agencies( public and private) providing services to employment, in particular the intermediary agencies( Employment Centers, temporary work agencies, head hunters, and so on).
Hypo‐integrated Systems. A territorial collectivity( Municipality or Region) is hypo‐integrated. Each socioeconomic unit( agricultural, industrial, commercial, public, etc.) produces goods or services, which are not per se oriented to the interest of the whole collectivity, but rather to their own survival and development. Other examples of hypo‐integrated systems are collectivities of people, ethnic groups, Nations.
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