Supplementary Reading
The Information Resource and the Future of Governing[2]
It is difficult to overstate the computer's impact.Galileo and Copernicus showed us that human beings are not at the center of the universe，“attended by sun and stars”;Darwin demonstrated that humanity is not“the species created and specially endowed by God with soul and reason”;with Freud，humankind“ceased to be the species whose behavior was—potentially—governable by rational mind”;and the computer is teaching us that the human race is not uniquely capable of intelligently manipulating its environment.
Under these circumstances，it should not shock us that information technology has transformed much of government，and bodes to transmogrify all of it.“Public agencies of the welfare state appear to be quietly undergoing a fundamental change of character....Window clerks are being replaced by websites，and advanced information...systems are taking over the role of case managers and adjudicating officers....Today，a more true-to-life vision of the term‘bureaucracy’would be a room filled with softly humming servers，dotted here and there with a system manager behind a screen.”
Increasingly，computers are able to serve citizens，and are enabling citizens to serve themselves，in ways that once only public administrators could.“Putting service on the Web doesn't just change how governments interact with citizens.It can change how governments are run.”A third of local officials state that egovernment has“changed the role of staff”;more than a fourth say that it has“reengineered business processes”in their governments;and a few report that e-government has reduced the number of staff in their government.
Information technology is gradually eliminating street-level bureaucracies，or those public employees who interact directly with citizens，and replacing them with a screen-level bureaucracy，or a decisionmaking process in which public officials，when they are in direct contact with citizens at all，routinely communicate through a computer screen，lowering the profile and influence of computerilliterate citizens but raising those of computer-savvy ones.
Screen-level bureaucracies are，in turn，fading away in favor of system-level bureaucracies，which transfer administrative discretion(formerly a preserve of the street-level bureaucrats)to system designers and other officials who are actively engaged in data processing.System-level bureaucracies largely，perhaps entirely，terminate face-to-face interaction between citizens and administrators，thereby shriveling administrative discretion.(https://www.daowen.com)
Central to system-level bureaucracies are infocracies，or information elites that dominate the public bureaucracy from bottom to top.Infocrats displace street-level bureaucrats by reducing their opportunities for administrative discretion，and consequently their jobs tend to be downgraded.Because infocrats are far more cognizant of the uses of information resources than are elected officeholders，these“non-elected public officials have a free playing field”and“know better than the people's representatives”the conditions and opinions of these representatives'own constituencies;thus，power at the top of the bureaucracy slides from politicians to infocrats.
The computer is not merely transfiguring governing.It is transmogrifying democracy.
【注释】
[1]Source:Rosenbloom，David H.et al.eds.，Public Administration:Understanding Management，Politics，and Law in the Public Sector(5th Edition)，New York:The McGraw-Hill Companies，Inc.，pp.61-65.
[2]Source:Henry，Nicholas，Public Administration and Public Affairs(11th Edition)，New York:Pearson Education，Inc.，2010，p.127.