Work Behind the Service: Web Publishing and Changes in Document Production

With the current rapid diffusion of Internet and World Wide Web, many organisations establish Web services and hence become providers of digital documents. Based on eight smaller case studies and theoretical work with dialectics, this paper discusses the organisational implementation of the World Wide Web among information providers. A Web service typically takes its starting point in the current production of documents using conventional word processors. Creating a Web service therefore results in a major extension of the chain of tasks related to document production. Current practices in document production are not necessarily well suited for this extension of the task chain, however, questioning the current implementation of word processing. The concepts of thesis, antithesis and synthesis from dialectics are used to characterise systems development as construction, evolution and intervention. In an analogy to this interpretation, three approaches to the implementation of Web services are derived: identified as technology oriented, tradition oriented and change oriented approaches respectively. Two of the cases, both from the Norwegian public administration, are clear examples of a tradition oriented approach, although both started in a more technology oriented manner. While this appears to be a typical course of evolution, those two cases also reveal important unrealised possibilities, indicating that the organisation behind the Web services probably have not found its final shape. Realising these possibilities involves a more change oriented approach. This observation confirms the relevance of applying ideas from dialectics to the use of World Wide Web.