The Internet-time and the Structural Elements of Bureaucracy: the Case of Venice Local Government

The paper is based on empirical research focused on the implementation of a series of on-line services inspired by the logic of the „social web‟ in the Local Government of Venice: in particular IRIS, an online platform where citizens can report urban maintenance problems by posting a message on a web page, and expect an almost instant reply by the Local Government. More specifically the focus of the paper is the effect that the implementation of web services that require an “internet-time” response has on the organizational processes and organizational culture of the Public Administration. The research is mainly based on expert interviews and describes the managers' and representatives' activity of interpretation and sense-making realized in order to manage the implementation of this kind of internet-services. It is claimed in the paper that their interpretation needs to encompass also a reconsideration of their role and the role that public institutions should have in the knowledge society. Moreover the paper develops theoretical considerations drawing from this empirical data. It is discusses the concept of “enactment of technology”, used both by Orlikowski (2000) and Fountain (2001), which reconsiders the interplay between the characteristics of the technological tools, the constraints of the institutional context and the interpretative flexibility and self-reflexivity of human agents. The paper assesses how the provision of an internet-time service, such as IRIS, and the development of an effective interactive web platform by a local government could imply an at least partial redefinition of the Weberian structural elements of bureaucracy, such as the principles of hierarchy and specialization.