DSS for Strategic Decision Making

This chapter describes and analyses the experience of the Egyptian government in spreading the awareness of information technology and its use in managing socio-economic development through building multiple information handling and decision support systems in messy, turbulent and changing environments. The successes over the past ten years in developing, implementing and sustaining stateof-the-art decision support systems for central governmental decision making holds many lessons for the implementation of sophisticated systems under conditions of extreme difficulty. The experience offers insight into a variety of problems for designers, implementors, users and researchers of information and decision support systems. The chapter focuses on two main themes; the use of information in development planning and the use of decision support systems theory and applications in public administration. These themes reflect the government attempts to optimize the use of information technology to boost socio-economic development which witnessed the initiation, development and implementation of a supply-push strategy to improve Egypt’s managerial, technological and administrative development. The chapter demonstrates how the nature of decision making at the Cabinet and the information needs related to such a strategic level necessitated the establishment of an information vehicle to respond to the decision making requirements. Finally, the chapter provides some case analysis showing the implementation and institutionalization of large information and decision support systems in Egypt, their use in unconventional settings and their implications on the decision making process in public administration.