The Theoretical Basis of a SISP Framework to Gauge Alignment between Federal Government Policy and Community Objectives in Regional Telecommunications

The decline of regional Australia in terms of wealth and population during the two decades since 1980 has compelled the Federal Government to intervene. In 1997 the Australian Federal Government devoted in excess of $A460 million to a grant award scheme called the Regional Telecommunication Infrastructure Fund (RTIF) in which regional communities identified local telecommunication problems and applied for funds to correct them. Our project is to examine the theoretical underpinnings of a conceptual framework designed to assess the effectiveness of the mechanism of this and similar schemes. The primary purpose of this paper is to develop and justify a conceptual framework, informed by Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP), to underpin an investigation of this grant scheme and, in particular, to gauge the benefit of apparent convergence between the operationalisation, on the one hand, of Federal Government policy and, on the other, of community objectives