Community Informatics and Information Systems: Can They Be Better Connected?

There is an ongoing debate in Community Informatics about the need for a stronger conceptual and theoretical base in order to give the field disciplinary cohesion and direction. By investigating the body of reflective thinking in Information Systems, researchers in Community Informatics can develop a more rigorous theoretical context for their work. Information Systems can be considered as a fragmented adhocracy that allows many intellectual communities to co-exist under its umbrella. The social, political, cultural and community orientation of Community Informatics provides a strong cultural distinction from the usual industrial, commercial and organisational orientation of Information Systems. A sympathetic reading of Information Systems offers an opportunity to Community Informatics to address both social and technological issues in its theoretical framework. This framework would be based on a common language that expresses a shared ontology and epistemology with Information Systems. Such a framework then allows Community Informatics to fully address its information systems problem solving agenda as well as its community problem solving activities. Strengthening this dual agenda will allow Community Informatics to work effectively with both the technical and social design and implementation problems. But it also provides Communty Informatics with an opportunity to contribute to a discourse within Information Systems in order to broaden the traditional Information Systems concept of organisation and social action.