Organizational Development and Information Systems

Summary The experience of a human service organization which made the commitment to computerizing their client records early in the 1980s is described. The development of this system was plagued by several difficulties due, in part, to the fact that personal computer LAN technology was fairly new and few consulting companies had direct experience with these types of applications. As well, for certain human service organizations the 1980s was a time for reconceptualizing how services were provided based on the ideologies of consumer empowerment, community integration and normalization. This shift translated into new ways of making service decisions, hence new needs for information and strategies for its use.