Rethinking government in the information age Is government winning or losing in the information revolution? This and other questions dealing with the impact of technology on government and the government's ability to deliver digital services to its citizens were discussed at a conference sponsored by the LBJ School and IBM. The conference--"Rethinking Government in the Information Age"--was directed toward government agency directors and managers of information resources. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, general manager of the IBM Corporation Internet Division, opened the conference by saying that "rethinking should be the prelude to reinventing." According to him, the growth of the Internet, along with the changing nature of work and of government, is creating new opportunities for individual empowerment. This, in turn, will bring about institutional empowerment, as citizen participation increases and the flow of information rises. Some of the new concerns related to this progress--universal accessibility and the importance of education--were also discussed by the conference participants. Gary Chapman, director of the LBJ School 21st Century Project, was the moderator on a panel dealing with privacy and censorship. In his remarks, Chapman spoke about "smart devices," machines that will be capable of sharing data with each other without human commands. According to him, our society is headed toward a "pervasive infosphere of buzzing digital bits that will get information from us with almost everything we do." Other sessions focused on ways to fund and implement technological change in the public sector.

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