Discussion

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In summary, while many of the implications of the LSP are still to be felt, EnAct has already promoted significant changes, particularly within the OPC. Outside the OPC, there have not been, and are unlikely to be, substantial direct impacts on enactment processes, though it is having a huge impact on people's access to legislation and could have significant longer-term indirect effects. Within the OPC, the EnAct system seems to be changing the way that drafters create legislation, has induced standardisation, and has promoted technocratic authority structures and processes. Other role, authority and cultural changes are still unfolding, but could be significant in the longer term. The project seemed to stimulate change before the system was implemented, and many of these changes were not envisaged or planned. While systems development project management tends to emphasise control and prediction, this research suggests this is difficult, and that emergent issues should be acknowledged and managed. As such, this research backs up recent work by Orlikowski and Hofman (1997).

While some of Orlikowski's (1988) predictions also apply to the changes in the OPC, others do not. Table 2 summarises these observations. Some of the differences between these observations and those of Orlikowski's could be attributed to the differing organisational contexts under examination, the 10 years' difference between the two studies, and the slightly different foci of the research. While Orlikowski's study focused power and control, these issues were relevant, but not central to this study. This study supports Orlikowski's conclusions that computerisation can be associated with moves towards technical rationality, increased formalisation, abstraction and reification of task processes and greater standardisation.

Table 2: Orlikowski's (1988) Predictions on Computerisation and Control and the LSP.

The nature of production tasks	Evidence in LSP Case Study
A shift towards technical rationality	Yes- through greater standardisation, but not completely, as the expertise of individuals is acknowledged.
Increased technical and cultural control standardisation;	More technical control through no evidence of major cultural changes noted.
Deskilling of production tasks overall	Administrative assistants loose specialist as keyboard experts but remain important in workings of office.
Increase of formalisation, abstraction and reification of task content	Yes- through use of standard wordings and SGML structures.
Integration of the division of labour	None observed, but nature of relationship between drafters and administrative assistants still fluid.
The expertise associated with the production processes
A synthesis of technical expert and managerial roles, achieved through joint project teams or technical managers	Already existing.
A conflict between hierarchical and expert authority (functional & technical territorialism)	Within the OPC, conflict between these two sources of power reduced slightly as individual areas of authority are defined.
The production strategy underlying the production process
A shift towards generalised problem-solving approaches drafting	Possibly but not necessarily; the system does not prescribe a method for drafting, and the structures required by the system can be enforced towards the end of the process.
Increased programmed customisation; that is, the production of services by standardised problem-solving logic.	Not observed.
Organisation of people around the production processes
Increased debureaucratisation, with more client participation, multi-disciplinary project teams and loosely coupled semi-autonomous production units	Potentially - not observed at time of system implementation
Decentralisation supported with elements of centralisation, as control is centralised	Yes- through standardisation.

One possible limitation of this study is that it is difficult to firmly claim direct correspondence between changes and their results in a real world situation where there are so many other factors that could have influenced the situation. Other parallel changes, such as the implementation of enterprise bargaining and plain English drafting, changes in the executive government after an election in early 1996, and broad social changes may have contributed to the changes observed. For example, during the time EnAct was being developed and implemented, OPC staff members became more technically literate. This is probably largely due to the LSP training program, but may also have been affected by a growing awareness of technology by the general public. Nevertheless, the changes noted above were broadly linked to the LSP by the project's participants, and this is supported by multiple sources of evidence.

Given that the LSP provides a novel and promising way for managing access to legislation, this research has implications for other jurisdictions. In developing such technical systems, others are also interested in possible associated organisational changes, and this chapter fulfills this need. It also provides an in-depth insight into core government processes at a time of significant change. The LSP is significant due to the technology employed but, more particularly, because of the application of this technology.

Areas for possible future research include:

• Similar studies in other organisational settings focusing on similar issues to investigate the applicability of these conclusions to other settings.

• A follow-up study of the OPC examining how they utilise the technology over time and any associated changes. Such a study would directly echo work by Orlikowski (1996) and Orlikowski and Hofman (1997) in a differing organisational context, so aiding the generalisability of their concepts.

• An examination of the literature has revealed very little consideration on how the use of wordprocessing technologies could be changing the creative process of writing and writing styles. The diffusion of the printing press is said to have lead to changes in writing styles, as the resulting text was intended to be read visually, rather than orally but it was difficult to find anything examining such issues in relation to the diffusion of computerised technologies. Also related to this is the use that people make of computerised technology in the process of writing, the conceptual approach they take and requirements they have. This topic was an area of relevance for the drafters and of interest to anyone using computerised technology in the writing process.

• An examination of the implications of the EnAct system and computerisation generally on the broader processes of enactment and parliamentary processes.

Such future research could further add to the growing and increasingly relevant stream of literature focusing on the process of implementing technologically induced change in organisations and the application of computerised technology in an organisational context.

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