The computer imperative

“The Computer Imperative” has been defined as the necessity for the administrator to specify his goals, objectives, criteria, standards, rules, etc., in very explicit and operational terms as he seeks to devise a better management system, especially if computers will be used to implement portions of the system. It is essential that educational leaders be able to tell system designers and computer technologists what they want, and to do this they must know at least the rudiments of what is technically possible. Otherwise, the administrator in some sense is at the mercy of the technologist. Studying an administrative system as essentially an information system provides a useful model. To define who originates, processes, uses, or needs information is to describe much of the actual operation of administration. In a manual system, many rules and procedures can be left undefined, and intuition and experience can substitute effectively for logical precision. As computers are programed to assume certain basic transactional functions, the administrator must bear in mind that computers do only what they are told. It is therefore critically important to be able to describe what we want. Much of the “threat” of automation can be attributed to uneasy or uncomfortable recognition of this “imperative”.