The state-local context for information systems is complicated and often poorly understood. State agency staff tend to think of local governments as more or less similar operations. They are not. Local officials tend to view state agencies as organizations with independent authority to make decisions and act. They are not. Not long ago, local government participation in state initiatives was often mandated by state law. Today that participation is more likely to be voluntary. Once, state regional offices covered the landscape and were stepping stones on the career ladder for both state and local officials. Today, state agency presence in localities is greatly reduced as is the likelihood that a person will have both state and local work experience.

It is easy to think of local government as a single kind of public entity operating in our communities. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are many different kinds of general purpose local jurisdictions. New York has 57 counties stretched from Lake Erie on the Canadian border, to the isolated tip of Long Island; 62 cities ranging from little Sherrill with a population of 2,864 to mammoth New York City, and 932 towns that are home to as few as 47 and as many as 725,605 New Yorkers. There are also thousands of special districts that manage schools, fire protection, sewers and water systems, transportation services, and other specialized activities. Within each kind of local jurisdiction there is an infinite variety of specific conditions:

• physical size and geography
• population size, density, and demographic characteristics
• degree of and trends in urbanization
• types of businesses and educational institutions
• economic conditions
• volume of service transactions
• mix of state and local services offered
• kind, number, and specialization of staff
• kind, amount, and sophistication of information technology
• degree of formalization in organizational structure and functions
• the way these characteristics combine and interact to produce specific local conditions

In terms of mission, it is simplistic, but useful, to think of local government agencies as falling into three categories:

• General purpose public service agencies (e.g., County, Town, Village, and City Clerks) offering well-defined routine transactions initiated by citizens (e.g., County Clerks recording real property transactions, Town Clerks issuing fishing licenses).
• specialized program agencies (e.g., County Health Departments, City Assessors, Highway Departments, Local Social Services Districts) carrying out a dynamic set of related services that often involve ongoing relationships with customers (e.g., conducting public health clinics, maintaining road systems, preparing the city assessment rolls, determining eligibility for Food Stamps).
• administrative support offices (e.g., County Data Processing Departments, City Purchasing Offices) conducting a variety of centralized support and oversight functions (e.g., developing and operating various information systems or conducting centralized procurement).

In addition, local agencies respond to an array of elected officials, some of whom are department heads (such as the Clerks) and others who are responsible for overall executive and legislative functions (such as Mayors, County Executives, County Legislators, and Town Council Members). New York’s strong traditions of local autonomy and "home rule" mean that these officials take seriously their authority to act independently of the State or to exercise the options that state programs provide.

State agencies have some common characteristics, but also many variations. They all belong in some way to the Executive Branch of state government. With a few exceptions, such as the separately elected State Comptroller, their chief executives are usually appointed by the Governor, and most staff are appointed and compensated under the laws of the Civil Service system. Their missions and programs are defined in state law, but many are decisively shaped by federal requirements. Their budgets come from the annual appropriations process in which the entire state budget is divided into many portions according to the policy agreements made between the Governor and the Legislature. Some have special authority to generate revenue through fees or other methods.

A number of state agencies carry out programs that place them squarely in the middle of the federal system. Their programs are strongly influenced, if not wholly defined, by federal laws and regulations. They turn federal requirements into statewide policies, programs and procedures that have to work in all corners of the state Πurban and rural; affluent and poor; industrial and agricultural. They usually manage statewide implementation through local governments as their agents. Each state agency tends to deal with one or very few kinds of local counterparts throughout the state (the State Health Department deals mostly with County Health Departments, the Office of Real Property Services deals mostly with City and Town Assessors and County Real Property Directors). Few state agencies deal with local jurisdictions in their totality.

State agency staff tend to be highly specialized in their professions. Although all agencies have a cadre of general administrators and support staff, they are mostly made up of people with specialized skills and training. They are somewhat removed from the "street level" implications of programs, but highly focused on the statewide policy implications of their decisions. In addition, state agency staff work in an environment of great political and philosophical diversity and need to understand and deal with a wide variety of competing preferences for how state programs are carried out.

Three trends are reshaping the nature of intergovernmental relations: public demand for services that make sense and operate at reasonable cost, the shift of authority away from the federal government to the states and localities, and movement away from mandated programs to optional ones.

• Public demands for sensible, cost-effective services. Increasingly, citizens and businesses demand that government programs make sense, work predictably and efficiently, and show a consistent, intelligent face to the public. They expect one-stop, same-day, customized services instead of the fragmented, duplicative, and lengthy processes that have often characterized government operations. Often, separate programs serve the same people, but without regard for the fact that they require the same information, or impose conflicting requirements, or result in costly duplication of effort. Programs that meet public demands for quality and effectiveness often require coordination, collaboration, and integration among multiple units of state and local government as well as private industry and non-profit service providers.
• Devolution of authority. Our recent political history has seen a dramatic shift of focus away from Washington toward state capitals in such critical public programs as Medicaid and Welfare Reform. These are the largest program devolutions in a line of actions stemming from Model Cities and Revenue Sharing in the 1960s and 70s to the block grants of the 1980s. The shift of authority for programs and services toward states in many cases means a shift of responsibility to localities. As states redesign their welfare programs, for example, they often give local governments a number of local program options. This is an attempt to customize programs to local conditions at either the state or local level or both. One effect is more local control. Another is even greater complexity due to local variations in statewide programs.
• Mandates vs. voluntary local participation. As states take up the responsibility of newly "devolved" programs, they are mindful of traditional and growing local opposition to unfunded mandates. It is now common for local participation in state initiatives to be voluntary in whole or in part. This philosophy has positive effects on the localities and encourages the state to be more creative and responsive to local conditions in order to attract local participation. However, voluntary participation also leads to expensive parallel programs when some localities are willing to adopt a new way of working while others stay with the old way.

The decade of the 1980s introduced powerful new computing and communications technologies to government operations. Today at the end of the 1990s, the old, rigidly structured, inflexible technologies and systems of earlier decades are beginning to be joined or replaced by more flexible systems that rely on networks, new methods of electronic communication, industry and international standards, and very powerful hardware and software tools. Technologies such as electronic imaging, electronic work- flow, e-mail, electronic data interchange, and the World Wide Web make it possible to share and transport information in ways that could not be imagined in the 1970s. These tools now make integrated programs technically feasible, although by no means easy to design, implement, and operate. However, the electronic revolution has not reached into every corner of our society or every government office that serves local communities. The wide discrepancies in technical capacity from one place to another severely limits the degree to which these new tools can be applied to program management and information sharing goals.