If Dissemination Is the Solution, What Is the Problem ?

and request the study. Another is the computerized retrieval system; only the user’s request for information will initiate the exchange of information; without that request the computer slumbers, and dissemination does not occur. The passive information exchange is an access-oriented system designed to place what is known at the disposal of policy-makers. Its primary objective is to reduce the cost of obtaining information, a cost which Rose has noted is not insignificant: The cost of obtaining information ... can be nil if it is part of the free stream of information available to anyone ... Information will be costly to obtain if it requires scarce resources. Money is one of these scarce resources. Skilled manpower to collect and analyze information another. Time is also ... a constraint, in that many of the needs of politicians are immediate ... The resource cost of collecting information is also nontrivial [Rose, 1972: 124]. Juxtaposed to passive exchanges are active ones in which the disseminator initiates the search for and transmission of information. An active information exchange transfers information to needy policymakers. To accomplish this, active information exchanges try to reduce both the cost of obtaining and of consuming information; the former is reduced because the disseminator initiates the exchange and anticipates policy-makers’ needs; the latter, because the information is presented in clear, understandable language, and in limited quantities. Option 2: Moving People Diffusion fails when interaction between and among policy-makers and policy-researchers does not take place because the underlying social relationships have broken down. The strategy of moving people to achieve dissemination substitutes artificial for natural interactions. What are the specific strategies for moving people? We can move the policy-makers who need knowledge; for example, incentives

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