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Katriina Byström
Dept. of Information Studies
University of Tampere, Finland
Municipal Administrators at Work Ð Information Needs and Seeking (IN&S) in
Relation to Task Complexity: A Case-Study amongst Municipal Officials
Abstract
Task complexity, in terms of perceived a priori determinability, affects the types of
information needed in tasks based on a motion submitted by the inhabitants of a town.
Information which is connected solely to the task in hand (i.e. task information) is
sufficient in most of the tasks. However, as the tasks become more complex task completion
requires to a greater degree information which is useful in several tasks of the same
domain (i.e. domain information). Instrumental task-solving information is nearly always
unnecessary. Furthermore, most of the information needs experienced by municipal officials
seems to be well-definable and routineously satiable. The increasing complexity leads to
the increasing use of information sources and the usage of different types of information
sources. Document sources are the single most frequently used information source type in
the most simple task category, whereas the usage of persons as information sources
increases drastically at the expense of document sources in more complex tasks. The
results are based on a preliminary analysis of 38 original task performances by municipal
officials of two Finnish towns. Multiple data gathering methods are utilized.
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