All Hands on Tech

11The Organizational Response to Citizen Technology

We’ve focused thus far in this book on the idea and benefits of citizen technologies and the journeys that individual citizens have made toward the broad use of them. Now it’s time to discuss the organizational response. That’s a little difficult because it is in flux, and how organizations react to citizens taking over some of the traditional professional technology tasks varies not only across companies but also across time. We’ve interviewed or worked with multiple citizens who told us that at one point there was strong opposition to citizen development, but it has recently eased or even vanished. It does appear that the long-term trend is heading toward greater democratization and that absent some highly visible catastrophes, it’s likely to continue.

The Two Stereotypical Positions

There are (or at least were…we’re in the midst of change) two traditional positions relative to citizen development and technology usage—one positive and one negative. As you might expect, the positive attitudes were largely on the part of citizens themselves, and in many cases their managers as well. They advocated for citizen activities because they wanted to get things done—to support current and future business initiatives with technology—and because they were dissatisfied with the pace and perceived effectiveness of technology support from professional organizations like their IT groups. Laments like “I went to IT with a request to support ...