The design, development and implementation of new systems in organisations while widely studied remains a difficult and uncertain undertaking.
Extending systems design and implementation to entire societies is a much more challenging project.
Technological systems are comprised of multiple elements: technologies, tools, techniques, knowledge etc.
The performance and development of a \enquote{whole} system is an accumulation of the performance and development of the entirety of its constituent elements.
The theoretical construct of \enquote{technological salients}~\citep{Hug1987aa} refers to an alteration of performance by one technology out of the performance envelope of the other elements it works with.
In the social construction of technology literature the presence of a salient conveys either the advance or the degradation of an aspect or subsystem of whole technological system performance.
In the social construction of technology literature the presence of a salient conveys either the advance or the degradation of an aspect or subsystem of whole technological system performance.
The original concept of "salient" (or alliteratively, "forward salient") denotes a feature that projects into another region. In military terminology it is the injection of one side on a battlefield into a region held by the other side.
The salient may become the new frontier if its own side advances or it may become isolated if the other side exerts a pincer movement from two sides.
The notion of a technological salient is therefore a temporal and dynamic concept.
It depicts the interface between technologies or their agents and the wider environment, carries the notion of tension between either side of the interface, and the dynamics of advances (or retreats) in that boundary as one or other make progress or resist.
In this case we argue that a technological system salient may be contrived or constructed by its promoters by generating social and political perceptions.
Political discourse and consultation with so-called stakeholders may be orchestrated in order to prefigure the eventual technology.
If the concept of the technological salient stabilises sufficiently it may in fact succeed in establishing the very conditions necessary for its development.
Egan (2007) uses the notion of reverse and forward salients to develop a framework for governing technological fragility in the development and maintenance of ‘Critical Infrastructure’ (CI).
We propose that the concept may also be employed to depict the evolving politics public policy that becomes entangled with technologically mediated innovation.
Large technical systems impacting civic society and public services are more usually instances of configuring and applying technology rather than the \enquote{de novo} creation and generation of new systems.
We question the relationship between technology developed to implement public policy and the development of public policy that is intended to be implemented in technology.
Social and cultural views on technology and systems have promoted the notion that artefacts have politics (Winner, 1980; Latour, 1991).
Less well developed is a theoretically informed understanding of the process by which, as in the case of the Irish postcode system, politics produces technological artefacts (Joerges, 1999).
Egan (2007) uses the notion of reverse and forward salients to develop a framework for governing technological fragility in the development and maintenance of ‘Critical Infrastructure’ (CI).
We propose that the concept may also be employed to depict the evolving politics public policy that becomes entangled with technologically mediated innovation.
Large technical systems impacting civic society and public services are more usually instances of configuring and applying technology rather than the \enquote{de novo} creation and generation of new systems.
We question the relationship between technology developed to implement public policy and the development of public policy that is intended to be implemented in technology.
Social and cultural views on technology and systems have promoted the notion that artefacts have politics (Winner, 1980; Latour, 1991).
Less well developed is a theoretically informed understanding of the process by which, as in the case of the Irish postcode system, politics produces technological artefacts (Joerges, 1999).
Introduction of novel technological change at a national level represents one of the hard problems for systems development.
Social, industrial and political consensus is often required well in advance of the availability of a technological solution.
Technological systems change for the corps-état, while similar in some respects to issues of ERP implementation in organisations, differs in terms of the need to \enquote{prepare ground} over many years and often long before the technological solution is developed.
In the case of national systems the simple resort to the power of legal \emph{fiat} overplays the power of policy over debate and consensus.
Authorisation by law and regulation may require the actual technology rather than the promise of technology.
And law and regulation do not appear in a vacuum, they are consequences of lobbying, consultation, and deliberation over long duration.
Furthermore authorisation by decree overlooks the risk that wider society either ignores or actively resists the intended change.
Preparation may be needed well in advance of an actual working technological system.
Attempting to employ systems design techniques in these contexts is problematic because of this political societal dimension and the long term (many years) nature of preparation required.
The temporal dimension of systems development and implementation is a crucial although under-theorised aspect.Systems analysis and design, is usually depicted in a linear temporal form (e.g. from project selection, analysis, design, construction, to implementation and support).
More recent shifts to iterative development essentially follow the same format, albeit over shorter timeframes (\citep{Bec2000aa,Coc2002aa}).
Five broad implementation strategies (figure \ref{fig:impstrats}, \pageref{fig:impstrats}) span the extremes, from evolutionary to revolutionary change (\citep{Eas1988aa}).
Likewise these implementation strategies impose differing burdens and cost on users in terms of adaptation to change.
While such methods are widely employed in on-going projects less attention has been given to their use in long term (many years) projects and more importantly on the very-early-stage preparation required.
While such methods are widely employed in on-going projects less attention has been given to their use in long term (many years) projects and more importantly on the very-early-stage preparation required.
Preparation requires in this case of the \emph{corps-état}, the \enquote{body politic} of an entire nation (society plus commerce plus government plus\dots etc.).
The challenge for public agencies may be one of \emph{preparing the ground} long before the desired technological intervention is even designed.
The theoretical construct of implementation from the systems development literature, referring to management strategies at the interface between developers and users of technological systems, offers another way of interpreting processes involved in producing technological salients in the absence of technology.
