Information seeking at the Government Offices

This thesis examines information seeking and information needs at the Swedish Government Offices. The Government Offices comprise the Prime Ministers Office, the Government Ministries and the Office for Administrative Affairs. Approximately 4 500 members of staff are employed, of whom around 120 are political appointees. For this study, interviews have been conducted with 15 senior officials and political appointees at the Government Ministries and the Prime Ministers Office. The interviews have been supplemented with literature studies based on user studies research in library and information science. The aim has been to find out who or what the interviewees consult for information, but also to gain a deeper understanding of how the interviewees find and relate to information and information sources. The results show that information is actively sought and that a mixture of formal and informal information is used. Information sources need to be reliable and, because of time pressure, also need to be easy accessible. The interviewees favour the Internet for accessing information but, depending on the situation, verbal communication is also preferred in many cases. The interviewees in this study did in general not use the library. Reasons for this were mainly distant locations of the libraries and lack of awareness of its services.Uppsatsnivå: