When is an information infrastructure? Investigating the emergence of public sector information infrastructures

Drawing on the notion of information infrastructure as a relational concept, this paper endeavours to highlight the links between data standards and institutional facts. Although social science studies have emphasised the interplay between socio-technical factors, the author suggests that such approaches have overlooked the role that institutional facts play in the development of information infrastructures. An in-depth, qualitative case study of a recent episode of institutional change within the criminal justice system of England and Wales reveals how institutional facts are entangled with data standards through iterative sets of constitutive rules that are mirrored by their associated logical messages in an isomorphic fashion.