Information services are both ubiquitous and essential to the operation of virtually every organization in the public, academic, nonprofit, and commercial sectors. Service innovation and optimization can represent important sources of productivity gain, public engagement and participation, and form the basis of significant new business models.

Some important themes that help characterize the ‘service’ field include:

• Collaboration and the co-creation of value
• Information technology, standards, data models, and the choreography of collaboration
• Permeable organizational boundaries and networked relationships across and between firms
• The flattening of organizational structures
• The growing and global importance of knowledge workers
• Increasingly empowered and informed public and consumer communities
• New business models and modes of production, including ‘peer-production’

The Information and Services Design (ISD) program was established at the UC Berkeley School of Information in 2007 to provide a focus for teaching and research on the skills and concepts required by a services-led and information-powered economy.