Routledge Handbook on Information Technology in Government


Book edited by Yu-Che Chen and Michael J. Ahn: “The explosive growth in information technology has ushered in unparalleled new opportunities for advancing public service. Featuring 24 chapters from foremost experts in the field of digital government, this Handbook provides an authoritative survey of key emerging technologies, their current state of development and use in government, and insightful discussions on how they are reshaping and influencing the future of public administration. This Handbook explores:

  • Key emerging technologies (i.e., big data, social media, Internet of Things (IOT), GIS, smart phones & mobile technologies) and their impacts on public administration
  • The impacts of the new technologies on the relationships between citizens and their governments with the focus on collaborative governance
  • Key theories of IT innovations in government on the interplay between technological innovations and public administration
  • The relationship between technology and democratic accountability and the various ways of harnessing the new technologies to advance public value
  • Key strategies and conditions for fostering success in leveraging technological innovations for public service

This Handbook will prove to be an invaluable guide and resource for students, scholars and practitioners interested in this growing field of technological innovations in government….(More)”.

Permanent Campaigning in Canada


Book by Alex MarlandThierry Giasson and Anna Lennox Esselment:  “Election campaigning never stops. That is the new reality of politics and government in Canada, where everyone from staffers in the Prime Minister’s Office to backbench MPs practise political marketing and communication as though the official campaign were still underway.

Permanent Campaigning in Canada examines the growth and democratic implications of political parties’ relentless search for votes and popularity and what a constant state of electioneering means for governance. With the emergence of fixed-date elections and digital media, each day is a battle to win mini-contests: the news cycle, public opinion polls, quarterly fundraising results, by-elections, and more. The contributors’ case studies – on political databases, the strategy behind online political communication, the politicization of government advertising, and the role of the PMO and political staff – reveal how political actors are using all available tools at their disposal to secure electoral advantage, including the use of public resources for partisan gain.

This is the first study of a phenomenon that has become embedded in Canadian politics and government. It reveals the extent to which political parties and political staff have embraced non-stop electioneering, and the consequences for our democratic processes and institutions….(More)”

The Transparency Fix: Secrets, Leaks, and Uncontrollable Government Information


Book by Mark Fenster:  Is the government too secret or not secret enough? Why is there simultaneously too much government secrecy and a seemingly endless procession of government leaks? The Transparency Fix asserts that we incorrectly assume that government information can be controlled. The same impulse that drives transparency movements also drives secrecy advocates. They all hold the mistaken belief that government information can either be released or kept secure on command.

The Transparency Fix argues for a reformation in our assumptions about secrecy and transparency. The world did not end because Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and Edward Snowden released classified information. But nor was there a significant political change. “Transparency” has become a buzzword, while secrecy is anathema. Using a variety of real-life examples to examine how government information actually flows, Mark Fenster describes how the legal regime’s tenuous control over state information belies both the promise and peril of transparency. He challenges us to confront the implausibility of controlling government information and shows us how the contemporary obsession surrounding transparency and secrecy cannot radically change a state that is defined by so much more than information….(More)”.

The cloud, the crowd, and the city: How new data practices reconfigure urban governance?


Introduction to Special Issue of Big Data & Society by ,  and : “The urban archetype of the flâneur, so central to the concept of modernity, can now experience the city in ways unimaginable one hundred years ago. Strolling around Paris, the contemporary flâneur might stop to post pictures of her discoveries on Instagram, simultaneously identifying points of interest to the rest of her social network and broadcasting her location (perhaps unknowingly). The café she visits might be in the middle of a fundraising campaign through a crowdfunding site such as Kickstarter, and she might be invited to tweet to her followers in exchange for a discount on her pain au chocolate. As she ambles about Paris, the route of her stroll is captured by movement sensors positioned on top of street lights, and this data—aggregated with that of thousands of other pedestrians—could be used by the City of Paris to sync up transit schedules. And if those schedules were not convenient, she might tap Uber to whisk her home to her threadbare pension booked on AirBnB.

This vignette attests to the transformation of the urban experience through technology-enabled platforms that allow for the quick mobilization and exchange of information, public services, surplus capacity, entrepreneurial energy, and money. However, these changes have implicated more than just consumers, as multiple technologies have been taken up in urban governance processes through platforms variously labeled as Big Data, crowd sourcing, or the sharing economy. These systems combine inexpensive data collection and cloud-based storage, distributed social networks, geotagged locational sensing, mobile access (often through “app” platforms), and new collaborative entrepreneurship models to radically alter how the needs of urban residents are identified and how services are delivered and consumed in so-called “smart cities” (Townsend, 2013). Backed by Big Data, smart city initiatives have made inroads into urban service provision and policy in areas such as e-government and transparency, new forms of public-private partnerships through “urban lab” arrangements, or models such as impact investing, civic hacking, or tactical urbanism (cf. Karvonen and van Heur, 2014; Kitchin, 2014; Swyngedouw, 2005).

In the rhetoric used by their boosters, the vision and practice of these technologies “disrupts” existing markets by harnessing the power of “the crowd”—a process fully evident in sectors such as taxi (Uber/Lyft), hoteling (AirBnB), and finance (peer-to-peer lending). However, the notion of disruption has also targeted government bureaucracies and public services, with new initiatives seeking to insert crowd mechanisms or characteristics—at once self-organizing and collectively rational (Brabham, 2008)—into public policy. These mechanisms envision reconfiguring the traditional relationship of public powers with planning and governance by vesting data collection and problem-solving in crowd-like institutional arrangements that are partially or wholly outside the purview of government agencies. While scholars are used to talking about “governance beyond-the-state” (Swyngedouw, 2005) in terms of privatization and a growing scope for civil society organizations, technological intermediation potentially changes the scale and techniques of governance as well as its relationship to sovereign authority.

For instance, civic crowdfunding models have emerged as new means of organizing public service provision and funding community economic development by embracing both market-like bidding mechanisms and social-network technologies to distribute responsibility for planning and financing socially desirable investments to laypeople (Brickstarter, 2012; Correia de Freitas and Amado, 2013; Langley and Leyshon, 2016). Other practices are even more radical in their scope. Toronto’s Urban Repair Squad—an offshoot of the aptly named Critical Mass bike happenings—urges residents to take transportation planning into their own hands and paint their own bike lanes. Their motto: “They say city is broke. We fix. No charge.” (All that is missing is the snarky “you’re welcome” at the end.)

Combined, these emerging platforms and practices are challenging the tactics, capabilities, and authorizations employed to define and govern urban problems. This special theme of Big Data & Society picks up these issues, interrogating the emergence of digital platforms and smart city initiatives that rely on both the crowd and the cloud (new on-demand, internet-based technologies that store and process data) to generate and fold Big Data into urban governance. The papers contained herein were presented as part of a one-day symposium held at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in April 2015 and sponsored by UIC’s Department of Urban Planning and Policy. Setting aside the tired narratives of individual genius and unstoppable technological progress, workshop participants sought to understand why these practices and platforms have recently gained popularity and what their implementation might mean for cities. Papers addressed numerous questions: How have institutional supports and political-economic contexts facilitated the ascendance of “crowd” and “cloud” models within different spheres of urban governance? How do their advocates position them relative to imaginaries of state or market failure/dysfunction? What kinds of assumptions and expectations are embedded in the design and operation of these platforms and practices? What kinds of institutional reconfigurations have been spurred by the push to adopt smart city initiatives? How is information collected through these initiatives being used to advance particular policy agendas? Who is likely to benefit from them?…(More)”.

Civic Tech Cities


Paper by Rebecca Rumbul and Emily Shaw: “‘Civic technology’ is mostly used to refer to NGO led digital initiatives designed to bridge the gap between citizen and institution. However, since the rise of Code for America and similar organisations around the world, civic citizen-focused tech has increasingly been developed and implemented by and with public bodies themselves in an attempt to reach out to citizens and increase engagement and participation. Whilst early civic tech tended to focus on country-level issues, these initiatives are now proliferating at sub-national levels, particularly in cities. These emerging sub-national and municipal level civic technologies form the focus of this research, which explores five case studies of municipal civic tech operating in the US. It examines not only the impacts of this tech upon citizen users, but the effects it has upon the implementing institutions.

Whilst many governments in the world are still working with centralised forms of digital governance, the US has over the last 10 years experienced a plurality of growth in sub-state civic tech usage by city and municipal governments. This nascent government civic tech environment provided a most fertile opportunity for research into the operations and impacts of civic tech employed by official institutions.

This project was designed to examine how civic tech implemented by government is currently operating, who is using it, and what impacts it is having upon service delivery. The aim of this research is therefore to provide a comprehensive picture of civic technology implementation by municipal level public bodies and the challenges and benefits that arise in the process. It is hoped that this report will be of practical use to both public bodies and civic technologists working with them.

The primary deliverable of this project was five case studies of civic tech projects that have been deployed by US cities since 2013:

  • SpeakUpAustin (www.speakupaustin.org), in Austin, Texas
  • LargeLots (www.largelots.org), in Chicago, Illinois
  • RecordTrac (records.oaklandnet.com), in Oakland, California
  • DC311 (311.dc.gov), in Washington, DC
  • Office of Professional Accountability (OPA) Police Complaint Tracker (www.seattle.gov/opa/file-acomplaint-about-the-seattle-police), in Seattle, Washington

In the study, the users of the civic tech tools and the implementers of the tools within government were interviewed about the impact of the tool’s introduction on the delivery of the relevant public service, how these additional sources of public input affected the departments where they had been introduced, whether the department had noted increased efficiency, and whether internal or external stakeholders perceived increased effectiveness.

The civic technology tools examined in this study were generally well-appreciated both internally and externally, receiving good reviews both from the government and non-government sides of their use. People inside and outside of government appreciated the benefits of using them, and expressed interest in maintaining and improving them….(More)”

Blockchains: Moving Digital Government Forward in the States


National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO): “This brief will open the discussion about blockchains and the potential impact on state government.  We won’t delve into the mechanics of blockchains, nor the potential for proliferation of new “e-currencies.”  We want to open the door to the world of blockchains through a variety of conversations with leaders in state government and industry in order to begin discussions regarding where blockchain technology can serve the mission of state government….(More)”

Most City Employees in US Not Engaged


Steven Bosacker and Justin Bibb at Gallup: “Falling revenues, major demographic shifts and rising citizen demands have become the new normal for city governments across the U.S. If city halls want to deliver on their promises to provide high-quality services, they’ll need to find better ways to make government run more effectively.

One big way to do that is to view every city employee as a key contributor to their success.

Every single one.

Local elected officials who treat their public workforce as anything less than their No. 1 resource are missing the boat. City employees are usually the largest line item in the budget. They know firsthand the public’s concerns because they’re on the front lines, and often they exhibit the exact depth of commitment to the community we’d want and expect from such service providers.

The problem is, only 29% of full-time local — as well as state — government workers are engaged at work, according to Gallup’s 2016 “State of Local and State Government Workers’ Engagement in the U.S.” report. This mirrors engagement for government workers at the federal level. (Among the U.S. workforce overall, 33% of employees are currently engaged in their jobs.) As a result, 71% of full-time state and local government workers are unhappy or disengaged with their jobs, and this creates a missed opportunity for city administrators to drive innovation and move their communities forward.

Gallup also finds that disengaged employees may meet their job expectations but do not expend discretionary energy or feel passion for their work.

Gallup estimates that a lack of engagement among government employees costs U.S. taxpayers an estimated $18 billion per year. That’s a high price tag for losing out on this discretionary energy. On the positive side, big productivity gains are possible when local governments fully and creatively deploy that same discretionary energy.

Many cities attempt to measure and increase their employees’ engagement and commitment to doing good work through regular employee surveys, often juxtaposed with equally important resident surveys to understand key issues of public concern. Gathering such information about what motivates and activates civil servants isn’t just cost-effective — it’s also smart….(More)”.

Blockchain 2.0: How it could overhaul the fabric of democracy and identity


Colm Gorey at SiliconRepublic: “…not all blockchain technologies need to be about making money. A recent report issued by the European Commission discussed the possible ways it could change people’s lives….
While many democratic nations still prefer a traditional paper ballot system to an electronic voting system over fears that digital votes could be tampered with, new technologies are starting to change that opinion.
One suggestion is blockchain enabled e-voting (BEV), which would take control from a central authority and put it back in the hands of the voter.
As a person’s vote would be timestamped with details of their last vote thanks to the encrypted algorithm, an illegitimate one would be spotted more easily by a digital system, or even those within digital-savvy communities.
Despite still being a fledgling technology, BEV has already begun working on the local scale of politics within Europe, such as the internal elections of political parties in Denmark.
But perhaps at this early stage, its actual use in governmental elections at a national level will remain limited, depending on “the extent to which it can reflect the values and structure of society, politics and democracy”, according to the EU….blockchain has also been offered as an answer to sustaining the public service, particularly with transparency of where people’s taxes are going.
One governmental concept could allow blockchain to form the basis for a secure method of distributing social welfare or other state payments, without the need for divisions running expensive and time-consuming fraud investigations.
Irish start-up Aid:Tech is one noticeable example that is working with Serbia to do just that, along with its efforts to use blockchain to create a transparent system for aid to be evenly distributed in countries such as Syria.
Bank of Ireland’s innovation manager, Stephen Moran, is certainly of the opinion that blockchain in the area of identity offers greater revolutionary change than BEV.
“By identity, that can cover everything from educational records, but can also cover the idea of a national identity card,” he said in conversation with Siliconrepublic.com….
But perhaps the wildest idea within blockchain – and one that is somewhat connected to governance – is that, through an amalgamation of smart contracts, it could effectively run itself as an artificially intelligent being.
Known as decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), these are, in effect, entities that can run a business or any operation autonomously, allocating tasks or distributing micropayments instantly to users….
An example similar to the DAO already exists, in a crowdsourced blockchain online organisation run entirely on the open source platform Ethereum.
Last year, through the sheer will of its users, it was able to crowdfund the largest sum ever – $100m – through smart contracts alone.
If it appears confusing and unyielding, then you are not alone.
However, as was simply summed up by writer Leda Glyptis, blockchain is a force to be reckoned with, but it will be so subtle that you won’t even notice….(More)”.

The Nudge Wars: A Glimpse into the Modern Socialist Calculation Debate


Paper by Abigail Devereaux: “Nudge theory, the preferences-neutral subset of modern behavioral economic policy, is premised on irrational decision-making at the level of the individual agent. We demonstrate how Hayek’s epistemological argument, developed primarily during the socialist calculation debate in response to claims made by fellow economists in favor of central planning, can be extended to show how nudge theory requires social architects to have access to fundamentally unascertainable implicit and local knowledge. We draw parallels between the socialist calculation debate and nudge theoretical arguments throughout, particularly the “libertarian socialism” of H. D. Dickinson and the “libertarian paternalism” of Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. We discuss the theory of creative and computable economics in order to demonstrate how nudges are provably not preferences-neutral, as even in a state of theoretically perfect information about current preferences, policy-makers cannot access information about how preferences may change in the future. We conclude by noting that making it cheaper to engage in some methods of decision-making is analogous to subsidizing some goods. Therefore, the practical consequences of implementing nudge theory could erode the ability of individuals to make good decisions by destroying the kinds of knowledge-encoding institutions that endogenously emerge to assist agent decision-making….(More)”

Solving a Global Digital Identity Crisis


Seth Berkley at MIT Technology Review:” In developing countries, one in three children under age five has no record of their existence. Technology can help….Digital identities have become an integral part of modern life, but things like e-passports, digital health records, or Apple Pay really only provide faster, easier, or sometimes smarter ways of accessing services that are already available.

In developing countries it’s a different story. There, digital ID technology can have a profound impact on people’s lives by enabling them to access vital and often life-saving services for the very first time….The challenge is that in poor countries, an increasing number of people live under the radar, invisible to the often archaic, paper-based methods used to certify births, deaths, and marriages. One in three children under age five does not officially exist because their birth wasn’t registered. Even when it is, many don’t have proof in the form of birth certificates. This can have a lasting impact on children’s lives, leaving them vulnerable to neglect and abuse.

In light of this, it is difficult to see how we will meet the SDG16 deadline without a radical solution. What we need are new and affordable digital ID technologies capable of working in poorly resourced settings—for example, where there is no reliable electricity—and yet able to leapfrog current approaches to reach everyone, whether they’re living in remote villages or urban slums.

Such technologies are already emerging as part of efforts to increase global childhood vaccination coverage, with small-scale trials across Africa and Asia. With 86 percent of infants now having access to routine immunization—where they receive all three doses of a diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine—there are obvious advantages of building on an existing system with such a broad reach.

These systems were designed to help the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and my organization, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, close the gap on the one in seven infants still missing out. But they can also be used to help us achieve SDG16.

One, called MyChild, helps countries transition from paper to digital. At first glance it looks like a typical paper booklet on which workers can record health-record details about the child, such as vaccinations, deworming, or nutritional supplements. But each booklet contains a unique identification number and tear-out slips that are collected and scanned later. This means that even if a child’s birth hasn’t been registered, a unique digital record will follow them through childhood. Developed by Swedish startup Shifo, this system has been used to register more than 95,000 infants in Uganda, Afghanistan, and the Gambia, enabling health workers to follow up either in person or using text reminders to parents.

Another system, called Khushi Baby, is entirely paperless and involves giving each child a digital necklace that contains a unique ID number on a near-field communication chip. This can be scanned by community health workers using a cell phone, enabling them to update a child’s digital health records even in remote areas with no cell coverage. Trials in the Indian state of Rajasthan have been carried out across 100 villages to track more than 15,000 vaccination events. An organization called ID2020 is exploring the use of blockchain technology to create access to a unique identity for those who currently lack one….(More)”