Public administration research has documented a shift in the locus of discretion away from street-level bureaucrats to “systems-level bureaucracies” as a result of new information communication technologies that automate bureaucratic processes, and thus shape access to resources and decisions around enforcement and punishment. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are accelerating these trends, potentially altering discretion in public management in exciting and in challenging ways. We introduce the concept of “artificial discretion” as a theoretical framework to help public managers consider the impact of AI as they face decisions about whether and how to implement it. We operationalize discretion as the execution of tasks that require nontrivial decisions. Using Salamon’s tools of governance framework, we compare artificial discretion to human discretion as task specificity and environmental complexity vary. We evaluate artificial discretion with the criteria of effectiveness, efficiency, equity, manageability, and political feasibility. Our analysis suggests three principal ways that artificial discretion can improve administrative discretion at the task level: (1) increasing scalability, (2) decreasing cost, and (3) improving quality. At the same time, artificial discretion raises serious concerns with respect to equity, manageability, and political feasibility.

The Knudsen compressor can be applied as either a vacuum pump or compressor for gases. Earlier investigations have indicated that there are several interesting potential applications of the Knudsen compressor because it has no moving parts and requires no lubricants or supplementary working fluids. However, its energy efficiency tends to be low, so that careful optimization is necessary. An important aspect of the optimization is an understanding of the Knudsen compressor’s operating characteristics in the transitional flow regime of rarefied gas dynamics. This article presents a formulation of Knudsen compressor operation in transitional, rarefied flow. In certain simplified but meaningful situations the formulation provides essentially analytical results for the sensitivity of key performance indicators, such as the energy use and device volume per unit of upflow, to changes in operating and geometric parameters. A numerical study of more complicated situations, using the most general form of the formulation developed here, is substantiated by the analytical investigation. The numerical results also extend the understanding of the Knudsen compressor’s performance characteristics to conditions that cannot be addressed by the simplified analytical form. Specifically, minimization of the device’s volume per unit of upflow is found when the entire cascade operates in transitional flow, which can only be studied using the complete formulation. The results make clear that operation in the transitional flow regime can lead to very significant (factor of 5 to 10) reductions of energy use and device volume for a given task.

This article examines the institutional factors that influence the implementation of open data platforms in U.S. cities. Public management scholarship has argued that governance can be transformed by new information technologies that improve transparency and engagement, reduce administrative costs, and support performance management systems. However, this argument ignores key risks for administrators, as well as institutional and political obstacles that can thwart implementation. This article uses hierarchical negative binomial regression to analyze the organizational and institutional features influencing implementation in more than 1,500 departments across 60 cities. Department type and administrative capacity are strongly associated with the number of open data files available, while city‐level institutional characteristics and administrative capacity are not significant factors. Municipal demographics are also identified as a factor, suggesting a potential demand‐side influence from wealthy and technologically proficient residents. Evidence for Practice The implementation of open data policies benefits from targeted approaches at the department level rather than uniform, citywide objectives or requirements. City executive‐level positions such as chief data or information officers are not necessarily associated with successful implementation, measured by the number of open data files made available. Open data implementation involves additional administrative responsibilities and labor at the department level, so city administrators looking to expand the number and variety of data sets available through their open data platforms should devote time and resources to working directly with departments to facilitate and encourage data sharing. Administrators looking to expand the number and variety of data sets available through their open data platforms should consider the costs associated with investing in increasing individual departments’ abilities to balance the additional administrative responsibilities and labor involved.

Studies at the University of Southern California have shown that an unconventional solidstate device, the Knudsen compressor, can be operated as a microscale pump or compressor. The critical components of Knudsen compressors are gas transport membranes, which can be formed from porous materials or densely packed parallel arrays of channels. An applied temperature gradient across a transport membrane creates a thermal creep pumping action. Experimental and computational techniques that have been developed for the investigations will be discussed. Experimental studies of membranes formed from machined aerogels, activated by radiant heating, have been used to investigate thermal creep flows. In computational studies, several approaches have been employed: the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method and discrete ordinate solutions of the ellipsoidal statistical (ES) and Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) kinetic models. Beyond the study of Knudsen compressor performance, techniques discussed in this article could be used to characterize the properties of gas flows in nano/microscale channels.

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