Serving Clients When the Server Crashes: How Frontline Workers Cope with E‐Government Challenges

Abstract

Implementing e-government in the contemporary American state is challenging. E-government places high technical demands on agencies and citizens in an environment of budget austerity and political polarization. Governments developing e-government policies often mobilize frontline workers-also termed "street-level bureaucrats"-to help citizens gain access to services. However, we know little about how frontline workers cope in these challenging circumstances. Th is article fi lls this gap by examining frontline workers implementing the Patient Protection and Aff ordable Care Act. Based on a qualitative analysis, the authors fi nd that frontline workers "move toward clients" when coping with stress: they bend the rules, work overtime, and collaborate in order to help clients. Th ey are less inclined to "move away" or "move against" clients, for instance, through rigid rule following and rationing. In other words, frontline workers try to serve clients, even "when the server crashes." Frontline workers, then, can play a vital role in the successful implementation of e-government policies. Practitioner Points• Frontline workers cope with e-government service delivery in ways that are benefi cial for clients, even in diffi cult circumstances. Hence, they can play a vital role in successfully delivering e-government. • Frontline workers have a wealth of knowledge about implementation challenges, such as technical problems, impossible caseloads, and unclear rules. Th eir knowledge can improve implementation and should be gathered systematically. • Despite extensive coping skills, frontline workers may also experience considerable strain when implementing e-government reforms. Th is can lead to burnout and/or turnover. Th erefore, governments should pay particular attention to the challenges that frontline workers face in their daily work and try to address them.

Connecting governance and the front lines: How work pressure and autonomy matter for coping in different performance regimes

“…This follows insights from both qualitative and quantitative studies, which show that frontline employees who experience having too much work are more likely to cope by changing the relationship with the client (Winter 2002;Tummers and Rocco 2015). As Berkel and Knies (2016) argue, paying attention to the work pressure of frontline employees remains important because the resource-demand balance has an important role in determining the outcome of public policy.…”

“…A prominent issue in the literature is the individual‐level causes of coping (Maynard‐Moody and Musheno ; Loyens and Maesschalck ; Tummers and Rocco ). This article responds to recent calls to study the institutional context of governance in which frontline employees operate (Brodkin ; Hupe and Buffat ).…”

“…As most coping studies (see overview in Tummers et al ) do not compare coping between performance regimes (Hupe and Hill ; Berkel and Knies ), there is a need for such comparisons. Continual austerity and demographic developments (Lodge and Hood ; Kiefer et al ) will in the coming years create an efficiency pressure on public organizations that may increase the need for coping (Winter ; Tummers and Rocco ; Berkel and Knies ).…”

Unraveling the hindering factors of digital public service delivery at street-level: the case of electronic health records

“…By routinizing their use of digital tools, street-level bureaucrats could save time, and/or hide their lack of skills to work with them, which would make their work easier (cf. Tummers and Rocco 2015).…”

Excellence in public administration: job satisfaction as a factor of good administration

“…A relatively new field of studying both job satisfaction and user satisfaction is called 'behavioural public administration'. Its main focus is on the psychological and behavioural foundations of public administration, in order to systematically analyse evaluative judgments, decision-making and the (intended) behaviour of public managers, public professionals and citizens (Grimmelikhuijsen et al, 2017;Jilke, 2016;Tummers et al, 2013;Tummers and Rocco, 2015).…”