The second wave of digital-era governance: a quasi-paradigm for government on the Web

Abstract

Widespread use of the Internet and the Web has transformed the public management 'quasiparadigm' in advanced industrial countries. The toolkit for public management reform has shifted away from a 'new public management' (NPM) approach stressing fragmentation, competition and incentivization and towards a 'digital-era governance' (DEG) one, focusing on reintegrating services, providing holistic services for citizens and implementing thoroughgoing digital changes in administration. We review the current status of NPM and DEG approaches, showing how the development of the social Web has already helped trigger a 'second wave' of DEG 2 changes. Web science and organizational studies are converging swiftly in public management and public services, opening up an extensive agenda for future redesign of state organization and interventions. So far, DEG changes have survived austerity pressures well, whereas key NPM elements have been rolled back. IntroductionThings take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could. Larry SummersDigital changes made feasible by Internet-and Webbased technologies and applications have moved to centre stage in many academic disciplines. They are increasingly vital to executive government operations in all advanced industrial states, albeit with a 'culture lag' compared with business and many civil society adaptations. Public administration and public management scholars remain divided about these developments, however.c 2013 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. The erstwhile dominant academic 'quasi-paradigm' 1 of 'new public management' (NPM) marginalized technological changes in favour of a managerialist emphasis on organizational arrangements and strong corporate leadership. NPM stressed a trinity of macro-themesdisaggregation (chunking-up government hierarchies into smaller organizations); competition (especially with private-sector contractors but also in internal quasi-markets within government); and incentivization (built on pecuniary motivations instead of professionalism). From 1980 to around 2005, the NPM wave was moving strongly forward across many countries (with distinct emphases in different countries) [4]. However, NPM always prioritized managerialist elements and assigned little intellectual significance to digital developments.We have argued elsewhere that a change of quasi-paradigms in public management reform has now occurred, partly because the NPM wave ground to a halt in most advanced industrial countries, amid growing signs of crises and contradictions. This argument does not deny that NPM arrangements are still being implemented, and indeed occasionally being revived in some new contexts. Of course, even in the Kuhnian theory of shifts in scientific paradigms, the legacy view normally remains in being and is extensively used for many years. Its remaining exponents often fight lengthy rearguard actions against the ideas that intellectually supplant it. In fields such as public management, w...

Big data for policymaking: fad or fasttrack?

“…For example, the Data Readiness Concept references this in the organizational capabilities category, where Klievink et al (2016) identify IT governance, IT resources, internal attitude, external attitude, legal compliance, data governance and data science expertise as relevant factors for dealing with big data. Similarly, the DEG framework incorporates the idea that the levels of literacy connected to new technologies within government are often low and government workers have to be trained in new skills (Margetts and Dunleavy 2013). The evidence-based policymaking framework also addresses this in form of 'political analytical capacity' of governments (Sanderson 2006;Pawson 2006;Nutley et al 2007;Howlett 2009).…”

“…Both are built on the assumption that data-and technology-driven innovations in government need an infrastructure for creating value from data and are closely linked to the e-government idea of technologies transforming government toward being more responsive and accountable (Jetzek 2016). The DEG concept is a successor of the 'new public management' concept and is defined as a new macro-theory for public sector development (Margetts and Dunleavy 2013). In the DEG research stream, Dunleavy et al (2006) find that technology and digitization in public services are largely portrayed as effortless and a 'good thing', but that in reality, government lags behind development in the private sector, which leads to low levels of literacy connected to new technologies and at times even computers in general.…”

Knowing public services: Cross-sector intermediaries and algorithmic governance in public sector reform

“…The public sector imagined by these organisations is adaptive, interactive, and personalised, and is intended to shape and activate a new kind of interactive citizen subject, a subject who would participate interactively in the production of personalised services through feedback loops facilitated by the algorithmic powers of software systems, data analytics, and predictive technologies. This is an extreme form of human-computer interaction in digital governance utilising "zero-touch technologies" that can act autonomously of human oversight (Margetts & Dunleavy 2013) in order to automate and digitize the interaction between government and citizen. Algorithmic governance functions through collecting, collating and calculating the data of citizens in order to predict their probable future needs, and by automating the process of personalisation.…”

“…First, the promotion of much greater DIY participation in the co-production and personalisation of services (Needham 2011); and second, algorithmic techniques of data collection, calculation and machine learning that have the capacity to "see," "know," and "anticipate" citizens' lives and thus to make them amenable to governing (Ruppert 2012). Co-production and personalisation, mediated and augmented by human-computer interaction and machine learning, are being embedded by these organisations at the centre of their model vision for governing the future of public services (Margetts & Dunleavy 2013).…”

“…The aspiration for a more personalised and knowing public service provision in the UK public sector is examined below as a prototype of what the political scientists Margetts and Dunleavy (2013) have described as "digital-era governance" which puts "human-computer interaction" at the centre of government. Digital governance, in their account, embeds "electronic delivery at the heart of the government business model," and includes activities such as "digitizing interactions with citizens"; "new forms of automation using 'zero-touch technologies' that do not require human intervention"; and partly involves making "citizens do more, developing isocratic administration-or 'do-it-yourself' government" (Margetts & Dunleavy 2013: 6).…”