Government Information Quarterly最新文献

This study draws on longitudinal qualitative data and insights from the literature on administrative burdens, street-level bureaucracy, and digital government to advance the debate on digital inclusion. It sheds light on a paradoxical form of digital inclusion enacted by an unexplored tier of private street-level intermediaries. This paradoxical digital inclusion manifests in three ways. First, digitization reduces administrative burdens by streamlining access to digital services, yet it reproduces administrative burdens for digitally disadvantaged users. Second, digital-by-default policies help realize public value generated by digitization, yet they create economic value for street-level intermediaries to monetize digital inclusion. Third, private street-level intermediaries contribute to digital inclusion and benefit economically from sustaining digital exclusion. This study contributes to the literature on digital inclusion and administrative burden by revealing and explaining the complex and paradoxical mechanisms through which digital inclusion is enacted at the street-level. These detailed insights can enrich policy debates on digital inclusion and be useful in designing digital inclusion policies, specifically in contexts where such forms of ‘paradoxical inclusion’ are present.

Governments worldwide are strategically investing in artificial intelligence (AI) to improve public services and streamline internal operations. In this context, national AI strategies play a pivotal role. This study uses combined qualitative research methods analyzing 28 national AI strategies (i.e., the texts). Our aim is to delve into how governments define and position AI applications within the public sector. Specifically, the study explores how the texts convey AI's application in this context employing a public value(s) perspective. Its discursive analytical approach coupled with a comprehensive take on public value theory (Moore, 1995) engenders novel insights into national discourses on AI in the public sector. Against this background we draw on public administration and policy research in our analysis of three dominant discourses that we identify in the texts, i.e. empowerment through information, enhanced administrative practices, and improved service delivery. We find that the discourses involve different positions in relation to governments' use of AI and depend on particular actors and types of public service. Commonly, they concern government objectives to tackle critical societal issues through AI, such as in the areas of health and social care and employment. In particular, the discourse of enhanced administrative practices commonly positioned AI as a tool to optimize internal processes, resource allocation, and organizational management. On the other hand, the discourse of improved service delivery similarly placed public services front and center, while the discourse of empowerment through information framed AI as being able to enhance citizens' service experiences. Interestingly, discourses emphasizing the policymaking function, i.e., AI applied to the development of public policy,—receives limited attention. Our findings underscore strategic prioritizations. While efficiency and service delivery dominate the discourse, citizen engagement remains underemphasized. We argue that policymakers must strike a balance, ensuring AI aligns with broader societal outcomes while addressing democratic imperatives.

Blockchain technology emerged as a concrete and disruptive application in all sectors. Even if the public sector witnessed this technology's first applications and implementations, it took a while to spread even in that environment. Previous studies have shown that blockchain technologies are a powerful, essential, and effective lever for transforming government processes and procedures and improving the management of public benefits and policies. Following an analysis of a sample of 167 blockchain-oriented projects in the public sector, we explore in this article the extent of the effects of blockchain on fundamental public governance functions, and we further explore the information technology and strategic management literature in this regard. As a result, our study shows concrete evidence of how blockchain improves several government core functions: (1) public service governance, administrative efficiency, and open government capabilities; (2) process innovation in public services; and operational and administrative performance improvement. Via a fsQCA analysis, we explored how indicators characterizing blockchain-based transformation projects in the public sector led to radical transformations in public services. Our findings move forward the blockchain perspective on the public sector by enriching the literature, bringing insights to policymakers, and opening new research directions to scholars and practitioners.

In recent decades, public service provision has become increasingly digitalized. However, while digitalization and artificial intelligence holds many promises, there is surprisingly little causal evidence on how it affects the employees who provide such services in the frontline. Based on cognitive and social psychological theories, we argue that IT projects can increase employees' cynicism towards change and change fatigue. In liaison with a Danish unemployment insurance fund, we test our hypotheses in a pre-registered randomized controlled trial that introduced an algorithmic decision-making support tool to underpin the counselling of newly unemployed clients. We do not find evidence that implementation of this tool resulted in negative employee outcomes. However, exploratory analyses indicate that this conclusion may mask smaller or heterogenous effects depending on employees' years of service with the insurance fund. We end the paper by discussing the implications of organizational change in the public sector.

Disseminating information to the public is critical in emergency management. Thanks to technological advances in recent decades, governments can instantly reach citizens through multiple channels. Existing research on emergency messaging indicates that the effectiveness of messaging depends on multiple factors, including receivers' characteristics, message content and style, as well as the social and political contexts. However, what is still missing in the literature is a better understanding of the role of technology use for emergency messaging, particularly in local governments. Based on the Technology Affordances and Constraints Theory (TACT) and a practice perspective, we analyzed interview data from eighteen local emergency management agencies in the United States to investigate four questions: (1) what digital artifacts are used for writing and sending messages? (2) how do the artifacts afford emergency managers in writing and sending messages? (3) what are the constraints that impede effective messaging? and (4) how do governments cope with those difficulties? We find four types of artifacts involved in emergency messaging, their affordances, and constraints, as well as some strategies for mitigating negative impacts. The findings extend current knowledge about emergency messaging from the point of view of front-line staff and add insights into the TACT.

The prevalence of hate, threats, gender trolling, and other problematic communication patterns in social media prompts concerns about the responsibility associated with government social media adoption. In addressing this issue, this paper adopts a feminist perspective to enrich our understanding of how governments assume responsibility for their adoption of social media. The study contains a sentiment and thematic analysis of responses to a government video campaign on Facebook, which seeks to heighten public awareness about men's violence against women by highlighting problems surrounding sexist jokes. The video targets two audiences in terms of gender, resulting in various outcomes in sentiments, trolling, and trolling management. Results show disparities in sentiments between males and females, the diverse strategies employed in trolling, and how both users and the local government manage trolling. The local government deploys different strategies for trolling management, encompassing both engaging and non-engaging approaches. Notably, engagement is constrained to the targeted male audience and male trollers. The primary responsibility for trolling management is delegated to users, predominantly women, who become proxies for the local government. This dual practice of ignoring women as relevant stakeholders and utilizing them as proxies is considered a failure of responsibility. The study contributes to the advancement of citizen engagement research by delving into the intricate dynamics of trolling and trolling management within the specific context of government social media. Moreover, it sheds light on issues of responsibility inherent in the adoption of social media by governmental entities.

When it comes to routine government activities, such as immigration, justice, social welfare provision and climate change, the general perception is that the US federal government operates slowly. One potential solution to increase the productivity and efficiency of the federal government is to adopt AI technologies and devices. AI technologies and devices already provide unique capabilities, services, and products, as demonstrated by smart homes, autonomous vehicles, delivery drones, GPS navigation, Chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard, and virtual assistants such as Amazon's Alexa. However, incorporating massive AI into the US federal government would present several challenges, including ethical and legal concerns, outdated infrastructure, unprepared human capital, institutional obstacles, and a lack of social acceptance. How can US policymakers promote policies that increase AI usage in the face of these challenges? This will require a comprehensive strategy at the intersection of science, policy, and economics that addresses the aforementioned challenges. In this paper, we survey literature on the interrelated policy process to understand the advancement, or lack thereof, of AI in the US federal government, an emerging area of interest. To accomplish this, we examine several policy process frameworks, including the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET), Internal Determinants and Diffusion (ID&D), Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), and Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD). We hope that insights from this literature will identify a set of policies to promote AI-operated functionalities in the US federal government.

There is growing concern that implementing effective governance constitutes a significant element in cities becoming ‘smart’ due to its multidisciplinarity, complexity of urban challenges and multi-stakeholder involvement. It is assumed that in smart city initiatives, new governance modes arise through the interplay of technological artefacts and political and social factors, viewed through a sociotechnical perspective. We also argue that traditional urban governance modes help explain emerging modes and the nature of citizen-government interactions. Thus, a combination of the sociotechnical view with the modes of urban governance as a theoretical approach was used to understand the dynamics of emerging governance modes in smart city initiatives. Two cases were studied using a longitudinal qualitative case study and temporal bracketing analysis for an in-depth understanding. Our findings evidenced that the configuration of the elements, governance mode, information and communication technology (ICT) and types of citizen-government interaction varies from one initiative to another and changes over time, across multiple sociotechnical networks in practice, which leads to emerging new governance modes. We highlight that a new understanding of smart urban governance for sustainable development in the digital age needs to be developed as a dynamic process. Moreover, we identified two emerging governance modes and proposed a dynamic approach to investigate smart urban governance in other contexts.

Over the past decade, independent regulatory agencies like competition authorities, water and energy regulators have increasingly turned to citizen engagement, including via digital channels. In this study, we seek to shed light on the potential and limits of economic regulators' digital engagement with citizens, compared to traditional, non-digital equivalents. More specifically, we analyse the costs and benefits of four prominent (digital) engagement tools in relation to inclusion, focusing on three key challenges for inclusive citizen engagement: (i) access, (ii) accessible information, and (iii) support in making contributions. Furthermore, we assess the technical, social, and organisational conditions under which the use of the tools can be more inclusive. We conclude that ‘turning digital’ has important advantages for inclusive regulatory engagement but is no panacea. Yet, whilst some challenges cannot be unilaterally tackled by regulators, there is considerable room for these organisations to raise the inclusiveness of their engagement, both by combining tools and modes of engagement, and by expanding their toolbox.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become increasingly prevalent in almost every aspect of our lives. At the same time, a debate about its applications, safety, and privacy is raging. In three studies, we explored how UK respondents perceive the usage of AI in various public sector decisions. Our results are fourfold. First, we found that people prefer AI to have considerably less decisional weight than various human decision-makers; those being: politicians, citizens, and (human) experts. Secondly, our findings revealed that people prefer AI to provide input and advice to these human decision-makers, rather than letting AI make decisions by itself. Thirdly, although AI is seen as contributing less to perceived legitimacy than these human decision-makers, similar to (human) experts, its contribution is seen more in terms of output legitimacy than in terms of input and throughput legitimacy. Finally, our results suggest that the involvement of AI is perceived more suitable for decisions that are low (instead of high) ideologically-charged. Overall, our findings thus show that people are rather skeptical towards using AI in the public domain, but this does not imply that they want to exclude AI entirely from the decision-making process.