Digital Governance

Applying Advanced Technologies to Improve Public Service

Michael E. Milakovich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000456226
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique publique en matière de sciences et technologies

The application of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) to reform governmental structures and public service is widely and perhaps naively viewed as the 21st century "savior", the enlightened way to reinvigorate democracy, reduce costs, and improve the quality of public services.

This book examines the transition from e-government to digital governance in light of the financial exigencies and political controversies facing many governments. The chapters concentrate on strategies for public sector organizational transformation and policies for improved and measurable government performance in the current contentious political environment. This fully updated second edition of Digital Governance provides strategies for public officials to apply advanced technologies, manage remote workforces, measure performance, and improve service delivery in current crisis-driven administrative and political environments. The full implementation of advanced digital governance requires fundamental changes in the relationship between citizens and their governments, using ICTs as catalysts for political as well as administrative communication. This entails attitudinal and behavioral changes, secure networks, and less dependence on formal bureaucratic structures (covered in Part I of this book); transformation of administrative, educational, and security systems to manage public services in a more citizen-centric way (covered in Part II); the integration of advanced digital technologies with remote broadband wireless internet services (Part III); and the creation of new forms of global interactive citizenship and self-governance (covered in Part IV). Author Michael E. Milakovich offers recommendations for further improvement and civic actions to stimulate important instruments of governance and public administration.

This book is required reading for political science, public administration, and public policy courses, as well as federal, state, and local government officials.

Part I

Introduction and Overview

From Formal Bureaucracy to Digital Democracy

10.4324/9781003215875-1

Since the beginning of the Information Age, around the turn of the 21st century, a tidal wave of new technology-driven applications engulfed business, government, and society. New technologies were widely regarded by many as the enlightened way to improve the efficiency and quality of public services, increase electoral participation, and reinvigorate democracy. The extended use of electronic government (e-gov) was touted (perhaps naively) as a means to better inform political decision-making, increase citizen participation, reform government, and “reinvent” public administration. (Bold print denotes key term listed at the back of each chapter and defined alphabetically in the Glossary.) Advocates for faster virtual interactions claimed that civic dialog would be enhanced and that the costs and time associated with delivering public services reduced. Electronic and digital applications in government have since become a primary area of interest and study for numerous public policy specialists (see Chapter 2). The purpose of this book is to critically examine the results, successes, and failures of efforts to deploy technological solutions to solve governmental problems, both administrative and political.

Part 1 examines the rapid conversion from traditional “office-based” government to remote home-based access due to the financial and healthcare exigencies that many commercial enterprises, public agencies, and other organizations are facing. Chapter 1 examines the impact of the “knowledge revolution” on the delivery of government services, given the harsh economic and political realities of higher unemployment, greater debt, lower productivity, and political divisiveness caused by the Trump presidency and spread of coronavirus. Despite advances in technology, governments in the United States are challenged to cope with persistent economic, fiscal, healthcare, and social crises. Chapter 2 details the transition from earlier versions of electronic government to broader and more technologically inclusive concepts of digital government and digital governance, detailing how citizens and governments are struggling with the rapid conversion from traditional bureaucracy to online remote delivery of services. Whether or not advanced internet technologies encourage greater citizen participation, improve service delivery, overcome crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, or reduce massive budget debt and trade deficits, is still an open question.

1

From Centralized Government to Decentralized Results-Driven Smart Governance

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Computer-assisted information and communication technologies (ICTs) emerged a generation ago as the “savior” for business and government, a cost-saving “techno quick fix” for improving the efficiency and quality of citizen and customer services, reducing taxes, and reinvigorating participatory democracy. During the Clinton-Gore administration (1993–2001), electronic government (e-gov) was touted as a panacea for better-informing citizens, modernizing public administration, and reforming government. As detailed in Chapter 6, advocates for the then-trendy Reinventing Government (REGO) initiative espoused policies that purportedly would enhance interactions between citizens and governments, reduce the costs of public services, rebuild infrastructure, and provide incentives for citizens to participate in political decision-making processes (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). Despite multiple attempts at administrative reform and political changes during the first two decades of the 20th century, results did not turn out quite as positively as those making optimistic prescriptions had expected.

In the ensuing decades, connectivity increased, the costs of installing and accessing new internet-enabled ICTs decreased, and global markets further interconnected. Technological applications flourished, more devices were sold, and greater numbers of users connected to the internet and social media. Concurrently, increasing numbers of online participants became more cynical and disillusioned by the slow pace of change in governmental processes. Simply put, “reinventing government” was not enough to justify the existence or purposes of many so-called reinvented public services. Instead, many frustrated citizens were seduced by hollow promises to “drain the swamp” and “make America first” by reducing the size and scope of government and ignoring international responsibilities. In the United States, the subsequent neglect of public health and social policy as well as lack of international cooperation led to the greatest economic downturn since the Great Recession of 2008–2010.

Since early 2020, the global coronavirus pandemic challenged governments worldwide and reinvigorated the role of technology applied to public services. The utilization of electronic and digital government services is increasing as social distancing encourages online interaction. Electronic and digital platforms are also being used to develop innovative ways to promote work-at-work solutions, social distancing, and manage the healthcare crisis. While shelter-in-place and quarantine restrictions brought many “normal” economic and social activities to a halt, e-government applications underwent a massive stress test.¹

During past two decades, the knowledge revolution expanded at an exponential rate, connecting stakeholders everywhere in the world via an estimated 45 billion cellular/mobile phones, fiber optic cables, sensors, social media networks, and satellites. Internet servers and networks now link 5.3 billion online users globally; the omnipresent social media phenomenon Facebook alone reaches 2.6 billion users, nearly one-third of the world's population; such connectivity was undreamt of when e-gov and internet browsers first became widely available.

Only the most cynical observers foresaw the purloined uses of the internet to deal with illicit substances, spread false conspiracy theories, surveil millions of individuals, and threaten democratic political institutions and national security. Even fewer predicted the negative use of information technology (IT) by far-right domestic insurgents and foreign powers to undermine citizens’ confidence in democratic institutions.

The knowledge revolution raises numerous new concerns within the fields of both public and private management, affecting how organizations interact with each other, citizens, customers, suppliers, and stakeholders in new and often unfamiliar ways. Governments, in particular, are dealing with contemporary economic, fiscal, and social problems—often without the benefit of skilled employees with an in-depth understanding of information technologies, structural reforms, legal implications of technology applications, or adequate managerial and technical skills. In addition, equipment replacement schedules and employee skills within all types of organizations—not just governments—have had difficulty keeping pace with rapid advances in IT. Expenditures for equipment and retraining further deplete already bare-bone government budgets, potentially increasing taxes and adding to burgeoning public debt, especially in the United States.

Even before the adjustments required by the COVID-19 pandemic, ICTs were expanding faster than many governments or non-profit organizations, which could implement privacy and security measures necessary for citizens to benefit from the knowledge revolution. Without the massive deployment of necessary defensive tactics, continued digital disruption by hostile foreign governments and state-sponsored hackers may result in negative consequences for democratic governments for decades to come (Braun, 2019). Whether ready or not, governments worldwide are adopting remote online digital technologies as their primary means of service delivery and data privacy. The merger of internet-connected devices with ICTs has permanently disrupted traditional boundaries of commerce, education, healthcare, politics, and public administration.

Businesses, both large and small—as well as many governments and non-profit organizations of all purposes and sizes—are adopting advanced technologies, revising job descriptions, and developing new accountability and performance management strategies to adapt to the so-called New Normal. To respond to citizens and customers in a more “wired” but increasingly less secure world economy, many public agencies are increasingly applying advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, cloud computing, data analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to meet new challenges (Filgueiras and Almeida, 2021).

In addition to deploying advanced technologies to replace outdated legacy systems, operating a modern government requires competent administrators, IT transformation, robust cybersecurity, reliable remote connectivity, system modernization, and updated software. Compared with private-sector entities, most government agencies are decentralized, hidebound, inflexible, and often lack standardized management systems. Governments are generally slow to modernize, implement strategic plans, and attract the best tech talent. Budgetary restrictions and lower salaries than comparable jobs in the private sector further delay modernization. In addition, public service providers are under continuous scrutiny by politicians, many of whom would prefer substituting private providers for public agencies, rather than upgrading basic public infrastructure to support core functions such as education, healthcare, public works, and transportation.²

Predictably, infrastructure replacement costs, fiscal pressures, massive shifts in commerce and governance, political divisiveness, as well as justifiable fears about the misuse of technology, have delayed innovation at all levels of government.³ The potential negative consequences of disruptive changes are heightened by the growth of the competitive global economy, cyberwarfare, ransomware attacks by organized crime rings, independent operators, and foreign actors. The rise of China as a competitive world power, the slow response to the spread of the COVID-19 virus, Trump trade wars, and the long-distance race for global technological dominance have all contributed to the lack of technological innovation in government.

Global Competition for Technological Dominance

Globalization is an exponentially increasing mega-trend that is accelerating the connectivity of ICTs with the world's economy and altering how businesses, individuals, and institutions communicate, collaborate, and compete. At a minimum, global technological leadership requires: (1) investments in digital technologies, (2) knowledge of how to implement rapid process innovation, and (3) more efficient and fair revenue collection, taxation, and distribution systems. According to some experts, China appears to have the edge in the first, the United States in the second, and Western Europe in the third. The countries or regional groups of countries, which perform well in all the three scenarios, will likely overtake others in the global competition for economic and technological dominance.⁴

Globalization began affecting the world economy almost a generation ago—around the time the Berlin Wall fell, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Soviet Union (not Russia) collapsed. Since Europe began unifying in the early 1990s, the economic impact of globalization has empowered billions of individuals who were previously excluded from the material benefits of free-market capitalism (Bhagwati, 2004; DeSoto, 2000; Prestowitz, 2006). Durable goods, such as aircraft, automobiles, computers, and consumer electronics, as well as consumer services, such as IT, medical services and supplies, and remote service call centers, are being mass-produced and distributed less expensively on a larger scale than ever before. Expansion of internet technology and ICT connectivity permitted billions to participate in a more complex world, one that is less hierarchical—but also more dangerous and unstable—due to the driving forces behind globalization and its dissidents (Friedman, 2005, 2008; Milakovich, 2006a; Stiglitz, 2017). Technology has also exposed massive digital inequalities: of the nearly 8 billion inhabitants of the world today, nearly 4 billion people in emerging nations are still unable to connect to the internet due to energy inefficiencies and the high cost of service. Opinions about the long-term impacts of these mega-trends differ. Anti-globalization forces in Europe and the United States have given rise to conservative political movements, nationalism, and political divisiveness in the United States, unrest in Africa and the ...