Digital Era Governance:
Abstract
Government information systems are big business (costing over 1% of GDP a year). They are critical to all aspects of public policy and governmental operations. Governments spend billions on them — for instance, the United Kingdom alone commits £14 billion a year to public sector information technology (IT) operations. Yet governments do not generally develop or run their own systems, instead relying on private sector computer services providers to run large, long-run contracts to provide IT. Some of the biggest companies in the world (IBM, EDS, Lockheed Martin, etc.) have made this a core market. This book shows how governments in some countries (the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands) have maintained much more effective policies than others (in the United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia). It shows how public managers need to retain and develop their own IT expertise and to carefully maintain well-contested markets if they are to deliver value for money in their dealings with the very powerful global IT industry. This book describes how a critical aspect of the modern state is managed, or in some cases mismanaged.
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Cites
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Public sector IT projects are heavily resource constrained, path-dependent given existing infrastructures, and prone to failure from poor initial scoping.
“Compounding this, public sector IT projects are heavily resource constrained, path-dependent given existing infrastructures, and prone to failure from poor initial scoping [16].”
From Fairness and Accountability Design Needs for Algorithmic Support in High-Stakes Public Sector Decision-Making (2018) · cites this paper as [16]
The standardisation of administrative processes and increased ICT processing capabilities already exerted pressure on the human-exclusive decision-making paradigm by reducing cost and delay and increasing the volume of individual decisions a single human decision-maker could create.
“To be sure, the standardisation of administrative processes and the increased processing capabilities of information and communication technologies (ICT) already exerted pressure on such paradigm, as the cost and the delay of processing information reduced and, as a direct consequence, the volume of (individual) decisions that could be created by a single (still) human decision-maker increased (D”
From Resh(AI)ping Good Administration: Addressing the Mass Effects of Public Sector Digitalisation (2024) · cites this paper as Dunleavy et al. 2006
Only very few studies have tried to unpack the deeper mechanisms that shape the long-term transformation of the public sector.
“only very few studies have tried to unpack the deeper mechanisms that shape the long-term transformation of public sector (e.g. Fountain 2001, Dunleavy et al 2006, Gil-Garcia and MartinezMoyano 2007).”
From Technological capacity in the public sector: the case of Estonia (2018) · cites this paper as Dunleavy et al 2006
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Veale, M., Van Kleek, M., & Binns, R. (2018) · Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3173574.3174014 · Cited by 490 · see citing works
Big data in the policy cycle: Policy decision making in the digital era
Höchtl, J., Parycek, P., & Schöllhammer, R. (2016) · Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce · doi:10.1080/10919392.2015.1125187 · Cited by 331 · see citing works
“…is becoming increasingly difficult to justify, because the technological revolution in the realms of communication and data analyses has moved e-government beyond the concept of mere delivery systems for public services (Dunleavy et al. 2006a; Dunleavy and Margetts 2010; Dunleavy et al. 2006b).”
BackgroundCriado, J. I., & Gil-Garcia, J. R. (2019) · International Journal of Public Sector Management · doi:10.1108/ijpsm-07-2019-0178 · Cited by 339 · see citing works
Big data for policymaking: Fad or fasttrack?
Giest, S. (2017) · Policy Sciences · doi:10.1007/s11077-017-9293-1 · Cited by 235 · see citing works
Digital by default? A qualitative study of exclusion in digitalised welfare
Schou, J., & Pors, A. S. (2019) · Social Policy & Administration · doi:10.1111/spol.12470 · Cited by 229 · see citing works
Vogl, T. M., Seidelin, C., Ganesh, B., & Bright, J. (2020) · Public Administration Review · doi:10.1111/puar.13286 · Cited by 209 · see citing works
Data science, artificial intelligence and the third wave of digital era governance
Dunleavy, P., & Margetts, H. (2023) · doi:10.31219/osf.io/f3rza · Cited by 186 · see citing works
Self-citationAndrews, L. (2019) · Public Administration · doi:10.1111/padm.12534 · Cited by 172 · see citing works
The use of AI in public services: results from a preliminary mapping across the EU
Misuraca, G., van Noordt, C., & Boukli, A. (2020) · Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance · doi:10.1145/3428502.3428513 · Cited by 108 · see citing works
Technological capacity in the public sector: the case of Estonia
Lember, V., Kattel, R., & Tõnurist, P. (2018) · International Review of Administrative Sciences · doi:10.1177/0020852317735164 · Cited by 88 · see citing works
Of algorithms, apps and advice: Digital social policy and service delivery
Henman, P. (2019) · Journal of Asian Public Policy · doi:10.1080/17516234.2018.1495885 · Cited by 53 · see citing works
Petrakaki, D. (2018) · International Journal of Public Sector Management · doi:10.1108/ijpsm-02-2017-0043 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
Resh(AI)ping Good Administration: Addressing the Mass Effects of Public Sector Digitalisation
Sanchez-Graells, A. (2024) · Laws · doi:10.3390/laws13010009 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
- Authors
- Dunleavy, P., Margetts, H., Bastow, S., & Tinkler, J.
- Venue
- Oxford University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Published
- 2006-11-02
- OpenAlex
- W2506954441
- Cited by
- 637
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 118 · 2025: 81 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 24 · 2016: 22 · 2015: 32 · 2014: 23 · 2013: 34 · 2012: 36
- FWCI
- 26.95
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Oxford University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › E-Government and Public Services
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Public Policy and Administration Research
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Media Technology › ICT Impact and Policies
- Keywords
- public sector IT, government IT procurement, IT outsourcing, IT contracts, IT industry, value for money, public sector management, IT governance, IT policy, United States, Canada, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia
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