Developments in information and communication technology offer a rich set of possibilities for public managers that can make government more successful at serving their constituencies and achieving their missions. Sadly, barriers exist that can make this process difficult or impossible. Fortunately, this chapter provides public managers with an overview of new technology-based citizen partnerships that can facilitate the incorporation of disruptive technologies into government agencies. Developments like civic technology, data for good, public interest technology, and an emerging core of newer efforts offer public managers a way to address these barriers. The chapter discusses these developments, outlines competencies that managers will need to work with these groups, and explores ways that these competencies can be acquired by the public management workforce.
TopThe Promise And Pitfalls Of Government Technology
Government has a long history of effort in information and communication technologies. Funding for early mainframe computers, the seed money for the Internet and a plethora of other technologies, all came from government sources. It is surprising that, at least in the United States, government has struggled to incorporate technology into its efforts (Anthopoulos, Reddick, Giannakidou & Mavridis, 2016; Harris, 2019).
The potential for effective technology use in government is both substantial and growing (Noveck, 2015). Movements like smart cities or intelligent communities and new applications in a variety of government functions promise exciting new horizons. Many of these visions are never realized. There are many reasons for this and many of them are difficult to fix.
Most government organizations are bureaucracies (Weber, 1947; Bennis, 1970; Olsen, 2008). Bureaucracies are highly structured organizations that control work with a hierarchical system and many rules and procedures (Denhardt, Denhardt, Aristigueta & Rawlings, 2018). The bureaucratic organizational form performs best in a stable environment and dealing with routine problems (Perrow, 1970). This approach works well in this context but struggles in highly volatile environments. Because of this, bureaucracies resist efforts to make internal changes and tend to react strongly to deviations in the environment. Changing the organizational structure is particularly difficult and there is characteristically a substantial amount of resistance to any fundamental change. While the effects of technology adoption on organizational structure and processes are complex (Cascio & Montealegre, 2016), government bureaucracy might be considered a more challenging situation.