Digital Government: Technology Use in Public Administration

The dystopian view reminds the potential of information technology to become a control mechanism for authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, a tool of domination and violation of personal privacy. Such a view points out the inner contradictions of information technology.

The Panopticon Concept: Panopticon is a model prison imagined by Jeremy Bentham. This prison consists of a watchtower in the middle and cells surrounding that tower as a circle. The design of the building enables every cell to be perfectly visible from the guard in the watchtower. However, the prisoners are not able to see whether there is indeed a guard in the watch tower or not. But they all have to assume that someone is in the watch tower to monitor what they are doing and saying. The resulting sensation of being watched and the resulting continuous surveillance ability that the Panopticon creates is a very powerful control mechanism.

Means and Schneider (2000:121) defined the concept of e-government as the relationships between governments, their customers (businesses, other governments, and citizens), and their suppliers (again, businesses, other governments, and citizens) by the use of electronic means.

Brown and Brudney, defined e-government as the use of technology, especially web-based applications to enhance access to and efficiently deliver government information and services.
They categorize e-government efforts into three broad categories:

• Government to Citizen (G2C),
• Government to Government (G2G), and
• Government to Business (G2B).

“New Public Management” (NPM) is an umbrella term for like minded administrative reform movements that began in the late 1970s in several English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and a little bit later in the United States.

Toonen  listed the ideal-type characteristics of NPM reforms as follows:

The reasons for the popularity and implementation of New Public Management (NPM) and technology use in public administration worldwide are quite similar:

• First, the perceived insensitivity and rigidity of traditional bureaucratic structures and the resulting public dissatisfaction with government encouraged reformers to embrace managerial ideas. Making the government more responsive is one of the most important reasons for the launch of technology use in public administration projects.
• Second, the financial crises that swept the world, starting with the oil crises of 1973 and 1978, forced the welfare states of the developed Western countries to adapt their government systems to the changing structure of the world economy. Doing more with less is also a critical reason behind the use of technology in public administration projects. Many NPM documents mention technology as a critical enabler of achieving more with fewer resources.
• Thirdly, some countries, such as New Zealand, have been forced to redesign their administrative systems due to increasing global competition, which has reduced their competitiveness in global markets. Creating a technology enabled citizenry and workforce is also a key motivating factor for many government technology use initiatives.
• Fourth, Kettl argued that reinventing government is one way to manage the budget, performance, and trust gaps in government. Similarly, Nye perceived technology use in public administration systems as a major opportunity to combat performance and trust gaps.
• Finally, administrative reform is sometimes a symbolic act. Goodsell highlighted the ritualistic aspects of administrative behavior such as role-playing and meaning-creation. In a similar vein, Fox  interpreted NPM as a form of symbolic politics and attempts to manage citizen perceptions. A similar argument can be made for technology use in government. Not all technology used in public administration systems improves government performance. Sometimes, technology based governmental reforms can be symbolic politics, similar to other reform movements.

New Public Management (NPM) has been influencing technology use in public administration in two major ways:

• First, it encourages the formation of a small, minimal government by way of privatization, deregulation, and localization of public goods and services.

• Secondly, the remaining parts of the governmental structure that are not privatized, deregulated, or handed to the regional or local governments are encouraged to work with a private sector mentality, not in terms of profit maximization, but in terms of emphasizing efficiency or “value for tax money”.

These different types of coordination for collective action are;

1. governance by hierarchy,
2. governance by markets, and
3. governance by networks.

• In the “governance by hierarchy” mode, the government plays a key role as it hierarchically intervenes to produce and supply common goods (e.g., infrastructure, education, or clean air) and defines the legal framework.
• In the “governance by markets” mode, goods and services are allocated efficiently without government intervention by the state. Individuals and organizations decide whether or not to agree to a transaction based on market conditions, such as the price and the quality of the goods, services, or products.
• In the “governance by networks” mode, networks of individuals, groups, and organizations, which are organized around shared values, common beliefs & mutual trust aim to achieve common goals by exchanging information, expertise, and resources.

After the expiration of the MDGs in 2015, the United Nations announced a new set of goals in 2016, entitled the “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) focusing on the solution of complex social, cultural, and ecological problems by the end of 2030.
The SDGs are organized under 17 main headings including but not limited to minimizing hunger and poverty, combating climate change, and ensuring gender equality

To better understand the reasons for the government’s increased use of information and communication technologies, one has to ask two opposite questions simultaneously.

• First, there is the question of the institutional theory of organizations, which is, why are organizations so similar? In other words, if the question is reshaped for a better understanding of technology use in public administration systems, why do increasing numbers of government organizations use technology in quite similar ways? In the examination of this first question, the level of analysis is the individual government organization. The focus is on the processes of adaptation to the environment and pressures of legitimacy and economic efficiency.
• As an institutional theory scholar, Scott argues that organizational structure is an adaptive vehicle and institutionalization refers to evolutionary adaptive processes. He points out the importance of the symbolic aspects of organizations. Government agencies increasingly utilizing numerous technologies in a variety of their functions are good examples of this phenomenon. There are many myths about government organizations adapting different technologies. It is possible to identify these myths by closely examining the metaphors commonly used to define what the digital government is and what it will be like in the future. Digital government symbolizes a variety of concepts like decentralization, democratic participation, informed citizenry, public information networks, etc.

Within the institutional theory of organizations, isomorphic pressures can be observed in three different categories:

1. normative,
2. mimetic, and
3. coercive

• From a coercive isomorphic point of view, the reason that public organizations are going online is either the result of government mandates and/or the informal pressures of other similar public and private organizations, which had already gone online. The political decision-makers and directors of public organizations decide to go online for reasons of legitimacy, perceived efficiency gains, and citizen demand (and thus perceived legitimacy). Coercive isomorphism pressures arise (or are perceived to arise) because public institutions and organizations feel that they are expected to do technology use in public administration systems projects in certain ways. An example of this type of pressure, which is considered to be coercive, is the fear that the funds and resources allocated by the United Nations and the World Bank for ICT projects will be lost if a project does not meet certain conditions
• From a mimetic isomorphic point of view, government organizations model themselves after similar organizations, which they perceive to be more legitimate and successful. By imitating these other public organizations, which had already adopted digital government applications, they enhance their legitimacy by demonstrating that at least the organization is trying to improve the conditions of public service.
• As the name suggests, normative isomorphism arises from the perceived need to conform to certain norms and standards which are sometimes perceived as the expected standard operating norms in a given area. In this case, these norms are the new standards of digitalized service provision for the governments. Therefore, from a normative isomorphic standpoint, government agencies adopt practices of digitalization because of newly emerging professional norms of public service (online interactivity, virtual service, transparency and accountability, etc.).

The most widespread regulation against the risk of security and privacy of information at individual, organizational, and national levels is to enact stringent data protection laws that conform to international standards on this matter. Together with such laws, creating regulatory agencies is also a popular choice in many countries.
In Turkey, both the law (Personal Data Protection Law) and the regulatory body (Personal Data Protection
Agency) were established in 2016. A more current and much more detailed regulation in this area is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union.

Whenever, either national or local governments use technology to provide an online government service, it is possible that the security and individual, organizational, or national level information can be jeopardized at some level.  For example, security camera systems that can scan faces and car license plates may be used by government agencies to ensure or increase the security of the streets and other public spaces such as parks, stadiums, public libraries, and public schools. On the one hand, the use of such systems may increase the level of citizen satisfaction regarding security services provided by the government. On the other hand, there may be critics who see such systems as another means of mass surveillance and invasion of personal privacy.

Algorithmic Bias: “Algorithmic processes that are used to automate or assist decisionmaking about people may produce discriminatory results that violate the norms of justice and equality and that adversely impact particular people or communities in the workplace or society. This phenomenon is referred to as algorithmic bias and occurs
when the outputs of an algorithm benefit or disadvantage certain individuals or groups more than others without a justified reason for such unequal impacts”

The specific risks are;

• the digital divide,
• privacy of information,
• mass surveillance, and
• algorithmic bias.

If optimistic scenarios prevail, efficiency gains, citizen satisfaction with online government services, more government transparency, accountability, and participation are likely outcomes.

If the pessimistic scenarios prevail, there are risks of a wider gap in the digital divide, as well as many more violations of privacy, mass surveillance, and algorithmic bias examples.

Which scenario will play out depends on the existence or absence of strong regulatory governments, vibrant civil society organizations, and active international bodies that will provide international rules and standards.