Data science, artificial intelligence and the third wave of digital era governance

2023/09/25 by Patrick Dunleavy, Helen Margetts · 1 voice · 6 citations
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Blockchain Technology Applications and Security #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI #Legal and Policy Issues

paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/09520767231198737

openalex publication_date 2023/09/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02

Abstract

This article examines the model of digital era governance (DEG) in the light of the latest-wave of data-driven technologies, such as data science methodologies and artificial intelligence (labelled here DSAI). It identifies four key top-level macro-themes through which digital changes in response to these developments may be investigated. First, the capability to store and analyse large quantities of digital data obviates the need for data ‘compression’ that characterises Weberian-model bureaucracies, and facilitates data de-compression in data-intensive information regimes, where the capabilities of public agencies and civil society are both enhanced. Second, the increasing capability of robotic devices have expanded the range of tasks that machines extending or substituting workers’ capabilities can perform, with implications for a reshaping of state organisation. Third, DSAI technologies allow new options for partitioning state functions in ways that can maximise organisational productivity, in an ‘intelligent centre, devolved delivery’ model within vertical policy sectors. Fourth, within each tier of government, DSAI technologies offer new possibilities for ‘administrative holism’ - the horizontal allocation of power and functions between organisations, through state integration, common capacity and needs-based joining-up of services. Together, these four themes comprise a third wave of DEG changes, suggesting important administrative choices to be made regarding information regimes, state organisation, functional allocation and outsourcing arrangements, as well as a long-term research agenda for public administration, requiring extensive and detailed analysis.

Citations

• Digital Government, Open Architecture, and Innovation: Why Public Sector IT Will Never Be the Same Again
• New Public Management Is Dead--Long Live Digital-Era Governance
• Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Technocracy? An Old Framework for a New Analysis of Administrative Reforms in the Governance Era
• Algorithmic Government: Automating Public Services and Supporting Civil Servants in using Data Science Technologies
• Agile: A New Way of Governing
• Social domestication of service robots: The secret lives of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) at a Norwegian hospital
• Algorithmization of Bureaucratic Organizations: Using a Practice Lens to Study How Context Shapes Predictive Policing Systems
• The Fallacy of AI Functionality
• The war in Ukraine shows the game-changing effect of drones depends on the game
• “No end of a lesson:” observations from the first high-intensity drone war
• ChatGPT for Robotics: Design Principles and Model Abilities

Cited by

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• The political economy of digital government: How Silicon Valley firms drove conversion to data science and artificial intelligence in public management
• Generative AI Literacy: Twelve Defining Competencies
• Auditing, the State and Democracy in a “New” Machine Age of Digitalization: The UK Supreme Audit Institution

Discussions

• We are into the 3rd wave of digital era governance, outlined in this open access article doi.org/10.1177/0952... “Data science, artificial intelligence and the third wave of digital era governance” Mo [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]

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