Suzanne J. Piotrowski

Nonmission–Based Values in Results–Oriented Public Management: The Case of Freedom of Information

Since the 1940s, Congress and the federal courts have sought to make U.S. federal administration more responsive to democratic–constitutional values, including representation, participation, transparency, and individual rights. As manifested in the National Performance Review, the New Public Management emphasis on results may reduce attention to these values, which for most agencies are not intrinsically mission–based. Freedom of information illustrates the problem of protecting nonmission–based, democratic–constitutional values in results–oriented public management. Agencies’ annual performance plans under the Government Performance and Results Act overwhelmingly ignore freedom of information, even though it is a legal requirement and performance measures for it are readily available. This study concludes that focusing on results may weaken commitment to democratic–constitutional values by default. It suggests that using a balanced scorecard approach in performance plans could enhance attention to freedom of information and other democratic–constitutional values.

Performance Regimes Amidst Governance Complexity

Much of the appeal of performance measurement is explained by its image as a simple and value-neutral way to monitor and improve government. But contemporary governance is characterized by complexity. Few public officials have the luxury of directly providing relatively simple services, the context in which performance regimes work best. Instead, they must work in the context of a disarticulated state, with policy problems that cross national boundaries and demand a multi-actor response. At the same time, traditional democratic values must be honored. This article examines the tensions between performance regimes and the complexity of modern governance, identifying implications and questions for research and practice.

Outsourcing the Constitution and Administrative Law Norms

In the United States, the constitutional constraints and administrative law requirements imposed on government agencies generally have no applicability to private entities performing outsourced public administrative activities. In this article, the authors broadly explore the issues associated with outsourcing constitutional and administrative law norms along with government work by imposing them on private contractors. The authors seek to help frame these issues more cogently for the public administration community in an effort to promote more comprehensive and thoughtful discussion of outsourcing and a greater role for public administrative expertise in determining when and how to apply constitutional and administrative law norms to government contractors.

Transparency: A Regime Value Linked With Ethics

The argument presented in this article is a relatively basic one but one that has been overlooked by students of public administration ethics. The analysis is grounded in the writing and ideas of J...The argument presented in this article is a relatively basic one but one that has been overlooked by students of public administration ethics. The analysis is grounded in the writing and ideas of John A. Rohr. Rohr’s body of work includes a focus on ethics and regime values. I show that transparency and ethics are two terms frequently conflated in common usage. Rohr developed the concept of regime values, which is a central component of this article. My first key point is that governmental transparency fits the definition of a regime value laid out by Rohr. Second, while transparency and ethics are frequently conflated, ethics is conceptually broader than transparency.

Public Accountability ICT Support: A Detailed Account of Public Accountability Process and Tasks

A key objective of open government programs is to promote public accountability by using Information and Communication Technologies ICT to release data on the internal working of public agencies. However, it is not clear how actual accountability such as sanctions or rewards may be achieved from the data disclosed. Nor it is clear how ICT in general should support it. To better understand how ICT can support open data initiated accountability processes in achieving their goal, this paper considers the three phases information, discussion, and consequences usually used to describe such processes. Defining ICT support for these major phases is a difficult effort, since each phase encompasses different tasks and support requirements. This paper aims to address this problem by providing a detailed account of the tasks associated with the whole public accountability process. This may be used by those responsible for open government programs to design and deploy comprehensive ICT support platforms using a task-technology fit perspective.

Open data driven public accountability

Purpose This paper aims to analyse extant literature on open data, distinguish and categorize the strands of public accountability research and use the results to provide better clarity in the concept of open data-driven public accountability. Design/methodology/approach Systematic review of 135 open data articles and 155 accountability articles from the e-government reference library. A multi-stage analysis results in 12 articles which are categorized using Bovens’ (2007) accountability theory of information, discussion and consequences. Conceptual development, using the literature analysis, forms the final section of the paper. Findings Research demonstrates that a range of open data topics has been advanced. However, just 12 articles exist that simultaneously address open data and accountability theory. Of the total 155 public accountability articles, the preponderant focus is on the information (N = 25) and discussion (N = 7) stages of the accountability process. Just one article focuses on the complete accountability process. To address this problem, the characterization of open (government) data-driven public accountability establishes conceptual crispness and clarity. Originality/value Public accountability theory on open government has become overshadowed by social and economic value perspectives. This paper clarifies and advances the open data-driven public accountability perspective. It takes stock of public accountability research, delimits the key issues and questions and highlights the next steps needed for developing scholarship.

The “Open Government Reform” Movement: The Case of the Open Government Partnership and U.S. Transparency Policies

Open government initiatives, which include not only transparency but also participation and collaboration policies, have become a major administrative reform. As such, these initiatives are gaining cohesiveness in literature. President Obama supported open government through a range of policies including the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a multinational initiative. The OGP requires member organizations to develop open government national action plans, which are used as the basis for my analysis. To frame this paper, I use and expand upon David Heald’s directions and varieties of transparency framework. A content analysis of the 62 commitments in the US Second Open Government National Action Plan was conducted. The analysis provides two findings of note: First, the traditional view of transparency was indeed the most prevalent in the policies proposed. In that respect, not much has changed, even with the OGP’s emphasis on a range of approaches. Second, openness among and between agencies played a larger than expected role. While the OGP pushed an array of administrative reforms, the initiative had limited impact on the type of policies that were proposed and enacted. In sum, the OGP is an administrative reform that was launched with great fanfare, but limited influence in the US context. More research needs to be conducted to determine if the “open government reform” movement as a whole suffers from such problems in implementation.

Numbers over Narratives? How Government Message Strategies Affect Citizens’ Attitudes

ABSTRACT This article applies different marketing concepts to released government information and analyzes the effect on citizens’ attitudes. It looks at how the presentation of a message affects citizens’ attitudes when the content remains the same. It investigates the effects of an informational strategy (presenting facts and figures) and a transformational strategy (adding narratives to the figures to appeal to emotions of citizens). Based on theories about information process and framing, different responses are expected from engaged and unengaged citizens. It finds that unengaged citizens respond more favorably when information is couched in a transformational message strategy. Engaged citizens have an opposite response and are better served with an informational strategy. The article concludes that to reach the broader group of unengaged citizens, just disclosing information is insufficient; information needs to be embedded in a meaningful narrative.

Do Open Data Initiatives Promote and Sustain Transparency? A Comparative Analysis of Open Budget Portals in Developing Countries

This research provides a comparative analysis of open budget portals in the context of budget transparency. Specifically, we examine open data portals in the Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management in Brazil and the Finance Ministry in Kyrgyzstan. We utilize interviews with public administrators, archival information, and an analysis of the portals. Furthermore, we use Meijer’s 2013 transparency theoretical framework to assess the relationship between budget portals and transparency in Brazil and Kyrgyzstan. The paper finds that both jurisdictions face similar challenges promoting online disclosure, including a lack of infrastructural development and a limited use of portals by the public. Although centralized online budget disclosures have not promoted a sense of transparency across the broader public, the media has used these disclosures effectively. This has led to a wider public discourse on budgeting in both countries. The authors highlight the specific roles played by the Open Budget Index and international players in advancing and sustaining budget transparency in these countries.

Introduction: accountability processes in modern day government

This symposium came out of a workshop at the 8th Transatlantic Dialog (TAD) on public administration research held at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands on 6–8 June 2012. The TAD is a j...