Calls for public engagement and participation in AI governance align strongly with a public value management approach to public administration. Simultaneously, the prominence of commercial vendors ...and consultants in AI discourse emphasizes market value and efficiency in a way often associated with the private sector and New Public Management. To understand how this might influence the consolidation of AI governance regimes and decision-making by public administrators, 16 national strategies for AI are subjected to content analysis. References to the public's role and public engagement mechanisms are mapped across national strategies, as is the articulation of values related to professionalism, efficiency, service, engagement, and the private sector. Though engagement rhetoric is common, references to specific engagement mechanisms and activities are rare. Analysis of value relationships highlights congruence of engagement values with professionalism and private sector values, and raises concerns about neoliberal technology frames that normalize AI, obscuring policy complexity and trade-offs.
•Strategies most regularly describe the public as users of services.•Nearly 80% of references to engagement are abstract and do not describe activities.•Engagement values enjoy a congruent relationship with all other value ideals.•Private sector value congruence suggests technology frames that obscure complexity.
The use of information technologies to improve public services is fundamental to the mission of governments worldwide. As technology's value propositions have expanded, understanding how digital ...service delivery creates public values has become a complex and salient research problem. While the extant literature often discusses creating public values through digitizing public services from institutional and managerial perspectives, less is known about the citizens' perceptions of such value creation. This paper aims to address this gap guided by the following research question: what are the citizens' perceptions of public value creation through digital services? To answer this question, we use qualitative data collected through thirteen focus groups in four cities in Mexico. Our findings indicate that citizens tend to perceive the public value of digital services primarily through the individual benefits they receive and that they connect those values to specific characteristics and functionalities of digital services. Moreover, individual value extends to broader societal impacts related to advancing a more transparent and accountable government, stronger democracy, and a more equitable society. We contribute to the literature by describing main public values and their connections to digital services characteristics as perceived by the citizens.
•We use Focus Groups to explore public value creation through government digital services from a citizen perspective.•We use Jørgensen & Bozeman constellations of values to organize citizens' perceptions of value creation.•Citizens connect individual value to social values of a democratic and equitable society.•Digital services are perceived to produce cost savings to the citizens and increased capability for government.•Opportunities for additional value creation exist in those areas of democratic participation.
This article discusses the concept of 'publics' and provides a case example related to Covid-19 to show the importance of strategically managing with and for publics. Specifically, the publics of ...local governance in lockdown are identified from two focus groups with local leaders conducted in Lombardy, Italy. Identifying, designing and visualizing publics is a key democratic and strategic choice with implications on the public values enacted.
User-centricity in e-government is a double-edged sword. While it helps governments design digital services tailored to the needs of citizens, it may also increase the burden on users and deepen the ...digital divide. From an institutional perspective, these fundamental conflicts are inevitable. To better understand the role and effect of user-centricity in e-government, this paper analyses academic literature on user-centricity and public values. The analysis leads to three main insights: First, there is a conflict in citizen representation that may result from the normative dominance of decision-makers. Second, we identify an accountability conflict that can prevent user-centric innovation from thriving in a highly institutionalized environment. Third, we identify a pluralism conflict that emerges from a clash between the reality of a diverse society and the assumed homogeneity of actors. The need to address these conflicts increases with rapid technological innovation, such as distributed ledger technologies, artificial intelligence, and trust infrastructures. These technologies put the user at the center stage and permeate aspects of social life beyond government. In response to these insights, we outline suggestions for further research and practice.
•User-centricity in e-government and public values can conflict with each other.•This article identifies four prevalent value conflicts with five conflict sources.•Findings are derived from a literature review on public values and user-centricity.•Future research could look into the representation, accountability and pluralism conflict.
Policymakers and public managers need to identify, reflect and decide on public values for given policy issues. This process is defined as public values assessment (PVA). We conduct a systematic ...literature review (n = 114 studies) on PVA, and employ a Strategy-as-Practice lens to analyse how the activity of PVA takes place in practice. Based on our integration of evidence, we propose a theoretical framework called PVA-as-Practice (PVAP). We conclude by recommending a configuration approach to future public values research to identify the most effective configurations of PVA activities, taking into account the policy issues faced by policymakers and public managers.
Habiendo logrado los desafíos de cobertura tras políticas de obligatoriedad y un sistema de financiamiento vía subvención a la demanda condicionada a la matrícula y asistencia, pero enfrentado al ...escenario de la segregación escolar, Chile ha decidido abrazar el sueño de una educación inclusiva y de calidad. En este artículo identificamos y analizamos tres nudos críticos que afectan las posibilidades de movilizarse hacia una educación inclusiva de calidad: a) una tensión entre la lógica de la integración e inclusión educativa, b) un modelo basado en el mercado que no considera los valores públicos, y c) una nueva arquitectura educacional, basada en la lógica de la rendición de cuentas individual, que coloca la posibilidad de mejoramiento educativo en sistemas de incentivos individuales atados al logro de pruebas de alto rendimiento. Discutimos la necesidad de abordar y destrabar estos nudos desde la investigación transdisciplinaria.
Public Values Jørgensen, Torben Beck; Rutgers, Mark R.
American review of public administration,
01/2015, Volume:
45, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This article provides the introduction to a symposium on contemporary public values research. It is argued that the contribution to this symposium represent a Public Values Perspective, distinct from ...other specific lines of research that also use public value as a core concept. Public administration is approached in terms of processes guided or restricted by public values and as public value creating: public management and public policy-making are both concerned with establishing, following and realizing public values. To study public values a broad perspective is needed. The article suggest a research agenda for this encompasing kind of public values research. Finally the contributions to the symposium are introduced.
Understanding Public Value - Why Does It Matter? Brown, Prudence R.; Cherney, Lorraine; Warner, Sarah
International journal of public administration,
07/2021, Volume:
44, Issue:
10
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This introduction to the special issue looks back at the debates over public value and public values. It suggests that a focus on recognising public value provides a way to bring the different ...streams together. Drawing on papers from a workshop conducted in July 2019, it sets out three issues critical to understanding the concept: the need for better definition of the core concepts, its contribution to understanding the nature of institutions and the policy process, and ways to bring back the critical issues of power and heterogeneity into our consideration of public value. The special issue aims to expand our understanding of 'public value' and in so doing, better understand how it contributes to public policy research and practice.
We develop a novel citizen-centred multi-dimensional approach to public value creation in regional policy. Drawing on 47 citizen focus groups in 16 European regions, public values are analysed ...through an interpretative comparative approach. Goal attainment is a positive and widely held value. However, evaluations of institutional performance and democratic values are more negative. The findings have significant implications for public value management. We propose a five C's public value creation framework emphasizing coherence across public values and the communication and co-creation of public value sustained through capacity building and continuous feedback. Implications for public value theory, European regional policy and future research are discussed.
Despite substantial investments in ICT in the public sector over the past decades, it has been hard to achieve consistent benefits. One reason for the difficulties is the gap between the expectations ...of key stakeholders (such as governments, businesses and citizens) and project outcomes. Though normative, descriptive and instrumental aspects of stakeholder theory have been influential in explaining stakeholder interests and relationships in the management field, e-Government researchers have rather neglected the normative core of the theory. We show how value theory can improve normative foundations in this area to provide a focused analysis of four e-Government projects. We use a multiple case study approach to study the values of salient stakeholders, demonstrating how the combination of value theory and stakeholder theory provides greater explanatory power than either of the theories in isolation. Our work shows how stakeholders´ interests are bound to generic value positions and allow us to formulate implications for research and practice.
•We studied public values in four Norwegian e-Government cases.•We suggest a normative core in stakeholder theory based on public values.•Our framing of stakeholder theory's normative core enriches analysis of e-Government initiatives.•Administrations are primary stakeholders in e-Government initiatives.•Urgency is the differentiating stakeholder attribute.
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