Volcker Alliance Report – Preparing Tomorrow’s Public Service
The Volcker Alliance released their Preparing Tomorrow’s Public Service report. I was honored to serve as member of the advisory committee for this important project.
Posts
Leveraging Technologies in Public Agencies: US Census Bureau and the 2010 Census – Public Administration Review
I recently completed an examination of how the US Census Bureau leveraged technologies during the 2010 Census with Akshay Bhagwatwar (Kelley School of Business, Indiana University). I am pleased to announce that this paper will appear in a future issue of Public Administration Review. This paper is an illustrative outcome of the policy informatics initiative at the Metropolitan Institute. Policy informatics is an emerging field of both research and a community of practice focusing on 1) advancing decision-making in the public sector through information-centric analysis of evidence that leverages computational and technological advances, and 2) designing, managing, and evaluating of information systems and infrastructures for policy construction, analysis, and implementation. Policy informatics expands to the multi-disciplinary nature of the public administration discipline by infusing it with the advances of information technology, management of information systems, and computational and informational science perspectives.
Abstract: Emerging technologies are transforming government agencies and the nature of governance. In this paper, we outline how under the leadership of Steven J. Jost, Associate Director for Communications, the US Census Bureau leveraged emerging technologies during the 2010 census. The US Census Bureau used technologies not only to complete the 2010 census under budget, but also deployed them innovatively to engage citizens through the design of viable participatory platforms. The Census Bureau also managed risks associated with using emerging technologies effectively. The 2010 Census campaign focused on increasing response rates and encouraging citizen participation through innovations in the communication process with citizens and the infusion of technology.
Citation: Desouza, K.C. and Bhagwatwar, A. “Leveraging Technologies in Public Agencies: The Case of the US Census Bureau and the 2010 Census,” Public Administration Review, Forthcoming.
Leveraging Technologies in Public Agencies: The Case of the US Census Bureau and the 2010 Census – MI Working Paper #2011-01
Akshay Bhagwatwar and I have completed a paper on how the US Census Bureau leveraged technologies during the 2010 Census effort. The papers is being made available as part of the Metropolitan Institute Working Paper series.
Emerging technologies are transforming government agencies and the nature of governance. In this paper, we outline how the US Census Bureau leveraged emerging technologies during the 2010 census. The US Census Bureau used technologies not only to complete the 2010 census under budget, but also deployed them innovatively to engage citizens through the design of viable participatory platforms. The Census Bureau also managed risks associated with using emerging technologies effectively. The 2010 Census campaign, led by Steven J. Jost, Associate Director for Communications, focused on increasing response rates and encouraging citizen participation through innovations in the communication process with citizens and the infusion of technology.
Akshay Bhagwatwar is a doctoral student in the Information Systems Department at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. His areas of research interest are Information Technology Service Management, Virtual Collaboration and Policy Informatics. For more information on his research work please visit www.akshayb.com.
Investigating Failures in Large-Scale Public Sector Projects with Sentiment Analysis
I have co-authored a paper with Sandeep Purao and Jonathan Becker, both based at the College of Information Science and Technology at Penn State University, which analyzes the IRS’s Business Systems Modernization Project using sentiment analysis. The paper will appear in a special issue of e-Service Journal.
We describe results from historical analysis of the IRS Business Systems Modernization (BSM) as an example of large-scale, public sector projects. The project has already spanned a decade and consumed more than 3 billion dollars. The paper suggests extracting stakeholder Sentiments and Confidence from documents, with a view to exploring how such measures may offer early indications of project progress and assist managers to prevent undesirable future outcomes. The key contribution of this research is a demonstration of a plausible technique to elicit stakeholder perspectives based on the content in publicly available documents, either complementing any existing methods, or supplanting them in projects where collecting primary data may be infeasible.
A previous version of this paper was presented at the 44th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences in theElectronic Government Track(Development Methods for Electronic Government, Minitrack).