PATECH · Public Administration and Technology

Public Administration and Technology

Digital technologies are in the centre of the ongoing industrial revolution that is bound to change not only market organizations and activities, but also societies and governments. Ever-increasing computational power has led to automatization and transformation of human jobs and shift towards predictive governance and semi-autonomous services, whereas under the slogan of ‘smart cities’ the governments, private firms as well as citizens are expected to transform the way we organize the public sector, communities and built environment around us. Technological innovations are likely to radically shift the focus of public administration away from traditional activities towards public sector organisations as mediators between different and often conflicting interests of (technology) industry, other public organisations and citizens (activists and service consumers). At the same time, the public sector can be expected to remain an important enabler of technological change in markets. This provides governments with many challenges: they need to become better not only in utilizing digital technologies for economic growth and development, but also in providing more effective and efficient public services while creating more inclusive public governance systems. Central to these developments is the evolution of public sector technological capacities: an ability of public organizations to explore, develop and/or adapt new technological solutions in public service design, delivery and evaluation. The research objectives of the project are to: a) develop a coherent and novel conceptual framework on public sector technological capacities by merging public administration, organizational theory, and technological change literatures, and b) provide novel empirically grounded explanations on the co-evolutionary development mechanisms of public organizations and technology.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union