Digital Government” indicates a new paradigm in governments’ adoption of digital technologies (OECD, 2020), from an instrumental and efficiency-oriented use of technology to creating sustainable government and governance models around technological means. The term recently emerged as a quasi-concept (Jenson, 2015), simultaneously signifying an area of research, a political goal, and a public sector innovation value proposition. As such, Digital Government has been used for several purposes. In government, it supported the articulation of public sector innovation agendas, through which national governments worldwide aim to leverage digital technologies for innovation purposes. Within scientific research, it replaced previous labels that identified the co-evolution between governmental bodies and digital technologies as a research phenomenon — i.e. defining a transdisciplinary research area (Draheim et al., 2021). Data-driven innovation is a central driver of Digital Government (OECD, 2019), expected to enhance policymaking, public services and governance (Ubaldi et al., 2019). It adds to years of antecedent reflection on the public value of digital data (Gray, 2015). Nowadays, the debate on data-driven innovation seems to be abandoning an ICT-driven perspective for a data-centric one, wherein data processing for better policymaking becomes central (Charalabidis et al., 2019; Concilio & Pucci, 2021; Draheim et al., 2021). This new perspective seems to be accompanied by a renewed political interest in how to better leverage and integrate available data sources for better policymaking and value creation in the public sector (Deloitte & the Lisbon Council, 2021). However, data-driven innovation in policymaking appears to have only recently been explored by a dedicated, yet fragmented, field (Mureddu et al., 2020; Suominen & Hajikhani, 2021), which boundaries are not easy to define (Suominen & Hajikhani, 2021) and lacks examples going beyond experimentations (Arnaboldi & Azzone, 2020; Durrant et al., 2018; Giest, 2017; Klievink et al., 2017; Poel et al., 2018; Verhulst et al., 2019). Using Bourdieu’s concept, this paper starts from the hypothesis that the contemporary discussion on data-driven innovation in digital government applied to policymaking is developing into an autonomous field of research, reflection on experimental practices in government, and cultural production — called “data for policy”. Since the networks that gather around any emerging technological innovation actively contribute to its development (Akrich et al., 2002), the discourse on data for policy might influence the orientation of innovative practices of using data in government. Therefore, the paper asks: how has been the discourse on data for policy characterized until now? What makes it different from past research enterprises, and what themes and topics its community prioritises? In answer to these questions, the paper reports the results of a qualitative investigation that triangulated three sources: a narrative literature review on data for policy; thirteen interviews conducted from December 2020 to March 2021 with data for policy experts; and a document analysis of 162 conference papers, presented in the “Data for Policy Conference” (2015-2021 editions). The data collected through the three methods were jointly analysed following the triangulation principle (Flick, 2018) through an approach based on coding (Saldaña, 2013), which intended to map the main themes found in the literature review with topics in interviews and conference papers. The analysis returns that Data Ethics (i.e., the ethical use of data) and Data Culture (i.e., the recognition of the value of data by the public sector) are central themes in the discourse of data for policy. These results suggest that the normative ethical/political dimension of using data is acknowledged above technical and technological dimensions. At the same time, the analysis suggests that the discourse on data for policy has not engaged explicitly with the specificity of policymaking and the use of data in the policy process (Kettl, 2016), but only with regulations hindering non-traditional data use in the public sector. On the other hand, the analysis also shows substantial interest in citizens’ participation and engagement. The paper discusses these results, offers a reflection and agenda for the data for policy research enterprise, and proposes the concept of data-centric policymaking to support a context-based and policy-aware perspective of data-driven innovation in Digital Government.
What makes the “data for policy” discourse different? Analysing themes and topics of the data for policy field
F. Leoni
2022-01-01
Abstract
Digital Government” indicates a new paradigm in governments’ adoption of digital technologies (OECD, 2020), from an instrumental and efficiency-oriented use of technology to creating sustainable government and governance models around technological means. The term recently emerged as a quasi-concept (Jenson, 2015), simultaneously signifying an area of research, a political goal, and a public sector innovation value proposition. As such, Digital Government has been used for several purposes. In government, it supported the articulation of public sector innovation agendas, through which national governments worldwide aim to leverage digital technologies for innovation purposes. Within scientific research, it replaced previous labels that identified the co-evolution between governmental bodies and digital technologies as a research phenomenon — i.e. defining a transdisciplinary research area (Draheim et al., 2021). Data-driven innovation is a central driver of Digital Government (OECD, 2019), expected to enhance policymaking, public services and governance (Ubaldi et al., 2019). It adds to years of antecedent reflection on the public value of digital data (Gray, 2015). Nowadays, the debate on data-driven innovation seems to be abandoning an ICT-driven perspective for a data-centric one, wherein data processing for better policymaking becomes central (Charalabidis et al., 2019; Concilio & Pucci, 2021; Draheim et al., 2021). This new perspective seems to be accompanied by a renewed political interest in how to better leverage and integrate available data sources for better policymaking and value creation in the public sector (Deloitte & the Lisbon Council, 2021). However, data-driven innovation in policymaking appears to have only recently been explored by a dedicated, yet fragmented, field (Mureddu et al., 2020; Suominen & Hajikhani, 2021), which boundaries are not easy to define (Suominen & Hajikhani, 2021) and lacks examples going beyond experimentations (Arnaboldi & Azzone, 2020; Durrant et al., 2018; Giest, 2017; Klievink et al., 2017; Poel et al., 2018; Verhulst et al., 2019). Using Bourdieu’s concept, this paper starts from the hypothesis that the contemporary discussion on data-driven innovation in digital government applied to policymaking is developing into an autonomous field of research, reflection on experimental practices in government, and cultural production — called “data for policy”. Since the networks that gather around any emerging technological innovation actively contribute to its development (Akrich et al., 2002), the discourse on data for policy might influence the orientation of innovative practices of using data in government. Therefore, the paper asks: how has been the discourse on data for policy characterized until now? What makes it different from past research enterprises, and what themes and topics its community prioritises? In answer to these questions, the paper reports the results of a qualitative investigation that triangulated three sources: a narrative literature review on data for policy; thirteen interviews conducted from December 2020 to March 2021 with data for policy experts; and a document analysis of 162 conference papers, presented in the “Data for Policy Conference” (2015-2021 editions). The data collected through the three methods were jointly analysed following the triangulation principle (Flick, 2018) through an approach based on coding (Saldaña, 2013), which intended to map the main themes found in the literature review with topics in interviews and conference papers. The analysis returns that Data Ethics (i.e., the ethical use of data) and Data Culture (i.e., the recognition of the value of data by the public sector) are central themes in the discourse of data for policy. These results suggest that the normative ethical/political dimension of using data is acknowledged above technical and technological dimensions. At the same time, the analysis suggests that the discourse on data for policy has not engaged explicitly with the specificity of policymaking and the use of data in the policy process (Kettl, 2016), but only with regulations hindering non-traditional data use in the public sector. On the other hand, the analysis also shows substantial interest in citizens’ participation and engagement. The paper discusses these results, offers a reflection and agenda for the data for policy research enterprise, and proposes the concept of data-centric policymaking to support a context-based and policy-aware perspective of data-driven innovation in Digital Government.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
