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Full-Text Articles in Public Administration

Moving Toward Personalized Law, Cary Coglianese Mar 2022

Moving Toward Personalized Law, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Rules operate as a tool of governance by making generalizations, thereby cutting down on government officials’ need to make individual determinations. But because they are generalizations, rules can result in inefficient or perverse outcomes due to their over- and under-inclusiveness. With the aid of advances in machine-learning algorithms, however, it is becoming increasingly possible to imagine governments shifting away from a predominant reliance on general rules and instead moving toward increased reliance on precise individual determinations—or on “personalized law,” to use the term Omri Ben-Shahar and Ariel Porat use in the title of their 2021 book. Among the various technological, …


Algorithm Vs. Algorithm, Cary Coglianese, Alicia Lai Jan 2022

Algorithm Vs. Algorithm, Cary Coglianese, Alicia Lai

All Faculty Scholarship

Critics raise alarm bells about governmental use of digital algorithms, charging that they are too complex, inscrutable, and prone to bias. A realistic assessment of digital algorithms, though, must acknowledge that government is already driven by algorithms of arguably greater complexity and potential for abuse: the algorithms implicit in human decision-making. The human brain operates algorithmically through complex neural networks. And when humans make collective decisions, they operate via algorithms too—those reflected in legislative, judicial, and administrative processes. Yet these human algorithms undeniably fail and are far from transparent. On an individual level, human decision-making suffers from memory limitations, fatigue, …


Administrative Law In The Automated State, Cary Coglianese Jan 2021

Administrative Law In The Automated State, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

In the future, administrative agencies will rely increasingly on digital automation powered by machine learning algorithms. Can U.S. administrative law accommodate such a future? Not only might a highly automated state readily meet longstanding administrative law principles, but the responsible use of machine learning algorithms might perform even better than the status quo in terms of fulfilling administrative law’s core values of expert decision-making and democratic accountability. Algorithmic governance clearly promises more accurate, data-driven decisions. Moreover, due to their mathematical properties, algorithms might well prove to be more faithful agents of democratic institutions. Yet even if an automated state were …


A Transnational Network For Public Sector Innovation: The Impact Of A Global Digital Government Reform Network On Public Administration At The Domestic Level, Beomgeun Cho, R. Karl Rethemeyer Jun 2020

A Transnational Network For Public Sector Innovation: The Impact Of A Global Digital Government Reform Network On Public Administration At The Domestic Level, Beomgeun Cho, R. Karl Rethemeyer

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This study investigates the impact of a global E-government reform network on an individual country's E-government performance. As keeping pace with changing environments becomes one of the essential tasks for governments to retain problem-solving capacity, scholars have paid a lot of attention to the determinants of public sector innovation. However, how the ideas of reform and innovation have been communicated at the international or intergovernmental level has been paid less attention. To fill the gap in the literature, we have constructed a social network dataset covering 179 countries for the period 2010 to 2013. This dataset records whether countries sent …


Transparency And Algorithmic Governance, Cary Coglianese, David Lehr Jan 2019

Transparency And Algorithmic Governance, Cary Coglianese, David Lehr

All Faculty Scholarship

Machine-learning algorithms are improving and automating important functions in medicine, transportation, and business. Government officials have also started to take notice of the accuracy and speed that such algorithms provide, increasingly relying on them to aid with consequential public-sector functions, including tax administration, regulatory oversight, and benefits administration. Despite machine-learning algorithms’ superior predictive power over conventional analytic tools, algorithmic forecasts are difficult to understand and explain. Machine learning’s “black-box” nature has thus raised concern: Can algorithmic governance be squared with legal principles of governmental transparency? We analyze this question and conclude that machine-learning algorithms’ relative inscrutability does not pose a …


Regulating By Robot: Administrative Decision Making In The Machine-Learning Era, Cary Coglianese, David Lehr Jun 2017

Regulating By Robot: Administrative Decision Making In The Machine-Learning Era, Cary Coglianese, David Lehr

All Faculty Scholarship

Machine-learning algorithms are transforming large segments of the economy, underlying everything from product marketing by online retailers to personalized search engines, and from advanced medical imaging to the software in self-driving cars. As machine learning’s use has expanded across all facets of society, anxiety has emerged about the intrusion of algorithmic machines into facets of life previously dependent on human judgment. Alarm bells sounding over the diffusion of artificial intelligence throughout the private sector only portend greater anxiety about digital robots replacing humans in the governmental sphere. A few administrative agencies have already begun to adopt this technology, while others …


Taking Shape: Implementing Citizen-Centric Local Digital Government In Western Australia, Deborah Jane Stanton Jan 2007

Taking Shape: Implementing Citizen-Centric Local Digital Government In Western Australia, Deborah Jane Stanton

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Digital government, encompassing output-focused e-government (delivering services online) and outcomes-focused e-governance (developing ICT-enabled citizen interaction and participation) has been proposed as the next step in online interaction between government and its citizens. Local government is still coming to grips with providing a mechanism for implementation of both facets of digital government, particularly those of e-governance. The Local Digital Government Framework (LDGF) was developed in this study to incorporate the citizen-centric focus of e-governance, facilitating the move from the organisational, New Public Managementbased focus of e-government. The LDGF extends existing frameworks, providing continuity in the literature. It comprises a new conceptual …