LIST OF PANELS

This panel is organized jointly the IPSA RC 48 - Administrative Culture.

The introduction of digital technologies in public governance and policy is accompanied by debates about the benefits, challenges and risks of the digital world. Contemporary digital governance requires adaptability, mobility, flexibility, sensitivity and speed of response to emerging issues. All this requires transformations in the sphere of public administrative culture. It incorporates data-driven requirements, including principles of collaboration, transparency and openness, innovation and co-production. At the same time, digital technologies exacerbated the problems of surveillance and control from above, giving rise to popular anxiety about ‘Big Brother’ (after George Orwell), the ‘Panopticon’ (after Jeremy Bentham), or the All-Seeing Eye (after an ancient image). The danger to freedom and privacy and the cell-phone technology caused a control response from below (‘sousveillance’), itself creating a threat to integration and coordination of efforts in public space. Discussions on freedom, domination and intervention are accompanied by hope for a conflict-free strategy for the interaction of digital governance-citizen relationship based on cooperation, transparency and honesty, which are based on digital technology’s algorithms. Many are convinced that algorithmic governance will remove the dangers of inefficiency and mistrust by putting a share of responsibility on impersonal procedures.

Historically, the transformation of public policy in the era of the digital revolution in the 21st century is already restrained by the traditions laid down by the practice of the implemented e-government, in which considerable attention is paid to services, information and reactive behavior. E-government becomes "narrow" for evolving digital technology, providing new opportunities for public administration and politics, not only in form but also in content and culture. At the same time, the movement for "e-government 3.0" is gaining momentum, which breaks old habitual forms of interaction between the state and society. Some researchers say that, apparently, it is necessary to abandon the adjective "electronic" in describing the structure and activity of state bodies and to talk either simply about "government 3.0" or to focus on its new mechanisms and the culture of interaction with citizens, using the term "citizen-centric-government". This transition is connected with the technological and political basis of modern structures of coordination of interaction. In particular, it should be noted the notion of "platform", which acquires not only the importance of an open and neutral means of communication, but also a public basis for the formation of new administrative culture.

In the process of transforming e-government from portals to platforms, the political nature of the possible use of the state as a platform was manifested. A narrowly technological approach to platforms allowed only to improve the efficiency of service delivery. A broader interpretation spoke of a change in the ideology of public policy, which began to be characterized by such features as the orientation toward citizens inclusion, the cooperation of the main stakeholders in the development of public decisions, the discursive practice of setting the agenda, and so on. And here collaboration may now lead to a new role of the state: a state that rather enables and empowers the social creation of value by its citizens. It protects the infrastructure of P2P cooperation and the creation of commons and of collaborative administrative culture.

In the process of critically examining the possibilities of digital ICTs that have arisen in the course of the post-industrial (fourth) revolution, two main questions arise, to which optimists and pessimists respond in different ways. The first question touches on the problem of the depth of the transformation of technology: How revolutionary are the new ICTs, so that it can be said about their fundamental difference from the previous media and communication? The second question is related to the first and concerns the revolutionizing influence of ICT on political practice and relations: Do new ICTs require new policies and governance? Is there something radically new in this process of the digitalization of public space?

Under these conditions, the question arises of how the administrative culture of public governance is transformed under a digitalization of society and politics. Can we just talk about its adaptation to the changing requirements of digitalization? Or do we observe a kind of digital governance and policy that radically changes the principles, methods, attitudes and norms of administrative activity? What is this policy of digital governance and how does digital culture shape its administrative culture? What role do the processes of learning to act and interact (both within the administrative bodies and among them and the citizens) on the basis of cooperation, reciprocity and mutual responsibility play in this process of forming / adapting the administrative culture?

The introduction of digital technologies in public governance and policy is accompanied by debates about the benefits, challenges and risks of the digital world. Contemporary digital governance requires adaptability, mobility, flexibility, sensitivity and speed of response to emerging issues. All this requires transformations in the sphere of public administrative culture. It incorporates data-driven requirements, including principles of collaboration, transparency and openness, innovation and co-production. At the same time, digital technologies exacerbated the problems of surveillance and control from above, giving rise to popular anxiety about ‘Big Brother’ (after George Orwell), the ‘Panopticon’ (after Jeremy Bentham), or the All-Seeing Eye (after an ancient image). The danger to freedom and privacy and the cell-phone technology caused a control response from below (‘sousveillance’), itself creating a threat to integration and coordination of efforts in public space. Discussions on freedom, domination and intervention are accompanied by hope for a conflict-free strategy for the interaction of digital governance-citizen relationship based on cooperation, transparency and honesty, which are based on digital technology’s algorithms. Many are convinced that algorithmic governance will remove the dangers of inefficiency and mistrust by putting a share of responsibility on impersonal procedures.

How the administrative culture of public governance is transformed under a digitalization of society and politics? Can we just talk about its adaptation to the changing requirements of digitalization? Or do we observe a kind of digital governance policy that radically changes the principles, methods, attitudes and norms of administrative activity? What is this policy of digital governance and how does digital culture shape its administrative culture? What role do the processes of learning to act and interact (both within the administrative bodies and among them and the citizens) on the basis of cooperation, reciprocity and mutual responsibility play in this process of forming / adapting the administrative culture?

We invite conceptualists, case researchers and comparativists to participate. We are interested both in theoretical reports and in empirical studies of the transformation of administrative culture in developed and developing countries. We are particularly interested in reports that show the difference between the introduction of digital technologies in democratic and authoritarian regimes.