LIST OF PANELS

This panel will take stock and look to the future of administrative processes in the digital era. The digital revolution, with the shift from mechanical and analog technology to digital electronics, has been underway for more than half a century. Governments in all regions of the world are undergoing digital transformations: organizations are increasingly conducting operations digitally or even automatically while connecting digitally among each other and with citizens. In this panel, we build on prior work on the intersection of agency, structure, and technology (Orlikowski 1992; Giddens 1994) as well as more recent work on the shifting role of bureaucrats in an increasingly digitized and automated environment (Buffat 2015; Giest and Klievink 2022; Longo 2022).

In this context, the panel will address larger themes in current e-governance and digital policy and public administration literature, which include:

*How digitization is affecting governments, and public administration, in different regions of the world especially in light of how the COVID pandemic has influenced developments;

*The role of digitization in specific government processes including government procurement, financial and human resources management, administration of justice and the courts, etc.;

*Digitization in select public policy fields such as healthcare, communications, transportation, the environment, and consumer and financial regulation;

*Digitization in the policy process especially considering issues such as AI, ethics, privacy, big data, and regulator technology; and finally

*The impact of digitization on individuals and groups within – and outside – government, paying special attention to the fact that digitization not only creates information asymmetry among government and citizens, but also disadvantages certain groups of citizens. This also includes an examination of the impact of digitization on citizens including positive and exclusionary effects accounting for gender, age discrimination, marginalized and racialized communities, as well as rural communities.

By combining these themes, we aim to fill a gap in the current research landscape by integrating research on bureaucratic structures and digital or automated decision-making processes from the perspective of both public servants and citizens. More broadly, this panel will provide a comprehensive and rich overview of the effects and prospects of public administration in the digital era.

References:

Buffat, A. 2015. Street-Level Bureaucracy and E-Government. Public Management Review 17(1), 149-161.

Giddens, A. 1994. The Constitutions of Society. Oxford: Polity Press.

Giest, Sarah and Bram Klievink. 2022. More than a digital system: How AI is changing the role of bureaucrats in different organizational contexts. Public Management Review, DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2022.2095001.

Longo, J. 2022. When Artificial Intelligence Meets Real Public Administration. Canadian Public Administration, 65(2), 389-393. DOI: 10.1111/capa.12465

Orlikowski, W. 1992. The duality of technology: Rethinking the concept of technology in organizations. Organization Science 3(3), 398–427.

The panel addresses the digital transformation of administrative processes by building on a longer history of digitization research as well as more recent developments on automation or the use of artificial intelligence tools. In order to grasp the myriads of ways in which public administration is being transformed, this panel specifically looks for contributions on:

*The intersection of digital applications and existing administrative structures and processes including, but not limited to, government procurement, financial and human resources management, administration of justice and the courts;

*The changing administrative tasks, roles, and discretion of bureaucrats;

*Digitalization in the policy process linked to, among other possibilities, AI, ethics, privacy rights, big data, regulator technology, and digitalization in select policy fields such as healthcare, communications, the environment, and finance; and,

*The differentiated impact of digitization on citizens accounting for gender, age discrimination, marginalized and racialized communities, as well as rural communities

We invite theoretical and methodological papers as well as empirical work from different parts of the world. The cases can include reports on both successful and unsuccessful public sector digital initiatives. We further hope to engage in a lively discussion on shifts in public administration over time and the larger effects of this on the government-citizen relationship, including potential ‘blind spots’ of policymaking that these processes create.