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STREET-LEVEL BUREAUCRACY AND E-GOVERNMENT

Aurélien Buffat

Aurélien Buffat Institute of Political and International Studies Faculty of Social and Political Sciences University of Lausanne Lausanne Switzerland E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

With the intensive use of information and communication technologies, governments are transforming into e-governments. While public management research has given increased attention to this subject lately, this article reviews the limited literature that deals with the impacts of e-government tech- nologies on street-level bureaucracies. A twofold argument is being developed. First, what can be called the ‘curtailment thesis’, stressing the reduction or disappearance of frontline policy discretion, is addressed. Second, the ‘enablement thesis’ gets atten- tion, highlighting how technologies provide frontline workers and citizens with additional action resources. The article concludes with propositions for a future research agenda on the topic.

Key words E-government, street-level bureaucracy, dis- cretion, accountability

© 2013 Taylor & Francis

Public Management Review, 2015

Vol. 17, No. 1, 149–161, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2013.771699

INTRODUCTION

Governments are increasingly using information and communication technologies (ICT). This phenomenon, scholarly labelled as ‘e-government’ or sometimes ‘e-gov- ernance’, mainly refers to the intensive use of electronic tools and applications in public administration and the provision of governmental services (Garson, 2006; Snellen, 2005). While the implementation of new technologies brings important changes for civil servants’ work, the study of e-government has been ‘more or less sidelined’ within public management research (Lips and Schuppan, 2009: 739) where it occupies a somehow ‘ghettoized’ position (Hood and Margetts, 2010; Pollitt, 2011: 378). This seems to reflect the overall lack of consideration regarding the role technological change plays in public administration (Pollitt, 2011). Nevertheless, increasing attention has been given to e-government in the past fifteen years (Bellamy and Taylor, 1998; Henman, 2010; Homburg, 2008; Snellen and van de Donk, 1998). In that regard, Dunleavy et al. (2005) see an overall movement of public sector organiza-

tions towards a ‘digital-era governance’ conceived as ‘the central role that IT and information system changes now play in a wide-ranging series of alterations to how public services are organized as business processes and delivered to citizens or customers’ (468). The new web- based technologies are seen as deeply changing the relations between government agencies and citizens through large-scale use of emails for external communications, the rising influence of agencies’ websites or the massive development of electronic services for clients. Interestingly for our topic, public service organizations tend to transform into ‘digital

agencies’ (479) through the partial or full digitization of their administrative processes and interactions with citizens: various services are nowadays delivered online (e.g. request a birth certificate or fill in a tax return); new forms of automated technologies are implemented based on a ‘zero touch’ logic (the ideal of no human intervention in an administrative operation) and potentially creating a ‘radical disintermediation’ (486) that allows citizens to directly connect to state systems – e.g. with mobile phones applications – without having to pass through the usual universal gatekeepers (the agency personnel). Digitization also implies a movement towards ‘self-government’ (citizens increasingly involved in the co-production of outputs through electronic processes) and towards ‘open-book government’ (citizens’ access to their administrative files and electronic possibilities to intervene in the process). This being said, with some noticeable exceptions presented hereafter, e-government has

remained relatively un-researched from a street-level bureaucracy perspective (Lipsky, 1980), i.e. from a perspective focused on the impacts and uses of these important changes at the frontline level. This is regrettable for our understanding of contemporary street-level organisa- tions functioning in such an increasingly computerized and technologized work environment. Traditionally, street-level bureaucrats are defined as public service workers who

directly interact with citizens (often in face-to-face encounters) and have considerable discretion in the execution of their work, particularly in the way they process people

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and the decisions they make. Several factors account for this discretionary power: the inadequacy of available resources, the ambiguity of policy goals, the difficulties of managerial control, the structural weakness of clients and the intrinsically human (and hence complex) nature of the cases to be handled are considered as work conditions particularly conducive to discretionary behaviour. As Lipsky put it:

The essence of street-level bureaucracies is that they require people to make decisions about other

people. Street-level bureaucrats have discretion because the nature of service provision calls for human

judgment that cannot be programmed and for which machines cannot substitute (1980: 161).

However, the advent of a ‘digital-era governance’ makes it nowadays relevant to ask if and how ICT would be able to impact the well-established policy discretion of street- level bureaucrats depicted in the literature (e.g. Maynard-Moody and Portillo, 2010; Meyers and Vorsanger, 2003). Given the control potential of new technologies allowing managers to supervise frontline agents directly and permanently, it is equally important to investigate the consequences of ICT on street-level accountability relationships, i.e. on ‘accountability regimes’ (Hupe and Hill, 2007). The goals of this paper are hence twofold. First, it aims at discussing the works that

connect e-government, street-level bureaucracy and discretion. Second, based on the latter, propositions for a future research agenda on the subject are made.

FRONTLINE DISCRETION IN E-GOVERNMENTS: CURTAILMENT VERSUS ENABLEMENT ARGUMENTS

Little research exists that addresses the impacts of ICT on street-level discretion. As a consequence, available empirical results and insights are relatively limited. In addition, existing works do not provide conclusive statements. On the one hand, initial research considered that street-level discretion decreases or disappears in the case of large bureaucratic informatisation. Since an insistence is put on the negative impact of ICT over discretion, the label ‘curtailment thesis’ is relevant. On the other hand, other studies point out more nuanced effects of ICT. These studies indicate that new technologies constitute only one factor among others shaping street-level discretion and that they provide both frontline agents and citizens with action resources. This is why we label this orientation the ‘enablement thesis’.

The curtailment thesis

A first contribution was made by Snellen (1998, 2002) according to whom street-level discretion disappears with informatisation. For him, the power of street-level bureaucrats

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lies in their intermediary position between information streams coming from the state and the citizens. Snellen argues that ICT deeply challenge their ability to manipulate information:

It is not by bureaucratic but by infocratic means that the street-level bureaucrat can be prevented from

manipulating the information streams between organization and client. It is because of ICT applications

that street-level bureaucrats have lost what Prottas called their intermediary or central position between

information streams (1998: 500).

In addition, ICT exclude agents from decision making since computer applications provide automated assessment of cases. Human ‘interference’ in cases is eliminated. Such automation of decisions ‘will increasingly define the decision-making premises of street-level bureaucrats’ and, where it occurs, ‘the characteristic street-level bureaucrat disappears from the pages of public administration and public policy’ (Snellen, 1998: 503). The focus is put on the ‘downgrading’ of street-level work (Snellen, 2002: 194–5). With the shift from bureaucracy to ‘infocracy’ (Zuurmond, 1998), street-level bureaucrats lose their influence on policy implementation. Other authors, like Bovens and Zouridis (2002), argue that the street-level dimen-

sion stricto sensu vanishes with ICT: ‘contacts with citizens no longer take place in the streets, in meeting rooms, or from behind windows, but through cameras, modems, and Web sites’ (2002: 180). Agencies progressively transform into screen-level or system- level bureaucracies. While in the former type, ICT are used for data entry and information storage, in

the latter, human judgment is fully replaced with software and predefined algorithms. Decisions are not made by caseworkers but generated through automated programmes: agents do not decide any longer to allocate a grant to a student or send a traffic fine; the programme does it automatically. Street-level bureaucrats disappear almost totally from the organisations: ‘Apart from the occasional public information officer and the help desk staff, there are no other street-level bureaucrats as Lipsky defines them. The process of issuing decisions is carried out – virtually from beginning to end – by computer systems’ (2002: 180). Therefore, frontline discretion decreases with the increasing role of ICT. In a screen-

level bureaucracy, new technologies support case assessment. Human intervention occurs only partially. Limited discretion exists. In a system-level bureaucracy, the whole decision-making process is automated. Caseworkers’ intervention disappears and so does their discretionary power. Discretion shifts to other actors. In terms of policy making, system designers, legal policy staff and IT experts become the functional equivalent of the ancient street-level bureaucrats: ‘they are the persons whose choices can affect the practical implementation of a policy’ (2002: 181). Even though Bovens and Zouridis argue for a ‘discretion-disappearance’ thesis, they

remain cautious regarding the generalisation of this transformation pattern. A first

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reason is the limitation of their study to specific types of street-level bureaucracy, i.e. large decisional industries that handle large amount of formalized transactions (2002: 184). Automating decisions is particularly likely here. It remains uncertain whether ‘similar transformations can be observed in non-legal, non-routine, street-level inter- actions, such as teaching, nursing, and policing’ (180). There are also restrictive necessary conditions for the advent of system-level bureaucracies, such as policy outputs being easily formulated in ‘if, then’ programs and a legal culture emphasising formal equality. The authors grouped here share a common central argument: ICT has a negative and

curtailing effect on frontline discretion. In computerized public service delivery, street- level bureaucrats partially or totally lose their discretionary power. This power shifts to other actors. With this thesis, several critical notes can be made. First, a certain technological

determinism is implied in the argument: technologies arrive and frontline discretion decreases or vanishes. Since implementation and public administration literature have constantly shown the inherent and resilient existence of discretion at the street level, the power of ICT may be overestimated here. A second problem is the use of a too-narrow definition of discretion, particularly by

Snellen, who defines it as the agents’ ability to manipulate information streams (1998: 500). Such a definition does not consider the various sources of frontline discretion. Evans and Harris (2004: 883–90) identify three possible sources: when policy goals appear unclear (discretion in nebulous policy), when frontline agents resist undesired policies (discretion as subversion) or when policy officials voluntarily grant caseworkers with substantial room for manoeuvre (professional discretion). The latter clearly shows that managerial strategies cannot be reduced to the curtailment of discretion. In addition, discretion is a complex phenomenon that depends on a multitude of factors (Hupe, 2006; Hupe and Buffat, 2012); one shall not assume unilateral and mechanical influence of technology. Third, the argument suffers from an obvious empirical limitation. The typology is

only suitable for very specific street-level organisations but, as Bovens and Zouridis acknowledge themselves (2002: 184), is hardly transferable to the core types of street- level bureaucracies (police departments, schools or social welfare departments). Classical street-level bureaucrats will continue to patrol, teach or provide resources for other human beings despite the existence of new technologies. Public goods like education, security or health cannot be provided through algorithms. The fourth weakness is an insufficient interest in the concrete uses of technologies by

frontline workers. How do caseworkers use software and other new technologies? What about citizens? Taylor and Kelly (2006: 637) argue that ICT have become ‘the tool of the professional’ and have to be considered as a further ‘step in the process of street-level activity’ rather than its end point. Such an argument exists in a second range of works we present in the following section.

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The enablement thesis

The ‘curtailment thesis’ is challenged by other research. Instead of unilaterally assuming curtailing effects of new technologies on discretion, other works have considered the question differently. They consider new technologies as only one contextual factor among others shaping discretion, focus their attention on various effects of ICT and highlight how both frontline agents and citizens use technologies as action resources. Dubious about the infocratic argument, Jorna and Wagenaar (2007) study two

subsidy allocation processes in The Netherlands. They show that ICT provide increased managerial control over formal aspects of the daily organizational life (quantity of applications handled and number of inconsistencies) but that such supervision is unable to capture informal dimensions of the decisions made by operators (meaning of data for workers, content of the applied standards, etc). Instead of eliminating discretion through tightened control, informatisation has rather created more ‘inanimate artefacts’ (2007: 210), i.e. information makes it impossible for managers to see how much discretion agents effectively use. The authors argue that ICT ‘obscure the informal use of discretion’ (210) and therefore stress the limited capacity of ICT to provide relevant information on frontline’s daily decisions. The informality of work practices is very difficult to approach through automated monitoring, such an ability being highly dependent on the definition and nature of the task to be controlled. Buffat (2011) provides similar results in a study looking at the impacts of New Public

Management and ICT tools on policy discretion and street-level accountability in a Swiss unemployment fund. Buffat highlights the paradoxical effects of a new electronic document management system. On the one hand, the new programme has provided managers with much more quantitative information on workers’ decisions and com- pliance to legal criteria. On the other hand, the introduction of a remote control through the software has weakened the quality of the supervision: middle managers are not located within the field agencies and work teams any longer and have therefore lost a refined vision of caseworkers’ decisions. Besides, time to control and close attention remain limited organizational resources. As a consequence, managers might see much more regarding street-level work, but this does not mean they see things better; the level of street-level discretion has therefore not diminished after the introduction of the new office technology. Here, the managerial ability to control workers through ICT tools depends on other contextual factors that the technology stricto sensu, i.e. work organization and available resources. Other authors focus on how new technologies are used by frontline agents. In a

study on the implementation of the French agricultural policy, Weller (2006) provides an ethnographic account on how a farmer (called ‘Poulard’) is saved by a street-level bureaucrat (a local farming inspector) against a judgment automatically issued through satellite detection (suppression of the public subsidies granted to Poulard). The satellite has automatically measured some parcels in an incorrect way. Interestingly, it is a

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human agent, using his judgment and intimate local knowledge of the field, who was able to correct the machine’s decision. Here, the automatically generated interpretation of reality is counterbalanced by a human interpretation, which ultima ratio prevails. Analytical lessons consist in the key discretionary role frontline agents continue to play even in highly technologized and automated work contexts. The study also demon- strates that opposing ICT and discretion is not relevant, since it is rather a complex and dynamic interaction that exists between the technical device and its users, in a specific context. Weller’s study indicates that technological influence is not automatic because street-level agents can successfully oppose automated decisions by applying their own judgements. In that case, discretion does not depend only on technology but also and more importantly on contextual factors such as task distribution among agencies or the professional skills of agents. Other works have investigated the impact of new technologies on the nature of the

service encounter and relations between frontline workers and citizens, in particular when ICT seek to replace face-to-face human interactions with virtual ones. The starting point often referred to in these works is the ‘public encounter’ (Godsell, 1981) or the ‘bureaucratic encounter’ (Hasenfeld et al., 1987) as being the previously traditional modes of interaction between state agents and citizens: based on face-to-face meetings in government offices, human interaction and usually taking place at a reception desk.1 What fundamentally characterizes such a bureaucratic encounter is ‘an information exchange and a negotiation and conflict management process through which the applicant’s normative framework and expectations are brought in line with the organization’s’ (Hasenfeld et al., 1987: 402). This type of encounter represents a key moment in ‘people-processing’ (Prottas, 1979) or in the ‘social construction of a client’ (Lipsky, 1980: 59), i.e. the process through which ordinary citizens are being transformed into preformatted legal-administrative categories. Besides, these encoun- ters are conceived as ‘power-dependence relations’ because both state officials and citizens exchange information, depend on each other and mobilize their own resources to ‘negotiate favourable outcomes’ (Hasenfeld et al., 1987: 406). But what does happen to the administrative relationship when such a human interaction is being replaced by a virtual one? In an ethnographic study on how beneficiaries of the French social aid use website

applications of their welfare state department, Vitalis and Duhaut (2004) show the existence of ambiguous and complex effects of the new technology. First, the beneficaries’ choice to electronically interact with the organization is

closely depending on the degree of simplicity/complexity of the matter at hand. The Internet is especially used for cases that both workers and citizens perceive as simple, but users prioritize direct contact with state agents for more complex matters requiring more elaborated explanations and discussions. This is typically the case for conflicting situations, for which the use of the website is perceived as being poorly relevant. Interestingly, virtual interaction does not replace direct interactions between actors but

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get rather integrated into pre-existing and still existing practices (face-to-face contact, phone calls, etc.). This indicates that the administrative relationship remains ‘multi- modal’ (318). Besides, remote web-based technologies have a limited capacity to translate clients’ needs into administrative outputs and a restricted ability to function as a negotiation area of rules or as a conflict management tool. For negotiating or solving conflicts, actors favour direct contact modes of interaction. Another result regards the effects of the new technology on welfare agents. On the

one hand, while in face-to-face interactions agents can easily alternate between a personalized-flexible and a distant-rigid strategy towards their clients, this game is less possible within the formatted internet system. Here, agents see a restriction in their discretionary power. But on the other hand, they also use the same internet system as a way to re-introduce some distance in their relationship with reluctant clients and legitimize their decisions by protecting themselves behind the formal rules and computerized procedures.2 Besides, the IT system provides agents with a whole range of data on clients, allowing them to exert closer control over the beneficiaries. In these two cases, the new technology has both a restraining and an enabling effect on the agent’s discretionary power over clients. Finally, Vitalis and Duhaut (2004) convincingly argue that the beneficiaries can

successfully use the new internet applications to their own advantage: websites provide clients with increasingly better information regarding their rights and clients are therefore able to reduce their asymmetry of information vis-à-vis state agents; they can also get more benefits by remotely cheating in the information they transmit to the welfare department3: ‘for clients, online resources constitute means to break down the administrative opacity and therefore rebalance the administrative relationship. In some cases, exchanges through the internet might even reverse the asymmetry’ (Vitalis and Duhaut, 2004: 322).4 Here, new technologies do clearly provide citizens with addi- tional resources in their relationship to the state. On the latter aspect, consistent empirical evidence in that direction has been recently

produced by Bekkers et al. (2011). In their analysis of two successful micro-mobiliza- tions in The Netherlands (protest of secondary school students and dissenting voices of Dutch soldiers involved in Afghanistan), the authors show that Web 2.0 technologies (social networks, weblogs, YouTube, etc.) have provided individuals and small groups with powerful resources for rapid and important political mobilization against contested policy programmes. In that case, public professionals (managers here) were ‘caught by surprise’ and restricted in their action and room for manoeuvre. New technologies do not only enhance transparency of information for citizens, they do also provide them with powerful action resources due to their facilitating character. In conclusion, the common characteristic of the publications referred to in the

previous paragraphs is the suggestion of an alternative view of discretion in digital street-level bureaucracies. First, discretion is not suppressed at the frontlines despite ICT tools and continues to exist in the daily street-level activity. This result is linked to

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contextual factors such as the inability of ICT tools to capture the whole picture of frontline work and choices, limited resources for managers to control (time, attention), work organization or the skills possessed by street-level agents. Analytically speaking, this means that technology (and its use) is only one of the factors influencing the discretion of frontline agents and that a variety of non-technological factors shape it as well. This is why no unilateral effects of technology can be assumed. Furthermore, these works reach nuanced conclusions regarding the effects of digitization on the administrative relationship. New technologies have mixed and ambiguous impacts because they simultaneously enable state agents to better control their clients while clients also get empowered through the strategic use they can make of ICT. At the opposite of the rather deterministic argument on technology in the ‘curtailment thesis’, this second thesis focuses its attention on how technology is used both by state agents and citizens in their power-dependence relationship, thus insisting more on the enabling aspect of ICT considering the action resources they provide to actors involved at the street level. It appears that complex interactions occur between new technologies, frontline workers and citizens.

TOWARDS A FUTURE RESEARCH AGENDA

Curtailment and enablement arguments represent first encouraging steps of the inquiry into interactions between technological change and street-level bureaucracy. Taking stock of these works, I would like to make propositions for future research on the topic. First, existing knowledge being inconclusive regarding ICT impacts on frontline

discretion, more empirical research is needed. In particular, issues of discretion (power dimension) and accountability (control dimension) in digitized street-level agencies must be placed at the heart of future research efforts. Second, the issue at stake can hardly be separated from the more general debate on

the causal links between technology and society. An intermediary position between the two ‘extreme theoretical positions’ (Pollitt, 2011) – the dominance of technology on the one hand (‘technological determinism’) and the social shaping of technology on the other hand (‘social determinism’) – is relevant here. There is a growing agreement regarding the relevance of a pragmatic and complexity-aware approach of technological change within public administration (Homburg, 2008; Lips and Schuppan, 2009; Pollitt, 2011). This emerging view pushes scholars to fully account the complex sociotechnical nature of e-government. Lips and Schuppan (2009: 742) think e-govern- ment is ‘an outcome of the interplay between ICTs, the public sector, and individuals who are using ICTs’, and Pollitt (2011: 380) similarly states that ‘the uses and consequences of information technology emerge unpredictably from complex social interactions’. Taking complexity seriously implies that probably no big theory is

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relevant here and that future research projects shall be able to address a whole range of contextual factors. This has implications both at a theoretical and methodological level. In terms of theoretical propositions to be explored in future research, it has now

become clearer what still need to be explored. Actually, the two thesis presented above teach us that new technologies exert both constraining and enabling effects on street-level bureaucrats. What remains unclear so far is to discover under which specific conditions do new technologies function, rather as what Hupe and Buffat (2012) call an ‘action prescription’ (limiting the room for manoeuvre) or an ‘action resource’ (enhancing the room manoeuvre) for street-level agents. This obviously regards an empirical matter, implying an investigation of the main contextual factors influencing the phenomenon at stake. As noted earlier, important factors to be considered in the analysis would be (among others): citizens and managerial use of the new technologies, work organiza- tion, types of task at hand or degree of agents’ professionalization. Besides, future research must unpack e-government, i.e. empirically disaggregate it.

E-government involves a large variety of ICT ‘with different technical functions and capabilities, and as a consequence, different possibilities for influencing processes and structures in the public sector’ (Lips and Schuppan, 2009: 742). Unpacking the variety of e-government technologies is important because different consequences are to be expected on street-level discretion and accountability according to the type of technol- ogy. Following Snellen’s (2005: 399) distinction of ICT into five different types, different impacts might be expected whether a database technology, a work-tracing device or an automated decision-making software is implemented in a frontline agency. Finally, what would be suitable methodologies for such a research agenda?

Concluding a special issue dedicated to existing methods in public management research, Hood (2011: 322) refers to the ‘James Bond approach to methodology’ to describe the current interest for combining different methodological approaches, a perspective which seems relevant here as well. Among the methods toolkit, ethnography would be particularly adapted to account for

contextual factors and complexity. Besides, participant observation of the daily func- tioning of organisations is a good way to empirically assess how state agents and citizens do concretely use new technologies. Besides, ethnography is particularly adapted ‘where the challenge is to develop theory rather than to test hypotheses from already fairly well-developed theory’ (Hood, 2011: 325), this being the case regarding our knowledge on the links between new technologies and street-level work. In addition, as Huby et al. (2011) argue, the ethnography to be practised has to be ‘multi-site’ and ‘mobile’ – new ways of ‘being there’ – in order to capture the relationships that are nowadays not just between people, ‘but also between people and human artefacts such as IT products and systems’ (210). Nevertheless, ethnography has its own limitations in terms of generalization of identified causal mechanisms. This is why I suggest to rely also on methods such as comparison (Wilson, 2011) and longitudinal designs (Wond and Macaulay, 2011).

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Comparative analysis would be a suitable approach to assess the effects of e-government in a systematic way: the same technology might have very different consequences for street- level bureaucracies whose characteristics significantly vary at the individual, organisational, professional and institutional levels. As Pollitt (2011: 380) put it, ‘The impact of technological change varies with the particular activities under consideration, the institu- tional context and culture, the legal and financial rules and, not least, the inherent characteristics of the particular technology itself’. In such a comparative perspective, the dependent variable could be the amount of street-level discretion observed in two or more agencies (with identical tasks) but varying on the presence or absence of a given new technology. Comparison could also be diachronic, implying to compare discretion before and after a technological change. Here, comparative methods are useful to empirically establish differences and similarities between cases, to systematically ‘capture context’ (Hupe and Buffat, 2012) and develop causal arguments about the relationship between contextual factors and the outcome under study (discretion). In particular, a diachronic comparison might take the form of a longitudinal design.

Extending the temporal sequence of comparison would compensate the rather short-term perspective of ethnography and allow research projects to get a deeper appreciation of the ‘contextual milieu in which public managers operate’ (Wond and Macaulay, 2011: 311). These are theoretical and methodological suggestions considered useful for the develop-

ment of a future research agenda. More generally, it can be hoped that linking the study of e-government to the study of contemporary street-level bureaucracy will lead to a fruitful dialogue and cross-questioning between these two separated subfields of public administra- tion. Analysing the interaction between new technologies and street-level work remains a necessary task to capture the transformations of public management.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and also Peter Hupe (Erasmus University, Rotterdam) and Yannis Papadopoulos (University of Lausanne) for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article.

NOTES 1 Or a guichet in the terminology used by French sociologists like Weller (1999) or Dubois (2010). 2 The same empowerment of frontline agents towards their clients through IT systems has also been observed in

a study by Dennis (2006) conducted in a US welfare state department: ‘This way (showing budget screens to the client to explain adverse actions), they seem to question the authority and the decisions less than before. I mean “the computer says what the computer says” is the way we can present it and they seem less willing to protest against the outcomes’ (574), quoted from an interview with a frontline worker.

3 For example, the website provides claimants with the possibility to calculate precisely how much social benefits they would get depending on various criteria, such as marital status or other conditions of resources.

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Some claimants have therefore presented themselves as being single instead of married, because they knew from the website calculator it would be more beneficial for them.

4 Our own translation from French.

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