Algorithmic bureaucracy

Abstract

In recent years, local government has been undergoing changes which are strongly influenced by the growing digitization of governmental operations. In this paper, we expand on the concepts of Digital Era Governance and its successor, Essentially Digital Government, by introducing the concept of Algorithmic Bureaucracy, which looks at the impacts of artificial intelligence on the socio-technical nature of public administration. We report on a mixed-method study, which focused on how the growth of data science is changing the ways that local government works in the United Kingdom. Under Algorithmic Bureaucracy, the direct and indirect effects of public administrative changes on the level of social problem solving may become positive in two cases: 1) where through artificial intelligence and isocratic administration the explainability of algorithmic processes increases individual and staff competence, and 2) where algorithms take on some of the role of processing institutional and policy complexity much more effectively than humans.