The use of information and communication technology (ICT) is rapidly changing the structure of a number of large, executive public agencies. They used to be machine bureaucracies in which street‐level officials exercised ample administrative discretion in dealing with individual clients. In some realms, the street‐level bureaucrats have vanished. Instead of street‐level bureaucracies, they have become system‐level bureaucracies. System analysts and software designers are the key actors in these executive agencies. This article explores the implications of this transformation from the perspective of the constitutional state. Thanks to ICT, the implementation of the law has virtually been perfected. However, some new issues rise: What about the discretionary power of the system‐level bureaucrats? How can we guarantee due process and fairness in difficult cases? The article ends with several institutional innovations that may help to embed these system‐level bureaucracies in the constitutional state.

The film I, Daniel Blake, directed by Ken Loach, describes the administrative struggles of an elderly carpenter who suffered from a heart attack. After taking a work capability assessment he is deemed fit for work, even though his doctor does not allow him to return to work. He gets lost in the bureaucracy, because he is a computer illiterate and most of the forms have to be filled in online and are processed digitally. His case managers, bound by their preprogrammed decision systems, are unwilling and unable to empathize with him and to do justice to his personal circumstances.The story of Daniel Blake is a rather dramatic illustration of a general trend. The use of information technology (IT) has caused the discretionary freedom within large-scale public executive organizations to shift from professional case managers to programmers and data analysts. This is particularly true of the 'decision factories', those large-scale bureaucracies that routinely make decisions on social benefits, licences, tax returns, fines, subsidies and, to an increasing extent, permits. The same shift also seems to occur in law enforcement organizations that apply data science to optimize their resources and intervention strategies. Whereas previously, these organizations employed massive amounts of 'street-level bureaucrats', today these organizations are more properly understood as 'systemlevel bureaucracies' (Bovens and Zouridis 2002). In these 'system-level bureaucracies', the basic principle of 'unit production', which involved human judgement for each individual case, has been replaced by 'continuous process production' (Woodward 1958(Woodward /1975. Decision making by automated decision systems based on algorithms has pushed aside human judgements based on rules of thumb. In colloquial terms: it is the computer that says ´yes´ or ´no´.This chapter describes how information technology, such as automated decision systems and big data analysis, has transformed large executive organizations into system level bureaucracies. In these system level bureaucracies, the discretionary powers of the street-level professionals have been disciplined by digital systems, and the locus of administrative discretion has shifted to those responsible for programming the decision-making process and translating the legislation into software.Our analysis is limited to large 'production agencies' (Wilson 1989), such as the internal revenue services, departments for work and pensions, and social security agencies. We make no claims about more traditional street-level bureaucracies, such as the police, social work, schools, or courts -although some of the trends we describe can be observed there too. Intelligent and predictive policing are already transforming police organizations and shifting policing from street-level bureaucrats to systems designers and data analysts (e.g. Guilfoyle 2013). Even although police professionals still do street-level work, computer algorithms decide on where police capacity is send to and how policemen work. Data science a...

IntroductionContemporary Dutch public administration increasingly uses new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support its service delivery. As in many other European countries, Dutch municipalities experiment with one-stop shops. National government has also initiated new experiments (see, for an international comparison, Lips and Frissen, 1997). For instance, the Student Loans Agency tries to optimize its accessibility by means of ICTs. Students are able to use the traditional paper forms to communicate with the agency, but they can also use their smartcards or the Internet.In this article we analyse the use of ICTs for public service delivery. We also explore the democratic implications of electronic service delivery. Although the quality of public services can be improved with ICTs, its use may also cause a drift away from the traditional constitutional democratic relationships between the state and its citizens. This development may threaten some fundamental legal and democratic guarantees, which are rarely taken into account by the leading political coalitions. Political and administrative backgrounds for increased attention on service delivery in the NetherlandsThe attention on public service delivery is related to some general trends in Dutch public administration. Although it was partly inspired by the experiences in the United States and the United Kingdom, some of the political and administrative background to this development may be specific to the Netherlands. Two alleged 'crises' mainly caused the increased attention on public service delivery: (1) the 'crisis' in the welfare state which developed after the Second World War and (2) the 'crisis' in the constitutional democratic relationship between citizens and politicians.The gradual expansion of state intervention after the Second World War led to a welfare state in which citizens were nurtured from 'the cradle to the grave'. During the 1980s public administration increasingly met financial limits. Slowly

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