Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Technocracy? An Old Framework for a New Analysis of Administrative Reforms in the Governance Era

Using Social Media for Government Passive Expert-Sourcing

“…[12,27,28]) that, due to the high complexity of modern social problems and needs, it would be highly beneficial if this could be combined with the collection of policy relevant information and knowledge from experts as well ('expert-sourcing'). This is in line with the conclusions of a long political sciences debate, and a corresponding research stream, on the 'democracy versus technocracy dilemma' [5,11,13,15,25,38,39]: both 'democracy' (democratic processes, representative institutions and citizens' engagement/ participation) and 'technocracy' (specialized knowledge of experts) are important and necessary foundations for the development of high quality, effective and acceptable public policies; as each of them makes a different kind of valuable contribution, there is a need for balance as well as interaction between them. So the participants of the democratic processes need experts' knowledge from about the complex social problems under discussion, and the existing options for addressing them (e.g.…”

“…various alternative interventions that government can undertake for this purpose, as well as advantages, disadvantages and limitations of them, their short and long term impacts, etc.) [11,43]; the lack this knowledge and expertise can have quite negative impacts on the quality and effectiveness of the formulated public policies (e.g. can lead to public policies which are inefficient, ineffective, or have negative long term effects).…”

The value of Big Data in government: The case of ‘smart cities’

“…Practices associated with Big Data, especially around machine learning, automated decision-making and predictive algorithms, are changing how public service decision-makers and providers envisage future technology solutions in all service arenas (Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier, 2013), including those in smart city urban environments. Without neglecting the implementation of data analytics in governmental settings and the realization of genuine benefits (for some empirical examples see: Gamage, 2016), the current discourse reflects a technocratic agenda based on a scientific-technological rationality (Esmark, 2016). Typically, urban public service delivery is aligned with commercial ambitions to harvest data from citizens and public values such as transparency and fairness are outranked by attention to instrumental values such as efficiency, safety and security (Meijer et al, 2016).…”

Principal management concepts in Greek public sector: Part II – Management by Objectives

“…The principles and requirements of public management have significant differences from those expressed by the model of bureaucracy which has been followed for years in public administrations worldwide. In contrast with the bureaucratic system of organisation, public management can contribute in finding practical and sustainable solutions, but the fact is that most government departments and agencies are still applying bureaucratic procedures, not being, thereby, able to shake off its pathogenic characteristics (Esmark, 2016). The distinctive differences between bureaucracy and public management, as identified by Borins (1995), are presented in Table 1.…”