Where Are We Now? Get Out The Map

1. Where Are We Now? Get Out The Map What is PA’s response to Plunkitt? We will build new organizations that reconcile bureaucracy and democracy. Those organizations will tend toward the closed model and suffer from the usual defects in decision-making, and our task will be complicated by the vagueness of our goals, the diffusion of implementation responsibility, and the penetration of the task environment.

2. Where Are We Now? Get Out The Map As we try to manage our primary resource (people) for getting the job done, we will have to keep in mind that motivation must be individualized (Skinner, McGregor, Maslow, Herzberg), that individuals relate to organizations in different ways (Hofstede, locals vs. cosmopolitans), and that public sector leaders do not have as much reward or coercive power over employees as private sector leaders and thus have to rely more on expert, charisma, and personal power to motivate.

3. Lecture Preface for Chapter 6 Now that we have built our organizations, we need to use the tools at our disposal to get the job done. Those include information management, productivity improvement, budgeting, and human resources. Each tool has limitations and complications, requiring us to evaluate them in light of the 5 E’s of public administration: efficiency, effectiveness, ethics, equality, and equity.

4. Information technology has amplified problems that have been around for a long time: how much power does government have over us, who is collecting information about us, who has access to that information, and how is that information used? Simultaneously, we face new threats, from terrorism, for example, which make it tempting to collect and use information to insure our safety.

5. The NPR stories assigned for this week show how difficult these questions can be: information gathered by security cameras and DNA testing allows law enforcement authorities to track terrorists and criminals, but that same surveillance equipment is used to monitor the lives of ordinary citizens who pose no threat to the public. If new information technologies make it easier to gather information that previously was much harder to obtain, what is the problem with using them, even though they seem more “intrusive” than older methods? Does the threat of misuse of information mean that we should not gather it? What safeguards might we put in place to restrict the use of information to only those purposes on which we are all agreed?

6. What do I need to know from this chapter and why is it important? What is knowledge management? What is computer matching? What are the differences among street-level, screen-level, and system-level bureaucrats? What court case recognized a constitutionally protected zone of privacy of information? What is the three-pronged test used to balance employee privacy rights with an employer’s right to legitimate information?

7. What is knowledge management?

8. What is knowledge management? The coordination and administration of public policies and procedures for information technology, resources, personnel, and systems in the public sector. Public agencies gather sensitive information that can be misused. Having data means protecting it and organizing it so that it can be used properly. The complexity of this problem is made even more problematic by the scale of the issue, the general difficulties of getting things done in the public sector, and the growing digital divide.

9. What is computer matching?

10. What is computer matching? The electronic comparison of two or more sets or systems of individual personal records. Accessing multiple sources of data allows users to compile a detailed portrait of citizens. What do we want government to know about us?

11. What are the differences among street-level, screen-level, and system-level bureaucrats?

12. What are the differences among street-level, screen-level, and system-level bureaucrats? Street-level = employees who interact directly with citizens. Screen-level = employees act as the interface between citizens and the system. System-level = almost no contact with citizens but high levels of administrative discretion. Personal connection to public sector workers becomes more remote; decision-making is routinized; all contact is through impersonal systems.

13. What court case recognized a constitutionally protected zone of privacy of information?

14. What court case recognized a constitutionally protected zone of privacy of information? Whalen v. Roe (1977): New York statute created computer database with names of patients prescribed drugs likely to be abused. Court ruled that the identification requirement was the product of an orderly, rational legislative decision and did not violate privacy. Court recognized a limited right to informational privacy, but it is still a matter of controversy.

15. “We are not unaware of the threat to privacy implicit in the accumulation of vast amounts of personal information in computerized data banks or other massive government files. The collection of taxes, the distribution of welfare and social security benefits, the supervision of public health, the direction of our Armed Forces, and the enforcement of the criminal laws all require the orderly preservation of great quantities of information, much of which is personal in character and potentially embarrassing or harmful if disclosed. The right to collect and use such data for public purposes is typically accompanied by a concomitant statutory or regulatory duty to avoid unwarranted disclosures. Recognizing that in some circumstances that duty arguably has its roots in the Constitution, nevertheless New York's statutory scheme, and its implementing administrative procedures, evidence a proper concern with, and protection of, the individual's interest in privacy. We therefore need not, and do not, decide any question which might be presented by the unwarranted disclosure of accumulated private data - whether intentional or unintentional - or by a system that did not contain comparable security provisions. We simply hold that this record does not establish an invasion of any right or liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.” – J. Stevens

16. “What is more troubling about this scheme, however, is the central computer storage of the data thus collected. Obviously, as the State argues, collection and storage of data by the State that is in itself legitimate is not rendered unconstitutional simply because new technology makes the State's operations more efficient. However, as the example of the Fourth Amendment shows, the Constitution puts limits not only on the type of information the State may gather, but also on the means it may use to gather it. The central storage and easy accessibility of computerized data vastly increase the potential for abuse of that information, and I am not prepared to say that future developments will not demonstrate the necessity of some curb on such technology.” – J. Brennan, concurring

17. “In Katz v. United States, the Court made clear that although the Constitution affords protection against certain kinds of government intrusions into personal and private matters [1st = association, 3rd = quartering, 4th = searches, 5th = incrimination, 9th= retained; Griswold = contraceptives by married couple, “zone of privacy”], there is no "general constitutional 'right  to  privacy.'... [T]he protection of a person's general right to privacy - his right to be let alone by other people - is, like the protection of his property and of his very life, left largely to the law of the individual States.” – J. Stewart, concurring Scalia dissenting in NASA v. Nelson (2010): “A federal constitutional right to ‘informational privacy’ does not exist.”

18. What is the three-pronged test used to balance employee privacy rights with an employer’s right to legitimate information?

19. What is the three-pronged test used to balance employee privacy rights with an employer’s right to legitimate information? Reasonableness, compelling interest, and job relatedness. Under what circumstances can an employer monitor an employee or collect data about them? As with all invasions of privacy, there will be grey areas along side obvious intrusions. However, in a society that values privacy, there are rules that must be used to justify gathering information.