Preparing public managers for the digital era: incorporating information management, use, and technology into public affairs graduate curricula

ABSTRACT

This study examines how current public affairs graduate programmes prepare students for governing in the digital age and offer suggestions for how to better incorporate information management, use, and technology into public affairs curricula in the United States. Through surveys of graduate programme directors and content analysis of course syllabi, this study shows that current curricula have failed to keep pace with rapid changes in the industry. Courses on information management, use, and technology need to balance their focus on technology with their focus on government. It remains a challenge to integrate information management, use, and technology topics into mainstream management and policy foci.

KEYWORDS:

• Information management, use, and technology
• education
• survey
• content analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In this study, for the sake of simplicity, I use ‘public affairs’ as an encompassing term to include public management, public administration, and public policy.

2. In this study, ‘e-government’ is used in a broad sense. It is not differentiated from digital government or e-governance, though some researchers note clear differences among e-government, digital government, and e-governance (Dawes 2009; Garson 2006). For instance, some research argues that the term ‘e-government’ has a narrow definition, referring to the provision of public services via IT, usually through the Internet (Garson 2006). The term ‘digital government,’ coined by the National Science Foundation, refers to the use of IT to improve government operations, provide public services, engage citizens, and inform and support public policies (Dawes 2009; Garson 2006). The term ‘e-governance’ not only includes the use of IT for service provision and management improvement but highlights the use of technology for the ‘democratic processes and the relationships among citizens, civil society, the private sector, and the state’ (Dawes 2009, s87). ‘E-government’ has been used more frequently in existing literature, and it is used in this study interchangeably with digital government.

3. Although ‘data’ and ‘information’ are often used interchangeably, there are differences between these two terms. Data refer to the raw facts – or, ‘representation of facts about the world’ (Bardach and Patashnik 2015, 13). Information consists of data that have been processed to have ‘meaning’ and to ‘help you sort the world into different logical or empirical categories’ Bardach and Patashnik (2015, 13). Differentiating information from data allows the researcher to pay attention not only to the necessity of data collection, but also to the importance of informatics – that is, processing data into information.

4. The Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 (formerly the Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996) requires federal agencies to improve the acquisition, management, and use of information resources by appointing an agency Chief Information Officer (CIO), redesigning their work processes, and linking information resource planning and investment to the budget process (McClure 1997).

5. The term ‘information technology’ in this study goes beyond technology itself, covering information management, use, and technology. In the original survey questionnaire, the term and its broad connotations were illustrated by examples. To be consistent with the questionnaire and for the sake of simplicity, I use IT here, in Figures 2 and 3, and in Table 4 to refer broadly to information management, use, and technology.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qian Hu

Qian Hu, PhD, is an assistant professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida, USA. She received her PhD with a specialty in policy informatics from Arizona State University. Her current research interests include policy informatics and e–governance, collaborative governance, and network studies. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in academic journals such as Public Administration Review, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Management Review, the American Review of Public Administration, Journal of Urban Affairs, and Administration & Society.