Speaking Like Statesmen or Scientists: Differentiating Congressional and Administrative Views on Data

ABSTRACT

Do legislators and executives speak of data the same way when speaking about public sector data? Public management scholarship and public performance policies often emphasize data-driven decision making as the path to making government efficient and effective. Whether the public policy makers mean the same thing when they speak about data in discussions of data-driven performance and decision making is unknown. In this article, the authors present an analysis of the language of data in conversations about government performance. Two frameworks are identified for the role of data in public performance—the statesman’s and the scientist’s. A corpus-level analysis of over 30 years of government documents is used to demonstrate the differences between these two approaches. This research builds consciously on the work of previous scholars seeking to map the nuances of data-driven performance management policies in the U.S. federal government.

KEYWORDS:

• data
• data collection and analysis
• decision making
• government performance

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Beth-Anne Schuelke-Leech

Beth-Anne Schuelke-Leech is an assistant professor of Engineering Management and Entrepreneurship, Centre for Engineering Innovation, CEI2176, Department of Mechanical, Automotive, and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada.

Sara R. Jordan

Sara R. Jordan is an assistant professor at the Center for Public Administration & Policy, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA,