The political economy of digital government: how Silicon Valley firms drove conversion to data science and artificial intelligence in public management

Helen Margetts and Patrick Dunleavy

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Until 2010, Anglosphere digital governments struggled to modernize, dependent on large-scale contract relationships with global systems integrators (SIs) and elderly, custom-built legacy systems. Policy-makers have (belatedly) converted to the value of the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies for improving government. Using elite interviews with government officials in three Anglosphere governments, this article traces the origins of this conversion back to Silicon Valley (SV) and platform corporations. These massive firms drove cultural, organizational and technological developments that reduced the influence of SIs. Going forward, SV firms’ practices will now drive public management use of data science and AI, shaping financial systems and practices. Drawing together elements from business studies, organizational change, public management reform, digital government and AI scholarship and practice, the authors show how government’s relationships with SV firms re-shape political economy relationships and bring digital change in government closer to SV ways of working.

Keywords: AI (artificial intelligence) ingovernment; cloudcomputing and government; digital era governance; digital government; public management reform; public sector contracting; public sector IT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 H83 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 11 pages
Date: 2024-08-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay
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Published in Public Money and Management, 21, August, 2024. ISSN: 0954-0962

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