A credibility model of policy decision making: Effects of computer media, advocacy, and policy arguments

This research investigates the use of heuristics by decision makers to assess the believability of policy analysis information. The model proceeds from the assumption that decision makers operate in a complex decision environment with limited time, information, and cognitive resources. Drawing upon the work of Toulmin and Bozeman, this model explains how decision makers integrate and weigh various types of evidence in order to make a credibility assessment. The principal objective of this research is to understand the circumstances under which a decision maker will trust in a policy analysis product. Research from the communications, decision making, and evaluation literatures is integrated into a communications model which organizes the determinants of policy decision making. Hypotheses derived from this model are then tested through a controlled experimental study. Subjects include public policy students as well as practicing public administrators. Through the use of an unstructured decision problem, the relative influence of media and various arguments on credibility is revealed. Individual decision makers are asked to make a decision on a telecommunications policy problem. The subjects are exposed to an executive summary of the results of contracted policy analysis as well as a number of comments on the contracted policy analysis. This second set of comments operationalizes the various credibility heuristics that could be utilized by policy decision makers. The study found that decision makers could not be classified into those decision makers who rely on expertise and those who rely on their own analysis to assess the believability of policy information. While arguments about the quality of data affected the perceived difficulty of the decision, these arguments did not affect the credibility of policy analysis. Arguments about logical consistency did not affect the perceived difficulty of the decision but were shown to have a strong effect on the credibility of policy analysis. The perception of logical consistency was also important to whether decision makers utilized theoretical information. Of those decision makers who received their information through a computer, experienced computer users rated the information as less credible than inexperienced users. The implications from these and related findings for policy analysis are then discussed. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.

Landsbergen, David, and Barry Bozeman, Credibility Logic and Policy Analysis, Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization, 8(June, 1987), 625-648.

Discusses issues of credibility and methodology in policy analysis research

Governance rules for managing smart city information

Collecting, processing, and distributing information has always been a core function of government. This core function has evolved from the earliest ancient governments using clay tablets to today's smart cities relying on integrated data exchanges (IDE). A smart city “uses information and information technology to make better decisions to improve the quality of life” (Nam & Pardo, 2011). The IDE framework builds upon the data platform literature (O'Reilly, 2011) by incorporating governance systems to manage a smart city's activities. This conceptual paper takes existing research, synthesizes it, and creates a new framework to identify how cities can select the appropriate governance rules to facilitate the political, financial, and operational sustainability of their IDEs, and derivatively, their smart city efforts

Welfare reform and paternity establishment: A social experiment

From March 1988 through September 1989, a demonstration study was conducted in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on procedures for expediting paternity establishment. The issue of paternity establishment is central to current concerns about child support. In the 1988 Family Support Act, for example, administrative reforms to expedite paternity establishment are prominently featured. The results of the Cuyahoga demonstration provide early evidence of the likely impact of the 1988 reforms. At the implementation stage, the demonstration points up the complex interorganizational dependencies that are likely to limit the impact of mandated performance standards and associated sanctions directed at state and local child support agencies. As to the impact on paternity establishment outcomes, interventions directed at expediting administrative processes are likely to have a positive effect. However, the results of the demonstration indicate that noncooperative behavior among a significant portion of the client population is likely to seriously limit the effectiveness of expedited processes.