AI for the Public Sector: Opportunities and challenges of cross-sector collaboration

Public sector organisations are increasingly interested in using data science and artificial intelligence capabilities to deliver policy and generate efficiencies in high uncertainty environments. The long-term success of data science and AI in the public sector relies on effectively embedding it into delivery solutions for policy implementation. However, governments cannot do this integration of AI into public service delivery on their own. The UK Government Industrial Strategy is clear that delivering on the AI grand challenge requires collaboration between universities and public and private sectors. This cross-sectoral collaborative approach is the norm in applied AI centres of excellence around the world. Despite their popularity, cross-sector collaborations entail serious management challenges that hinder their success. In this article we discuss the opportunities and challenges from AI for public sector. Finally, we propose a series of strategies to successfully manage these cross-sectoral collaborations

Do Human Resource Departments Act as Strategic Partners? Strategic Human Capital Management Adoption by County Governments

Drawing on qualitative data from forty counties in New York and North Carolina, this article examines the adoption of strategic human capital management (SHCM) principles and practices at the county level and presents a typology of five levels of SHCM adoption. The level of SHCM implementation in a county depends on: the view of the HR function by executive county leadership, the capacity of the county to engage in strategic planning and management, and the capacity of the HR director to think strategically about the role of HR in the government. The article concludes with recommendations for practice, which focus on educating a diverse set of actors about SHCM, building executive level support, developing HR skill and competencies, and applying basic change management practices

Investigating the health implications of social policy initiatives at the local level: study design and methods

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In this paper we present the research design and methods of a study that seeks to capture local level responses to an Australian national social policy initiative, aimed at reducing inequalities in the social determinants of health.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>The study takes a policy-to-practice approach and combines policy and stakeholder interviewing with a comparative case study analysis of two not-for-profit organisations involved in the delivery of federal government policy.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Before the health impacts of broad-scale policies, such as the one described in this study, can be assessed at the population level, we need to understand the implementation process. This is consistent with current thinking in political science and social policy, which has emphasised the importance of investigating how, and if, policies are translated into operational realities.</p

Organization Culture as an Explanation for Employee Discipline Practices

Most supervisors dread employee discipline and often employ strategies not officially sanctioned by the organization. Poorly designed discipline systems cause this variation in discipline practices. Inconsistent discipline can cause losses in productivity and reduce employee morale. Extant literature offers little in the form of guidance for improving this important human resource activity. This article explore where normative literature on organizational culture may have explanatory value for understanding variation in discipline practices. The article suggests two groups of factors that have causal effects on discipline practices. The tangible factors are those describing the formal practices the organization wishes its employees to follow. The intangible factors provide cues for explaining why informal strategies emerge as successful practices for getting things done. Using this conception of organization culture, the article proposes hypotheses for future testing to validate the suspected influence of culture on decisions regarding employee discipline.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Is American Public Administration Detached From Historical Context?: On the Nature of Time and the Need to Understand It in Government and Its Study

The study of public administration pays little attention to history. Most publications are focused on current problems (the present) and desired solutions (the future) and are concerned mainly with organizational structure (a substantive issue) and output targets (an aggregative issue that involves measures of both individual performance and organizational productivity/services). There is much less consideration of how public administration (i.e., organization, policy, the study, etc.) unfolds over time. History, and so administrative history, is regarded as a “past” that can be recorded for its own sake but has little relevance to contemporary challenges. This view of history is the product of a diminished and anemic sense of time, resulting from organizing the past as a series of events that inexorably lead up to the present in a linear fashion. To improve the understanding of government’s role and position in society, public administration scholarship needs to reacquaint itself with the nature of time.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Collaborative administration: the management of successful networks

Despite a general consensus on the importance of collaborative settings for the solution of ‘wicked’ problems, questions of how to successfully manage public networks remain without a clear answer. Some authors highlighted the importance of the network structure and context; other authors shed light on network management and coordination mechanisms. More recently, some scholars have stressed the criticality of ‘soft’ factors, such as interorganizational trust. In this multifaceted landscape, the goal of the special issue is to stimulate a dialogue on the functioning of public networks, and contribute to the development of sound knowledge about how to make them succee