Automated, administrative decision‐making and good governance: Synergies, trade‐offs, and limits

• Published date: 01 November 2024
• Author: Ulrik B. U. Roehl,Morten Balle Hansen
• Date: 01 November 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13799

SCHOLARLY TAKES

Automated, administrative decision-making and good

governance: Synergies, trade-offs, and limits

Ulrik B. U. Roehl

1

| Morten Balle Hansen

2

1

Department of Digitalization, Copenhagen

Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

2

Department of Political Science and Public

Management, University of Southern Denmark,

Odense, Denmark

Correspondence

Ulrik B. U. Roehl, Department of Digitalization,

Copenhagen Business School, 60 Howitvej, DK-

2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark.

Email: ubur.digi@cbs.dk

Abstract

Automated, administrative decision-making (AADM) is a key component in digital gov-

ernment reforms. It represents an aspiration for a better and more efficient administra-

tion but also presents challenges to values of public administration. We systematically

review the emerging literature on use of AADM from the perspective of good gover-

nance. Recognizing the inherent tensions of values of public administration, the broad

review identifies key synergies, trade-offs, and limits of AADM and good governance

associated with nine values: Accountability, efficiency, equality, fairness, resilience,

responsiveness, right-to-privacy, rule-of-law, and transparency. While synergies repre-

sent “low-hanging fruits”, trade-offs and limits are “hard cases”representing challenges

to good governance. Taking the specific decision-making context into account, practi-

tioners and scholars should attempt to nurture the “fruits”and lessen the tensions of

the “hard-cases”thereby increasing the desirable societal outcomes of use of AADM.

Evidence for practice

•Public authorities employing automated, administrative decision-making as well

as relevant regulators must be aware of the inherent synergies, trade-offs, and

limits vis-à-vis good governance.

•Six synergies of automated, administrative decision-making and good gover-

nance are identified. They represent the advantages of both automated

decision-making and good governance. Such advantages are particularly associ-

ated with values of efficiency, equality, rule-of-law, and transparency.

•Eleven trade-offs and limits of automated administrative decision-making and

good governance which must be balanced to support good governance are

identified. Particular attention should be given to values of accountability, fair-

ness, resilience, responsiveness, resilience, and right-to-privacy.

INTRODUCTION

Half a century ago, Herbert Simon (1973, 269) predicted

that people will be “…more and more an observer, mod-

erator, maintenance man, and repairman for a nearly

autonomous process that can carry on for significant

intervals of time without direct human intervention.”

Simon’s prediction has since been confirmed by

increasing reliance on information and communication

technology (ICT) in public administration and in society at

large across the globe.

One trend is the accelerating use of automated deci-

sion systems that support and increasingly make formal

administrative decisions (sometimes labeled “algorithmic

decisions”or “smart decisions”). Such automated

decision-making has been praised as a solution to several

problems of public administration (e.g., Kuziemski &

Misuraca, 2020), but has also been criticized for creating

new problems (e.g., Eubanks, 2018).

This article conducts a systematic, critical-integrative

review (George et al., 2023) of the literature concerning

[Correction added on 18 November 2024, after first online publication: the

supplemental video has been added.]

Received: 13 June 2022 Revised: 31 January 2024 Accepted: 12 February 2024

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13799

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

© 2024 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

1184 Public Admin Rev. 2024;84:1184–1199.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar

use of automated,administrative decision-making (AADM)

through the prism of good governance.

Administrative decisions are central to public adminis-

tration as it is through those legally binding decisions that

public administrative bodies decide on what is lawful or

not in specific cases in relation to individuals or firms (col-

lectively labeled addressees)

1,2

. Administrative decisions

cover a wide spectrum of decisions both beneficial to

addressees (e.g., granting unemployment benefits or

childcare benefits) and restrictive (e.g., denial of permis-

sion to build a house or denial of parole).

We define AADM as administrative decision-making

that is partly or fully based on automated outputs gener-

ated by algorithmic systems that incorporate relevant

regulations of a given policy area. Such decision-making

ranges on a continuum from semi-automated (the final

decision being made by a public servant based on assis-

tance from the system) to fully automated (the final deci-

sion being made by the system). In practice, the use of

AADM often combines semi and fully-automated

instances and is based on combinations of simple and

advanced technologies. (Peeters, 2020; Roehl, 2022).

Administrative decision-making is a very tangible

manifestation of public authority while values of good

governance provide an important basis for the legitimacy

of this authority. Assessing the pros and cons of its

increasing automation through values of good gover-

nance therefore represents an important and meaningful

basis for an informed understanding of its automation.

Drawing on the voices of Francis Fukuyama, Christopher

Hood, Bo Rothstein, and Robert I. Rotberg, we elaborate an

understanding of good governance as an institutional and

administrative order of government characterized by values

of fairness, rule-of-law, accountability, efficiency, and resilience.

Good governance implies tensions between different

public values (Perry et al., 2014). Hood (1991), for exam-

ple, stresses the inherent tensions between efficiency,

fairness, and resilience while Pollitt and Bouckaert (2017)

emphasize the trade-offs and paradoxes that contradic-

tory values tend to produce. To analyze the relations and

tensions of AADM and good governance, we introduce

the concepts of synergies, trade-offs, and limits. A syner-

getic relation describes how the use of AADM may

enhance the values of good governance. A trade-off

describes how use of AADM may diminish the values of

good governance. Limits describe situations where the

use of AADM beyond a certain threshold or limit substan-

tially changes the relation to values of good governance.

Scholars predict that the use of AADM will increase in

both scope and depth due to advances in, for example,

data processing capacity and machine learning tech-

niques (Juell-Skielse et al., 2022). Empirical examples of

use of AADM are widespread: The fully automated, now

defunct, OCI debt recovery system in Australia is a high-

profile example (Carney, 2018) while a more mundane

one is the semi and fully-automated decision system used

by the Swedish Transportation Agency to assess driver

license applications (Andersson et al., 2018).

The increasing use of AADM is mirrored by a growing

academic literature. Despite advances, research is special-

ized and scattered across disciplines (Peeters, 2020), and

themes and findings tend to diverge. Some scholars

implicitly touch upon issues of good governance; even so,

their contributions primarily focus on singular advantages

or disadvantages of AADM and not on understandings of

good governance. Based on a review of existing literature,

this article explicitly uncovers tensions between increasing

use of AADM and values of good governance, by addres-

sing the following research question: How do the use of

AADM and good governance relate,and to what extent do

the relations represent synergies,trade-offs or limits?

Employing core understandings from the public admin-

istration literature, the article builds on a systematic review

of literature within social sciences including specialized sub-

disciplines such as Critical algorithm studies, eGovernment,

and Information systems. We synthesize the literature by

identifying key synergies, trade-offs, and limits between the

use of AADM and nine key values of good governance.

Providing a holistic review of the discussion of the use

of AADM, the article not only contributes with a broad

overview of an emerging literature but also points to nec-

essary balances between the use of AADM and different

values of good governance. The review thus not only pro-

vides impetus for further research but also direct public

administration practitioners to particular attention points

when employing AADM.

GOOD GOVERNANCE AND AUTOMATED,

ADMINISTRATIVE DECISION-MAKING

The subject of good governance is both an ancient one

(Griffith & Ferrari, 2000), an influential and criticized

reform agenda promoted by the World Bank

(Grindle, 2004), and an academic debate concerning what

constitutes good governance (Perry et al., 2014) and how

it relates to public value (Moore, 1997). The purpose here

is not to review this substantial literature, but to extract

broadly accepted values of good governance that are par-

ticularly relevant to use of AADM.

The literature contains both lengthy and short sugges-

tions of values ranging from 73 public values (Jørgensen &

Bozeman, 2007)toattemptstoreducegoodgovernance

to a few prime values (e.g., Fukuyama, 2013). We attempt

to strike a middle ground. Firstly, a list of values should not

be too long to make the analysis infeasible but include

those values that are particularly relevant to the use of

AADM and the exercise of public authority it entails. For

instance, in his seminal article, Rosenbloom (1983)shows

that public administration operates in a tension between

three approaches: Legality, efficiency, and political feasibil-

ity. Due to the definition of AADM in the above, political

feasibility is excluded from our list.Secondly, the list should

recognize the complexity of public administration and

include contradictory values that may produce trade-offs

and paradoxes (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2017).

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW 1185