Coproduction of Government Services and the New Information Technology: Investigating the Distributional Biases

• Author: Benjamin Y. Clark,Sung‐Gheel Jang,Jeffrey L. Brudney
• Published date: 01 September 2013
• Date: 01 September 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12092

Benjamin Y. Clark is assistant profes-

sor of public administration in the Levin

College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland

State University. His research focuses on

collaboration, public budgeting and f‌i nance,

and reducing health disparities.

E-mail: b.y.clark@csuohio.edu

Jeffrey L. Brudney is the Betty and Dan

Cameron Family Distinguished Professor of

Innovation in the Nonprof‌i t Sector in the

Department of Public and International

Affairs at the University of North Carolina

Wilmington. His major f‌i elds of interest are

public management, nonprof‌i t sector stud-

ies, and research methods and statistics.

E-mail: brudneyj@uncw.edu

Sung-Gheel Jang teaches geospatial

sciences at Stony Brook University. He

earned a doctorate in regional planning

from the University of Illinois at Urbana-

Champaign. His current research focuses on

the effect of neighborhood characteristics

on health service utilization at the individual

level using the multilevel framework and

geographic information sciences.

E-mail: sunggheel.jang@stonybrook.edu

Coproduction of Government Services and the New Information Technology: Investigating the Distributional Biases 687

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 73, Iss. 5, pp. 687–701. © 2013 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12092.

Benjamin Y. Clark

Cleveland State University

Jeffrey L. Brudney

University of North Carolina Wilmington

Sung-Gheel Jang

Stony Brook University

 is article investigates how communications advances

af‌f ect citizens’ ability to participate in coproduction of

government services.  e authors analyze service requests

made to the City of Boston during a one-year period from

2010 to 2011 and, using geospatial analysis and nega-

tive binomial regression, investigate possible disparities by

race, education, and income in making service requests.

 e f‌i ndings reveal little concern that 311 systems (non-

emergency call centers) may benef‌i t one racial group over

another; however, there is some indication that Hispanics

may use these systems less as requests move from call

centers to the Internet and smartphones. Consistent with

prior research, the f‌i ndings show that poorer neighbor-

hoods are less likely to take advantage of 311 service,

with the notable exception of smartphone utilization.  e

implications for citizen participation in coproduction

and bridging the digital divide are discussed.

Recent years have witnessed local governments

on the brink of employee layof‌f s, major cut-

backs in services, and even bankruptcy. In the

current economic climate, it has become more impor-

tant for local governments to f‌i nd ways to reduce

their budgets yet still deliver the level and quality of

services to which residents have become accustomed.

One method increasingly employed is coproduction,

whereby government engages citizens as partners in

service delivery.

In the traditional concep-

tion of public service delivery,

services are distributed through

government to the citizenry (De

Araújo 2001).  is traditional

model has government as the

active player, while citizens take

more passive roles. Increasingly,

governments are examining

how to best engage the public

(Bryson et al. 2013) and, in par-

ticular, the use of online or electronic means to do so

(Norris and Reddick 2013).  e concept of coproduc-

tion as a new model of service delivery challenges the

standard view by involving citizens directly in service

provision. Traditional ideas of service planning and

management need to be revised to incorporate copro-

duction (Bovaird 2007). Although coproduction was a

prevalent topic for public managers and researchers in

the 1970s and early 1980s, it fell out of favor as gov-

ernments and scholars alike focused on ef‌f orts geared

toward improving services and saving money through

privatization and marketization (Alford 1998). With

continuing budgetary challenges and growing appre-

ciation of the limitations of privatization, though, the

focus on coproduction has been renewed over the past

decade.

Innovations in how government services are delivered

in the 2010s, especially the use of new electronic com-

munications technology, have brought coproduction

back to the fore, both as a service delivery option and

as the subject of academic inquiry.  is article focuses

on one such innovation, the 311 call center.1  ese

centralized government call centers of‌f er nonemer-

gency information to citizens, comparable to 411 for

general information or 911 for emergency services.

Despite the rise of such systems, experts and practi-

tioners worry that they do not attract people from

diverse demographic backgrounds, a perennial issue in

coproduction research.2

 is article examines whether

the 311 system for requesting

government services results in

use throughout a jurisdiction

or facilitates the “haves” gain-

ing greater access and limiting

opportunities for historically

disadvantaged groups. To

address this question, we use the

citizen relations management

(CRM) database of the City of

Boston, which includes data

gathered from the city’s Mayor Hotline (Boston’s ver-

sion of 311), online portal, and smartphone applica-

tion.  e workhorse of any 311 system, CRMs are

Coproduction of Government Services

and the New Information Technology: Investigating

the Distributional Biases

 is article examines whether

the 311 system for requesting

government services results in

use throughout a jurisdiction

or facilitates the “haves” gain-

ing greater access and limiting

opportunities for historically

disadvantaged groups.