High time for a higher‐level look at high‐technology: Plotting a course for managing government information in an age of governance

• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Author: Patrick C. Exmeyer,Jeremy L. Hall
• Date: 01 March 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13513

VIEWPOINT

High time for a higher-level look at high-technology: Plotting

a course for managing government information in an age of

governance

Patrick C. Exmeyer

1

| Jeremy L. Hall

2

1

Department of Urban and Public Affairs,

University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

2

School of Public Administration, University of

Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA

Correspondence

Patrick C. Exmeyer, Department of Urban and

Public Affairs, University of Louisville, 426

W. Bloom St., #219 Louisville, KY 40208, USA.

Email: patrick.exmeyer@louisville.edu

Abstract

For years, scholarly interest in the intersection of government and technology has

overwhelmingly focused on the end-product of technology capabilities. Recent

advancements in computational power have facilitated breathtaking growth of

data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and process automation, sparking consid-

erable attention by scholars and practitioners alike. However, insight concerning

the technology hardware assets powering emergent applications in the public sec-

tor remains glaringly absent amidst this rapidly expanding area of research. We

position that gaining a greater understanding of the scope of technology utility in

governance requires exploration of not only the applications or interfaces pro-

duced by technology hardware, but rather the aim of promoting both modernity

and processing capacity of the hardware driving technology in government.

Evidence for practice

•Rapid advancements in technological processing power yield tantalizing possi-

bilities for application, along with questions concerning availability and

accessibility.

•Disparities between municipal, state, and federal government technology hard-

ware capabilities represent a barrier toward broader adaptation of emergent

applications.

•Modernization of technology hardware across all levels of government necessi-

tates careful budgetary considerations, informational awareness, as well as envi-

ronmentally conscious sustainability practices.

INTRODUCTION

In 2022, the United States federal government will usher

in a new era of technology in public service. The culmina-

tion of a joint venture announced in 2019 between the

US Department of Energy (DOE), California-based

chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., and software

developer Hewlett Packard Enterprise has resulted in the

development of the first exascale

1

supercomputer for use

by the DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge,

Tennessee. Spanning the length of two football fields,

two miles worth of power lines, and requiring over 40

megawatts of energy for processing and cooling at peak

load, exascale computer Frontier will be capable of oper-

ating at over 1.5 exaflops

2

at full capacity (B.

Vincent, 2021). Alongside supercomputer Aurora, a joint

development project between DOE, Intel, and Hewlett

Packard Enterprise [HPE Cray] for the Argonne National

Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, both systems will represent

the greatest computer processing power harnessed by

the United States federal government. As a result, each

system will be capable of processing exaflops exceeding

quintillion, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, calculations per

second (J. Vincent, 2019). For scale, the average consumer

laptop computer is capable of 2.6 teraflops, or 1/20 mil-

lionth the computing power of DOE’sFrontier

supercomputer.

Such profound advancements in raw processing

power arrive in an era where data has ascended in status

to a critical governmental resource equivalent to human

capital or natural resources for public service. Ubiquitous

data requires computing capacity, objectives defined by

Received: 24 February 2022 Revised: 4 May 2022 Accepted: 15 May 2022

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13513

Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:429–434. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar © 2022 American Society for Public Administration. 429