Show Me the Numbers: Bureaucratic Use of Data in the Policy Making Process

• Author: Tracey Bark
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211069924
• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Date: 01 October 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211069924

Administration & Society

2022, Vol. 54(9) 1795 –1826

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Article

Show Me the Numbers:

Bureaucratic Use of Data

in the Policy Making

Process

Tracey Bark1

Abstract

Bureaucracies often provide information to legislatures in an effort to

influence the agenda. This paper assesses whether data affects this influence,

arguing quantitative support can increase the likelihood of legislative

discussion and passage of bills related to a given topic. I also assess the

impact of centralization on an agency’s ability to provide information and

shape legislative agendas. I find including data in bureaucratic reports can

significantly increase an agency’s influence on the legislature, but this effect

is only present in a centralized setting. These results suggest centralized

agencies are better equipped to marshal quantitative support for arguments

to legislatures.

Keywords

bureaucracy, agenda setting, agency structure, higher education

Introduction

The use of data in policymaking is quickly becoming an integral part of mod-

ern government. The clearest demonstration of this is the rapid increase in

Chief Data Officer (CDO) positions within various government entities over

1Auburn University at Montgomery, AL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Tracey Bark, Auburn University at Montgomery, P.O. Box 244023, Montgomery, AL 36124-

4023, USA.

Email: tracey.bark@aum.edu

1069924AAS0010.1177/00953997211069924Administration & SocietyBark

research-article2022

1796 Administration & Society 54(9)

the past decade. Since Colorado hired its first statewide CDO in 2010, 24

other states and the District of Columbia have followed suit (Freed, 2019).

The growth in these positions has led to the creation of the State Chief Data

Officers Network, convened to enable sharing of best practices between

states (Kleykamp, 2019). At the federal level, the Foundations for Evidence-

Based Policymaking Act of 2018 has recently mandated that all federal agen-

cies appoint a Chief Data Officer to manage the data assets of the agency.1

These developments demonstrate that data’s role in governance is increasing,

yet there is little academic research devoted to assessing its impact.

This paper begins to explore how data is used in government decision mak-

ing and to what effect. Specifically, it focuses on the provision of data-laden

information by bureaucratic agencies to legislative bodies. Bureaucracies

serve as key information providers for legislatures at both the state and federal

levels, meaning these exchanges are incredibly frequent and can have signifi-

cant impacts on subsequent policy choices (Workman, 2015; Workman et al.,

2017). However, the impact of information provided by bureaucracies is not

uniform. Previous research has shown that structural factors of bureaucracies

influence the ability of an agency to shape legislative discussions. One such

example is centralization, which affects the concentration of an agency’s

agenda and its alignment with legislative concerns (Bark, 2021). The amount

of data included in bureaucratic communications may also be one of these fac-

tors in that it can provide factual information on which legislators may base

their arguments in favor of a specific position. This leads to the first research

question addressed in this paper: does the inclusion of data make bureaucratic

arguments stronger, such that legislatures are more likely to take up the topic

of concern?

I argue the use of data increases the likelihood that a given issue will appear

on the legislative agenda based on the elaboration likelihood model taken from

social psychology. This model suggests individuals with strong motivations to

learn about a topic will be more receptive to quantitative arguments (Petty &

Cacioppo, 1986). While not all legislators will be interested in every substan-

tive policy area, those who are should be more receptive to bureaucratic argu-

ments supported by data and statistics. Such legislators will be more likely to

place an issue on the agenda and shepherd it through the legislative process if

it has quantitative support. They may also utilize the data in a more symbolic

sense to craft a narrative surrounding the policy to engender support among

colleagues who are less invested in the issue at hand (March & Olsen, 1984).

The second question addressed in this paper relates to the bureaucracy,

asking whether the structure of the agency affects its ability to provide data

and shape the legislative agenda. I contend that it does, primarily through the

degree of centralization. Highly centralized agencies collect larger amounts

Bark 1797

of data in a single location, making it more accessible for inclusion in reports

sent to the legislature. Less centralized organizations, meanwhile, do not

have ready access to as much data for such purposes, thereby limiting their

ability to influence the legislative agenda and its outputs.

These hypotheses are investigated through a comparison of legislative

agenda space devoted to topics with varying levels of quantitative support in

bureaucratic reports as well as the progress of bills on the same topics through

the legislative process. Substantively, the dataset focuses on a comparison of

higher education policy in Kansas and Illinois and the quantitative informa-

tion provided by the higher education governance board in each state. Using

a series of path analysis mediation models and a large dataset containing over

9,000 coded paragraphs, I find some evidence that provision of data by the

bureaucracy can increase the likelihood of a topic being introduced and

passed into legislation, specifically for centralized agencies. Following the

analyses, I provide a brief discussion of the results and their implications.

Bureaucratic Provision of Data

Traditional notions of the bureaucracy envision it as the realm of experts,

where information is held close to maintain an advantage over political prin-

cipals. Thus, a great deal of the literature focuses on ways to control bureau-

cratic leaders and minimize moral hazard (McCubbins & Schwartz, 1984).

However, recent research suggests bureaucrats are much more willing to

share information than previously thought. This line of work is based on the

idea that information is a key driver of political agendas, as it allows issue

positions to be translated into actionable policy preferences (Baumgartner &

Jones, 2015; Rochefort & Cobb, 1994). From this perspective, then, bureau-

cracies have little incentive to guard their informational advantage. Instead,

bureaucrats use information to affect the policy process at a much earlier

stage in order to help define policy problems within their domain (Shafran,

2015; Workman et al., 2017). To do so, bureaucracies are eager to provide as

much information as possible to legislators in order to shape their perspective

on policy questions to more closely match the bureaucracy’s goals (Bark,

2021; Workman, 2015). Bureaucracies are not the only organizations provid-

ing this information, but they are among the most significant (Sabatier &

Whiteman, 1985). Because bureaucracies interact with legislators repeatedly

over time, a sense of trust is built up between the two institutions. As part of

this longstanding relationship, legislators also become familiar with agency

positions and biases and adjust their responses accordingly. This allows leg-

islators to utilize bureaucratic information even if it is not perfectly accurate

or in line with the legislator’s own beliefs (Guston et al., 1997; Workman,