When Local Governments Request Access to Data: Power and Coordination Mechanisms across Stakeholders

• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Federica Fusi
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13307

Research Article

When Local Governments Request Access to Data 23

Abstract: There are ongoing efforts to encourage public organizations to use data to enhance their performance and

design public policies. Among barriers to data use, public managers report low access to data owned by stakeholders—

other city departments, other public agencies, and nongovernmental organizations. A critical research question is

how public organizations can design incentives and structures that decrease the time and resources spent to request

and obtain access to data. Drawing from resource dependency theory and a contingency-based approach, this research

examines how routinized, formal nonroutinized, and informal coordination mechanisms facilitate access to data

from influential groups of stakeholders. Hypotheses are tested using 2016 survey data from a nationally representative

sample of 2,500 departments in 500 US cities. Results show that formal nonroutinized coordination facilitates access

to data requested from governmental actors, while informal coordination decreases access to data requested from

nongovernmental organizations.

Evidence for practice

• Around one-third of departments in small- and medium-sized US city governments report that only “some”

or “few” of their requests for data are promptly fulfilled.

• The degree of influence of state and federal agencies decreases autonomy and increases bureaucratic

requirements, which negatively affect access to data.

• Informal coordination is the least effective coordination mechanism to access data, especially from

nongovernmental organizations.

• Formal nonroutinized coordination is associated with greater access to data from other government agencies

and departments.

Public management scholars and practitioners

have shown a growing interest in the use of

data to extract information for managing public

organizations (Jennings and Hall2012; Moynihan

and Hawes2012). Government agencies face complex

policy problems, such as terrorism, health crises, and

natural disasters, which require a large amount of data to

coordinate and support decision-making processes (Pew

Charitable Trust; Roberts2011). Government agencies

also increasingly outsource service delivery to nonprofit

and for-profit organizations (Milward and Provan2000).

Access to data can mitigate information asymmetries that

characterize the principal–agent relationship between

the government and its contractors (Malatesta and

Smith2012; Reynaers and Grimmelikhuijsen2015).

Moreover, public managers wish to harness new tools

for data analysis to improve performance and respond

to citizens’ calls for transparency and accountability

(Allard et al.2018; Pew Charitable Trust2018). Overall,

there are great expectations that data use will enhance

government effectiveness, efficiency, and responsiveness

to constituency needs.

Recent studies note that the use of data is often

hindered by a lack of or low access to data (Allard et

al.2018; Pew Charitable Trust2018). Data access

refers to an organization’s ability to obtain data

from other organizations (Levine and White1961).

Government agencies are unable to autonomously

collect all data they need, because either data

collection is too expensive or other organizations

control the data. Therefore, they request data from

other organizations, which might or might not grant

access. Meijer(2018) describes city governments’

struggle to access data from private companies, such as

Uber and Airbnb. The Pew Charitable Trust(2018)

finds that one-third of state leaders cannot persuade

other public agencies to provide access to data,

while Ki, Kwak, and Song(2020) show that local

governments are less likely to share their economic

data with organizations in other counties. A critical

question for public management is what barriers

prevent access to data and how public organizations

can reduce the time and resources they spend to

request and obtain data from stakeholders.

Federica Fusi

University of Illinois, Chicago

When Local Governments Request Access to Data: Power

and Coordination Mechanisms across Stakeholders

Federica Fusi is an Assistant Professor in

the Department of Public Administration

at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She

received her Ph.D. in Public Administration

and Policy from the School of Public Affairs

at Arizona State University. Her research

focuses on technology adoption and

implementation in city governments as

well as data sharing in the public sector

and science.

Email: ffusi@uic.edu

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 81, Iss. 1, pp. 23–37. © 2020 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13307.