Public Administration, Technology and Innovation: Government as Technology Maker?: Permanent Study Group 15: Public Administration, Technology and Innovation

Abstract

In this chapter, we summarize the historical roots and development of public sector innovation research and discuss its main current weakness—lack of an explicit evolutionary perspective. To remedy this weakness, we develop further the co-evolutionary perspective on public administration (PA), technological development and innovation. Relying on Christopher Pollitt’s framework of government as “placemaker”, we propose a complementary framework of government as “technology maker”. In the concluding section, we discuss the implications of the proposed framework for PA research.