Data and Technology for Equitable Public Administration: Understanding City Government Employees' Challenges and Needs

TL;DR

This study explores the challenges and needs of city government employees in implementing equitable data and technology practices, highlighting the importance of organizational context and design considerations for advancing equity.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into employees' equity practices and identifies key considerations for designing technology that supports equity in public administration.

Findings

Employees face operational challenges in applying equity principles.

Data needs are critical for advancing equity goals.

Design space exists for acceptable and equitable government technology.

Abstract

City governments in the United States are increasingly pressured to adopt emerging technologies. Yet, these systems often risk biased and disparate outcomes. Scholars studying public sector technology design have converged on the need to ground these systems in the goals and organizational contexts of employees using them. We expand our understanding of employees' contexts by focusing on the equity practices of city government employees to surface important equity considerations around public sector data and technology use. Through semi-structured interviews with thirty-six employees from ten departments of a U.S. city government, our findings reveal challenges employees face when operationalizing equity, perspectives on data needs for advancing equity goals, and the design space for acceptable government technology. We discuss what it looks like to foreground equity in data use and technology design, and considerations for how to support city government employees in operationalizing equity with and without official equity offices.