Discretionary Decisions in Public Administration Based on Machine Analytics: Challenges and Risks

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problems and risks of machine analytics and other digital technological resources in making managerial decisions in public administration. The author raises the difficult question of the fact that against the background of loud victory speeches about mass measures of digital transformation in public administration, some timid and sensible voices have been lost, asking: can everything be perfect and without flaws? No technological nodes and solutions today work with 100 per cent reliability. The same is true of human organisations. No one and nothing is perfect. Therefore, defects, dysfunctions, imbalances, and errors in public administration have been in the past, are now, and will be in the future. The problem is that digital technologies, while helping to combat some of these defects, dysfunctions, imbalances, and errors in public administration, drive other defects, imbalances, and errors in public administration very deeply into the ground and create third ones. And we have not yet learnt how to diagnose all this. The article gives some eloquent examples of great harm caused by failures of machine analytics to support public administration decision-making. The author shows typical problems of digitalisation in public administration, but concludes that these problems are solvable.