This book lays out an impressive, well-articulated set of trends that have affected or will soon affect local governments throughout the nation through technology. Amazingly, as Dr. Shark points out, all of this massive change has occurred within the past 12 years. While technology trends continue to play out in the local government realm, public managers, mainly city and county managers and assistant city and county managers, have experienced quite a number of challenges in navigating the brave new world. Dr. Shark chose local governments as the primary focus because their jurisdictions are where most innovation and experimentation takes place. Despite its focus, this book should be especially helpful to state governments, and perhaps federal agencies, trying to better understand the challenges local governments face. The Seven Trends that will Transform Local Government through Technology is a must-read for all public managers who are seeking answers about how all the pieces fit together and, as importantly, why. No other book on this subject lays it out as convincingly as this one.

Students of public administration, public policy, and nonprofit management require a strong foundation in how government and NGOs are connected with information technology. Whether simplifying internal operations, delivering public-facing services, governing public utilities, or conducting elections, public administrators must understand these technological tools and systems to ensure they remain effective, efficient, and equitable. This innovative textbook is designed for students of public affairs at every level who need to know and understand how technology can be applied in today’s public management workplace. The book explores the latest trends in technology, providing real-life examples about the need for policies and procedures to safeguard technology infrastructure while providing greater openness, participation, and transparency. In Technology and Public Management, Second Edition, author Alan Shark informs, engages, and directs students to consider best practices, with new material on emerging technology, data management and analytics, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. This thoroughly updated second edition explores: A broad range of technologies on which government, nonprofit partners, and citizens depend upon to deliver important infrastructure, including security, education, public health and personal healthcare, transit and transportation, culture and commerce. Growing mistrust in government, and the role technology can play in ameliorating it. Emerging and adapted technologies to help government achieve ambitious goals, including drawing carbon out of the atmosphere, empowering students everywhere to learn effectively at home or at school, improving healthcare, providing affordable housing, enabling agriculture to keep pace with population growth, and improving scores of other public services. The critical insights and management skills needed to argue for investments in information technology as necessary priorities for our public organizations to improve public services and resources. This reader-friendly and jargon-free textbook is required for students enrolled in public administration and nonprofit management programs, as well as for practicing public administrators looking for a better understanding of how technology may be successfully and responsibly used in public organizations. It is equally valuable as a text for MBA studies, social work, education, public health, and other degree programs that produce graduates who will work with and within those organizations that deliver public services.

How do we prepare for and manage the challenges and the transformations that are increasingly confronting cities? Solutions are necessary for the impacts expected from the global population movement toward urban centres; the evolution of technologies and its influence on the economy; the evolving socio-cultural fabric of our cities and what it means for citizen engagement and happiness; and for the increasing need to protect and better manage the environment. The series of essays presented here will help governments, organizations, and concerned citizens think differently about ways we can improve the places we call home. It will stimulate local stakeholders to move away from silo-thinking and work collaboratively toward innovative solutions to make cities more liveable and sustainable. The volume brings together international experts on development, innovation, education, health, digitalization, and planning to provide stimulating new ideas and successful examples of tools and systems being used worldwide to improve the future of cities.

Marc Holzer and Richard W. Schwester have written a fresh and highly engaging textbook for the introductory course in Public Administration. Their coverage is both comprehensive and cutting-edge, including not only all of the essential topics (organizational theory, human resource management, leadership, program evaluation and policy analysis, budgeting, and the politics of public administration), but also reflecting new realities in public administration: the importance of new technology, changes in intergovernmental relations, especially the emphasis on inter-local and shared regional resources, and public performance and accountability initiatives. New to this edition is a dedicated chapter on big data and analytics to support decision-making and problem solving, as well as updates throughout taking stock of the Covid-19 pandemic in the context of public administration, including politics, decision-making, intergovernmental relations, and the interpretation of data presented to the public. An important new feature of this fourth edition is a fully updated and full-featured companion website, written by the authors, containing instructor and student support materials including PowerPoint slides, cases, simulations and links to videos, designed to engage and encourage students to immerse themselves in virtual problem-solving experiences. This fourth edition of Public Administration has been crafted with student appeal in mind. Each of the book’s chapters is generously illustrated with cartoons, quotes, and artwork—all reinforcing the book’s theme that the field of public administration is rooted in the cultural and political world. Each chapter is also supported with a list of key terms, exercises, and additional resources. This comprehensive, contemporary textbook is an ideal introduction to the subject for upper-level undergraduate and first-year graduate students enrolled in courses in public administration and public management.

The Internet and related technologies have dramatically changed the way we live, work, socialize, and even topple national governments. As the Internet becomes increasingly pervasive across societies, we find more often that governments adopt Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) as part of their toolbox for facilitating efficient and citizen-oriented service delivery at all levels of government. Local governments across the major industrialized democracies have not been an exception to this trend and have set sail into the age of digital government. Closest to their citizens, towns and cities have adopted ICTs to facilitate electronic government (e-government). While research on local e-government functionality in terms of information dissemination, service delivery, and citizen engagement continues at an impressive empirical and methodological pace, gaps in our knowledge remain. Cross-national comparative research on local e-government that covers a wide range of municipalities in combination with in-depth case study analyses is lacking. Informed by a comparative case study approach, this book seeks to narrow that gap and offer practical policy solutions to facilitate local e-government. We do so by pursuing both a macro and micro perspective of e-government functionality in the federal republics of Germany and the United States and unitary France and Japan. The macro perspective focuses on the state and scope of e-government functionality across a large number of randomly selected municipalities of all sizes in these advanced industrialized countries. Based on a small sample of case studies, the micro perspective analyzes the successful implementation of e-government in Seattle (United States), Nuremberg (Germany), Bordeaux (France), and Shizuoka City (Japan).

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.