Description
This is part of a discussion please read and response to each post below… the readings and my intital post will be attached
1.Under the leadership of its former Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, New York certainly thrives under a managerialist approach in providing public service to the city. Mayor Bloomberg (seemingly) unilaterally put together a team of analysts and adapted emerging technology in order to provide better public service to the city’s enormous population (Shafritz et al., 2017, p. 353-354). Since “managerialism is quite comfortable with authoritarian management styles and a new version of scientific management,” Bloomberg enacted his own entrepreneurial vision to reengineer his city’s data collection, empowering a team of analysts with unlimited citizen data to provide more efficient and effective public service (Shafritz et al., 2017, p. 324-330). This fits the mold of managerialism as a practice of New Public Management, but fails Denhardt and Denhardt’s model of New Public Service, due to the several core principles they espouse.
Denhardt and Denhardt view public interest as one of the core principles of the New Public Service, and something public administrators must work towards (2000, p. 554). Specifically, they state “that the process of establishing a vision for society is not something merely left to elected political leaders;” instead, those leaders “bring people together in settings that allow for unconstrained and authentic discourse concerning the direction society should take” (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2000, p. 554). Furthermore, the “government has a moral obligation to assure solutions…are fully consistent with norms of justice and fairness,” a clear omission from Mayor Bloomberg’s initiative in establishing his own solution to better city management.
Lastly, Denhardt and Denhardt place an emphasis on a core principle of serving the people as “citizens” instead of viewing them merely as “customers” (2000, p. 555). They claim that “public servants do not merely respond to the demands of ‘customers,’ but focus on building relationships of trust and collaboration with and among citizens” (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2000, p. 555). Since “New Public Service recognizes that the relationship between government and its citizens is not the same as that between a business and its customers,” public administrators should not focus on responding “to the selfish, short-term interests of ‘customers’” (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2000, p. 555). Again, Mayor Bloomberg’s quick data-driven solutions fail the New Public Service model, as such actions mistakenly address short-term interests in delivering faster and effective public service. Furthermore, they failed to collaborate with citizens, violating trust through the intrusive and unconsented use of their data.
2.The rise of "big data" analytics reflects a service delivery based objective for meeting the needs of the citizens of New York, which contradicts the vision that Denhardt and Denhardt present for New Public Service (Denhardt &Denhardt, 2000). The idea of valuing people and not productivity is not seen through New York City's use of "big data" (Denhardt &Denhardt, 2000). The Mayor's Office of Data Analytics (MODA) utilized data rather than citizens to resolve and provide service to the city (Shafritz et al., 2017). For example, MODA used data to identify buildings within the city that were susceptible to fires (Shafritz et al., 2017). This contradicts the idea of shared leadership and providing engagement opportunities for citizens (Denhardt &Denhardt, 2000).
Also, it terms of valuing the citizen and not the outcomes, Denhardt says that this is "characterized by mutual respect, accommodations, and support through shared leadership, collaboration, and empowerment (Denhardt &Denhardt, 2000). Meetings, discussion, and collaboration leads to engaging and empowering citizens (Denhardt &Denhardt, 2000). Another example is that MODA could potentially use social media to meet the needs of the community, this limits the government's ability to respond to all citizen concerns (Shafritz et al., 2017). The government is responsible for ensuring that they respond, and engage all citizens, even those who aren't seeking services (Denhardt &Denhardt, 2000). MODA possibly using food poisoning tweets to address public health doesn't address the restaurants that aren't being tweeted about or the concerns of the people that are too sick to tweet about their food poisoning (Shafritz et al., 2017). The government serves all citizens, even those who are not actively tweeting their feelings (Denhardt &Denhardt, 2000).