Digital discretion: A systematic literature review of ICT and street-level discretion

Abstract

This study reviews 44 peer-reviewed articles on digital discretion published in the period from 1998 to January 2017. Street-level bureaucrats have traditionally had a wide ability to exercise discretion stirring debate since they can add their personal footprint to public policies. Digital discretion is suggested to reduce this footprint by influencing or replacing their discretionary practices using ICT. What is less researched is whether digital discretion can cause changes in public policy outcomes, and under what conditions such changes can occur. Using the concept of public service values, we suggest that digital discretion can strengthen ethical and democratic values but weaken professional and relational values. Furthermore, we conclude that contextual factors such as considerations made by policy makers on the macro-level and the degree of professionalization of street-level bureaucrats on the micro-level are important for understanding the diffusion and impact of digital discretion. In addition, inherent features of technology can be discussed at all levels in relation to their aims and tasks. We conclude that the scope of street-level bureaucracy is decreasing, and more and more street-level bureaucracies are turned into digital bureaucracies characterized by digital bureaucrats operating computers instead of interacting face-to-face with clients.

Keywords

ICT e-government discretion street-level bureaucracy literature review

1. Introduction

While policy makers expect policy making to be a top-down process where the intentions of the policy maker are pushed downward a hierarchy and materialize in actual outcomes, a different picture emerges through the implementation practices of street-level bureaucrats. Street-level bureaucrats refer to public service workers on the street-level who interact closely with clients and can exercise a substantial amount of discretionary power [1]. Discretion is the freedom street-level bureaucrats have to make decisions concerning individuals regarding the sort, quality and quantity of sanctions, and rewards during policy implementation including the possibility of no sanction at all [1, 2]. Public service provision is complex and policy implementation has traditionally required the unique expertise and skill sets of street-level bureaucrats acquired through years of experience. This competence is so exceptional that Lipsky [1] claims that “the nature of service provision calls for human judgment that cannot be programmed and for which machines cannot substitute” (p. 161). Given the diffusion of information and communications technology (ICT) in the public sector [3, 4], and the rapid technological development during the last two decades, this claim can be questioned. By ICT in this article, we refer to technologies that are used to register, store, edit, and handle client data as a basis for making case assessments or executing decisions [5]. The most frequently referred to technologies are variations of databases, case management systems, and automated systems.

In their seminal article, Bovens and Zouridis [5] observed that the structures of many traditional public agencies are changing due to ICT, and that this development can be traced as a change from the ‘street-level’, via ‘screen-level’, to a ‘system-level’ bureaucracy. They argued that street-level bureaucrats gradually disappear from the streets where face-to-face contacts are replaced by computers, and where computerized routines influence their discretionary practices (screen-level bureaucracy). Ultimately, street-level bureaucrats become replaced by fully automated technologies that make decisions about clients based on collected data and predefined algorithms (system-level bureaucracy). Although Bovens and Zouridis [5] claimed that street-level bureaucracies were changing, they acknowledged that the discretionary practices of traditional street-level bureaucrats such as teachers and nurses were more unlikely to be influenced by ICT. Inspired by their article, the purpose of this literature review is to take stock of research that has studied how ICT impinges on the discretionary practices of street-level bureaucrats. We are interested in studying how ICT has influenced street-level discretion in the past two decades given the rapid development of ICT and the wide variety of tasks that street-level bureaucrats conduct.

The role of street-level bureaucrats, their practices and particularly the discretionary power that they exercise, has been subject of much attention among academics and practitioners [6]. To ensure decisions according to intentions of the policy maker and to avoid a too strong street-level footprint, digital discretion has been introduced understood as the use of computerized routines and analyses to influence or replace human judgment. From this perspective, all use of discretion can in principle be mapped out by using algorithms [7]. The concept of digital discretion emphasizes the shift from viewing discretion as the street-level bureaucrats’ intellectual process to a situation where ICT replaces parts of, or the full intellectual discretionary process [5]. Digital discretion therefore describes how ICT has the potential to influence discretion by e.g., devising decision alternatives, or replacing discretion by fully automating decision-making. There are two main reasons for why digital discretion is desired. First, an administrative ideal is to treat clients equally and avoid that factors such as personal mood, bias, and coincidences influence decision-making [1]. Legal boundaries and principles of sound administration have successfully been implemented to curtail some of their leeway [5]. Whereas decisions made by street-level bureaucrats most often go unnoticed to the public, there are frequent examples of news articles stirring the debate about street-level discretion since examples of corruption [8], errors [9], and bias [10] continue to occur. ICT can be used to control the actions of street-level bureaucrats to close the gap between ‘policy as written’ and ‘policy as performed’ [1]. Research has shown that automation can strongly increase the quality of legal decisions in comparable executive agencies [11], and can thus be seen as “the zenith of legal rational authority” [5, p. 181].

Second, digital discretion can make decision-making more efficient. The discretionary practices of street-level bureaucrats are time consuming since each case needs some degree of attention. By automating parts of or the whole decision-making process, street-level bureaucracies may save considerable amounts of time and money, or spend their resources in a more beneficial way. For example, a public tax agency may allocate their resources to control tax embezzlements instead of handling individual tax reports manually.

Researchers adopting a bottom-up perspective will argue that digital discretion is not desired and that human judgment is necessary to adjust policies to real-life situations [12]. Without this adjustment, outcomes would be considered unreasonable by clients. Thus, discretion is a tool that strengthens a policy by ensuring that policy objectives are fulfilled. The role of ICT is merely to provide access to resources street-level bureaucrats can use in the decision-making process, e.g., by making more relevant information easily available [13].

In this literature review focusing on street-level bureaucracy through the lens of digitization, we use the concept of public values to categorize the overall goals embedded in the included articles. Digitization is the process of converting analog information such as text, pictures, and sound into a digital format [14]. In a public-sector context, digitization typically implies increased use of technologies that can assist street-level bureaucrats in handling cases by providing easy access to information about clients through channels such as online forms, and automating parts of or whole work processes. From the popular media and research literature, we observe that digitization has become particularly important in the public sector with the purpose of improving public services and yield cost savings. Based on this observation, we expect that digital discretion has increased its influence since Bovens and Zouridis [5] made their observations, and will continue to do so. Generally, a value is considered something good without further justification and something that is worth pursuing and of importance for an entity [15, 16, 17]. The concept of public value has received much attention in public administration and has been conceptualized as the successor of the New Public Management (NPM) paradigm [18, 19]. Public values have been subject to a number of classifications [20] and the concept has been highlighted as core pillar of public administration [21]. It is not the objective of this review to contribute further to classifications or taxonomies of public values but instead to categorize research contributions related to street-level bureaucracy within this core pillar of public administration. A broad and traditional categorization of public values is chosen for this review: ethics, democratic, professional, and people values [22]. Given its significant role in public administration [23], the categorization of the contributions along four generic parameters provides a measure for determining if digital discretion potentially leads to a value shift in street-level bureaucracy and highlight what the characteristics are. The first research question that this literature review addresses is:

1.1 Is digital discretion causing a value shift in street-level bureaucracy?

Furthermore, reviews of the street-level bureaucracy literature highlight that context matters [13, 24, 25, 26, 27]. In the continuation of research question 1, we investigate under what conditions digital discretion is causing a value shift in street-level bureaucracy. Thus, the following research question is sought answered in this literature review.

1.2 Under what conditions can digital discretion cause a value shift in street-level bureaucracy?

The remainder of this article is organized in the following manner. In the next section, we lay out the concept of public values. Then we describe the search methodology and outline the characteristics of the 44 reviewed articles on digital discretion. This leads to a qualitative analysis of the articles guided by four categories of public service values: ethics, professionalism, democracy, and people. This section is followed by a discussion of the findings before the conclusion ends the literature review by summarizing main findings and discussion points.

2. Public values

One of the central and widely cited conceptualizations of public value was introduced by Moore [19] more than two decades ago in his book titled “Creating public value: Strategic management in government”. The book has received much attention but also critique for its pragmatic approach and non-empirical foundation [18, 20]. The work of Moore [19] along with the discussion of the work [18, 20] has led to an emphasis on public values in administration in general [22, 28], within the domain of ICT in public sector [21], and more specifically in relation to e-government [15]. Research contributions point to the ambiguity and comprehensiveness of the conceptualization of public values (see for example MacCarthaigh [28] and Bryson et al. [23]. Jørgensen and Bozeman [20] identify as many as 72 values and Bannister and Connolly [21] identify a number of classifications, taxonomies and subcategories of values which they synthesize to three orientations which are impacted by ICT: duty, service and social. Common for the classifications is the inclusion of core aspects of public administration, i.e. accountability, responsibility, equity, and democracy. As stated in the introduction the aim of this literature review is not to identify new classifications or taxonomies of public values but to present how the reviewed articles reflect digital discretion related to public service values recognizing that the term represents core aspects which generally are followed independently of specific context [23]. The more generic classification of Kernaghan [22] is used which serve as a common denominator for those more comprehensive classifications mentioned above [20, 21]. Following the classification of Kernaghan [22] the sources from the literature review are grouped along the four general parameters; ethics, democratic, professional, and people values. Each of the four parameters is briefly introduced in the following.

2.1 Ethics

The ethics perspective attends to public service values that guide desired “right” and “good” actions as opposed to undesired “wrong” and “bad” actions [22]. The challenge is that the boundaries of ethical conduct are not static, they are contextually defined, and often involve dilemmas which are enhanced with the introduction of IT in public administration [29]. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the concept of ethical dilemmas. For the sake of simplicity, we refer to Kakabadse et al. [30] who emphasize that the right versus wrong and good versus bad dichotomies not always exist and furthermore that ethics when exercised is concerned with the commitment to do what is right or what is good. The ethical dimension in the workplace is often articulated as a ‘code of conduct’ [22, 28] which serve as a guidance but public employees may be subject to conflicting ‘codes of conducts’ i.e. professional, organizational, and national norms [22] which can lead to constant dilemmas. Literature points to key ethical values such as integrity, fairness, loyalty, and honesty [22]. In this context, the ethical perspective focuses on street-level bureaucrats who willingly and knowingly act contrary to policy objectives when faced with ethical dilemmas.

2.2 Democratic values

Public service values focusing on democratic values emphasize how the opinions of the people are reflected in public administration [28]. MacCarthiagh [28] outlines four families of public and democratic values; honest and impartial advice including all information relevant to decision-making, loyal implementation decisions, lawfully taken; support of individual and collective accountability; and information on results achieved by public servants provided regularly to relevant stakeholders. Key representative values for this perspective are rule of law, accountability, and representativeness [22]. This perspective points our attention towards street-level bureaucrats as trusted government representatives that take actions solely aiming at implementing the intentions of the policy maker [1], as well as including citizens in decision-making.

2.3 Professional values

Professionalism is “the conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or a professional person” [31]. While professional values may vary based on profession, some values are shared among professions and go largely unchallenged [32]. The professional values relate to effectiveness, efficiency, service, leadership, excellence, innovation, and quality [28].

2.4 People values

People values are concerned with how the public sector should attend to individuals in various contexts and with diverse needs. It involves respect for human dignity and the value of every person [28]. The decisions that street-level bureaucrats make have a big impact on individuals’ lives [1], and their different backgrounds and unique situations may cause different emotional reactions. Key people values are caring, fairness, tolerance, decency, compassion, courage, benevolence, and humanity [28]. Studies in this theme are concerned with how digital discretion affects individualized concerns.

3. Methodology

A systematic literature review of scholarly research was conducted to get a comprehensive understanding of digital discretion, and more specifically to find out if digital discretion is causing a value shift in public service provision and if so; under what conditions this value shift occurs. The review was guided by recommendations outlined by Webster and Watson [33]. Apart from answering the initial research questions, the literature review also analyzed the attributes of the research community.

The review targeted articles on digital discretion published on or before January 31st, 2017. Five databases were searched to gain access to leading publications within social sciences: Web of Science, Scopus, EBSCOhost, IEEE Xplore, and the E-Government Reference Library (EGRL v. 12.0). The search was limited to article title, abstract, keywords, or topic, and conducted in two rounds. In round 1, the search term was ‘street*level bureaucracy’. Using this term only was considered an incomplete search since much research on street-level work has been conducted without using street-level bureaucracy as the analytical lens [34]. In round 2, the search terms were ‘e-government’, ‘digital government’, ‘information technology’, and ‘ICT’ combined with ‘discretion’. Combining ‘discretion’ with ‘digital government’ did not provide any results in the selected databases. All combinations of search terms and their respective results are listed in Appendix A.

Manuscripts were excluded based on the following criteria:

•
Recurring articles
•
Articles with anonymous author
•
Written in a non-English language
•
Non-research manuscripts
•
Research-in-progress articles

From the initial set, we excluded 251 manuscripts for the following reasons: 193 manuscripts were duplicates; 12 manuscripts had anonymous authors; 15 manuscripts were written in a non-English language; 31 manuscripts were non-academic; and one manuscript was a PhD dissertation. After this process, we ended up with 111 articles.

All abstracts were read, and articles were included if they discussed:

•
Street-level work in public agencies, and
•
The relationship between technology and street-level discretion, and/or
•
Managerial control of street-level discretion using technology.

After reading the abstracts, 70 more articles were removed because they did not meet the above criteria. Reading through the 41 remaining articles resulted in 21 more articles being removed because they were not relevant or accessible. As a result, 20 articles remained in the dataset.

Following recommendations by Webster and Watson [33], a backward and forward search was conducted using the identified articles as a basis. The forward search added 20 articles to the existing dataset. The backward search added four more articles to the final pool resulting in a total of 44 articles for our review. The fields of e-government and public administration are informed by a multitude of journal and conference articles as well as books, and we do not claim this review to be exhaustive. However, we believe that the selected databases contain leading e-government and public administration research, and that the review is representative of scholarly research on digital discretion.

We used a bottom up approach applying techniques from grounded theory to study the reviewed articles. This approach has been recommended for rigorous literature reviews [35]. The first step was to read through the articles. The initial coding was done by applying open coding techniques resulting in codes that represented the aim, focus, and reported findings of each article [36]. The codes were generated mainly from an analysis of the article abstract, introduction, findings section, and conclusion. Whenever necessary, the entire article was carefully read.

In the next step, we identified relationships between the initial codes (axial coding). The codes were reduced into a set of 13 subcategories [36]. When categorizing the number of codes into subcategories, simplicity was sought while at the same time making sure that the diversity represented in the initial codes were represented. In the third and last step, our objective was to identify how the articles aligned with overall public service values [22]. Public service values reflect an ideal type of public administration which generates trust and confidence in public sector decisions [28]. In this context, it serves as a reference to discuss how various aspects of public service provision are influenced by digital discretion.

The reviewed articles cover a diversity of street-level bureaucracies ranging from child care services to automated handling of student grants. Due to the diversity, it is not possible to dive into the details of all 44 articles. However, the purpose of this article is to provide researchers in fields such as public administration and e-government with an overview of the academic contributions within the area of what is here labelled as digital discretion.
4. Research on digital discretion

In this section, we outline the research area of digital discretion. First, we provide an overview of conducted research with information about publication authors, timeframe, and outlets. Furthermore, we provide an overview of theoretical foundations and research methods. The conceptual articles build their arguments on firsthand experiences, technological trends, extant literature, and example data. The empirical articles build their arguments on collected data. Second, article reflections about digital discretion are laid out using the concept of public service values [22]. The articles are categorized according to four public service values each representing the focus in the articles: ethics, democracy, professionalism, and people.

4.1 Descriptives

Of the 44 articles reviewed, there are 31 journal articles, nine conference articles, and four book chapters. A complete list of identified articles is provided in Appendix B. The earliest study identified is from 1998. A citation analysis shows that the Bovens and Zouridis [5] article is the most cited article in this stream of research. The number of published articles varies from year to year with an increased interest in the phenomenon during the last decade.

Researchers from UK, Netherlands, USA, and Sweden are most active in this stream of research. Their affiliation was used to associate them with a research discipline showing that researchers within sociology, public administration, information systems, and computer science dominate the research stream. Other and less represented disciplines are political science, law, e-government, education, and cultural science. Social work is the most frequently studied empirical context.

The reviewed articles make use of various theories, concepts, and research methods implying that research on digital discretion is eclectic with no general agreement on appropriate theories and research methods. Street-level bureaucracy (SLB) is the most often appearing theoretical conceptualization in the included sample of articles giving much credit to the early work of Lipsky [1, 37]. This SLB focus is obvious given the applied search criteria. A number of articles combine SLB with theoretical perspectives from public administration, and in particular Weberian bureaucracy and institutional theory. But the overall picture is diverse with respect to theoretical frameworks applied in the sample. While the classification of research methods shows that there is no single methodology of choice, most of the empirical articles have used qualitative research methods. The use of research methods is characterized by some variation in use of well-known methodologies. Most common is the use of single and multiple case study designs followed by ethnographic studies. Several studies refer to firsthand experiences or other cases as examples to support their arguments and leave detailed and explicit descriptions of their research methods out.

4.2 Digital discretion and public service values

Reflecting research question 1, the first aim of this literature review is to study if digital discretion is causing a value shift in street-level bureaucracy. To find out, the articles are related to four categories of traditional public service values; ethics, democracy, professionalism, and people [22, 28]. In each category, digital discretion is studied with regards to whether it results in strengthening or weakening public service values.

Table 1
Implications of ICT for ethical public service values

Societal problem	Leads to …	Purpose of ICT	Desired effect(s)	Article(s)
Unethical actions and corruption	Trust in street-level bureaucrats decline	Reveal reasoning behind decisions Reveal actions made by street-level bureaucrats	To avoid unethical actions and corruption	[8, 38, 81, 82, 83]
Wrong decisions due bias	Trust in street-level bureaucrats decline	Enforce adherence to rules and procedures	Fair and uniform decision-making	[10]
Wrong decisions due different interpretation of rules, and personal factors	Unfair and random decision-making	Enforce adherence to rules and procedures	Fair and uniform decision-making	Interpretation: Personal factors:

4.2.1 Ethical values

Table 1 provides an overview of societal problems that ICT can solve which have implications for ethical public service values. Only three out of nine articles in this category were empirical whereas six articles were conceptual. Findings from the empirical studies are inconclusive. While two of the studies show that digital discretion is supporting traditional ethical values in public administration, one of the studies claim that digital discretion is creating novel forms of unethical actions.

Wenger and Wilkins [10] found that women were discriminated when filing claims to employment services. Introducing digital discretion increased the number of women receiving benefits while having no effect on men. The second study focused on how personal factors such as the mood and recent life events of street-level bureaucrats could influence their decision-making. Increased computerization was viewed favorably as computers are not subject to the same whims [38]. Contrary to these studies, the third study concluded that digital discretion could not sustainably improve bureaucracies through the automation of processes since they introduce novel forms of corruption [8].

Table 2
Implications of ICT for democratic public service values

Societal problem	Leads to …	Purpose of ICT	Desired effect(s)	Article(s)
Reduced acceptance of authority	Reduced political legitimacy	Reveal reasoning and actions made by government (open government)	Increased political legitimacy	[39, 81]
Wrong assessment of cases	Wrong decisions	Allow citizens to participate in decision-making processes	Empower citizens	[40, 41, 59]
Reduced adherence to rules and procedures	Reduced impartiality	Enforce adherence to rules and procedures	Increased accountability	[42, 43, 44, 87]
Street-level bureaucrats are policy makers	Policy outcomes may differ from intentions of policy makers	Embed intentions of policy makers in decisions	Increased rule of law

4.2.2 Democratic values

Table 2 provides an overview of how ICT is intended to solve societal problems with implications for democratic public service values. Ten articles were categorized to discuss democratic implications of ICT. Five of these articles were empirical whereas five articles were conceptual. Findings from the empirical articles are inconclusive. Some of the studies conclude that ICT enhances democratic public values whereas other studies claim that ICT weakens values in this category.

One democratic problem that ICT is proposed to solve is the reduced acceptance of the authority of public agencies. Jansson and Erlingsson [39] claimed that legitimacy is closely interlinked with how citizens experience public services, and were less optimistic on behalf of ICT’s possibilities to enhance legitimacy. They viewed discretion as a prerequisite for legitimacy which ICT cannot support since the use of technology is not as flexible as a personal meeting.

A trend in research is the phenomenon of citizens taking a more active role in governmental tasks [40]. Marston [41] views ICT as enabling tool for citizens that have the actual capacity needed to participate in decision-making. Snellen [40] found that citizens, being situated in society, can contribute to intelligence functions.

Another important venue for public agencies to utilize ICT is to increase accountability. The purpose is to make street-level bureaucrats accountable for their actions (or lack of actions). While Reddick [42] argues that bureaucratic accountability is enhanced as a result of reducing the discretionary power of street-level bureaucrats, Pithouse et al. [43] found that this view was only expressed by people in managerial roles, as one informant states it: “I know exactly what members of the team are doing and then they can be answerable to why they haven’t completed things when they’re suppose to have completed them…” (p. 169). Whereas managers were positive, Pithouse et al. [43] found that transparency promoted by ICT in fact could lead to disguised actions lying behind the more apparent accountability of ICT. Similar to these findings, Smith et al. [44] concluded that when ICT takes over tasks previously done by humans it actually obscures the lines of responsibility.

Table 3
Implications of ICT for professional public service values

Societal problem	Leads to …	Purpose of ICT	Desired effect(s)	Article(s)
Insufficient or incorrect information	Inadequate decisions	Information processing	Increased quality of decisions	[12, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 88, 89, 90]
Erroneous assessments by street-level bureaucrats	Wrong decisions	Reveal reasoning behind decisions Reveal actions made by street-level bureaucrats Enforce adherence to rules and procedures	Prevent errors	[8, 9, 75, 85, 91]
Reduced adherence to rules and procedures	Reduced quality of decisions	Enforce adherence to rules and procedures	Increased quality of decisions	[5, 7, 51, 52, 53, 54, 87]
Discretion is costly and inefficient	High public expenditures and reduced efficiency	Empower unqualified street-level bureaucrats	Reduced costs	[42, 43, 92]
Discretion is costly and inefficient	High public expenditures and reduced efficiency	Faster decision-making	Increased efficiency	[9, 47, 55]
Erroneous and inefficient decision-making	Reorganization of public agencies	Change work processes	Increased efficiency and quality of decision-making	[49, 50, 56]
Consequences of erroneous decisions are too big	Trust in street-level bureaucrats decline	Management monitoring of employees	Increased quality of decisions	[5, 10, 43, 57, 58]
Consequences of erroneous decisions are too big	Trust in street-level bureaucrats decline	Peer-to-peer monitoring of employees	Increased quality of decisions

4.2.3 Professional values

Articles that view ICT as an instrument to enhance professionalism within street-level bureaucracy are listed in Table 3. Articles discussing the professional implications of ICT were by far the largest group consisting of 30 articles. Nineteen of these articles were empirical whereas 11 articles were conceptual. Our review shows that ICT somewhat struggles to enhance professional values. The reduction of discretion in street-level work is claimed to reduce service quality, demoralize street-level bureaucrats, and fail to achieve goals such as preventing errors to occur. However, the picture is not all black and white, and ICT is looked at with positive eyes when used as an enabling tool for street-level bureaucrats.

Street-level bureaucrats are expected to make decisions that are based on law and their professional judgment since their education and experience uniquely qualify them to make such decisions. However, a large portion of the articles focus on how decision-making can be improved in terms of quality. Various causes have motivated this research: Insufficient or incorrect information, errors made by street-level bureaucrats, and reduced adherence to rules and procedures leading to wrong decisions. In addition, the profound consequences of wrong decisions are reasons for why ICT is considered a valuable tool for increased quality in decision-making. Articles looking at how ICT can be used as an information processing tool conclude that sufficient and high-quality information lead to better decisions since street-level bureaucrats are provided with a better foundation for their decision-making than earlier. In addition, decision-making can be improved by utilizing intelligent algorithms, and collect and combine information from several sources [45]. This was found to be the case for judges [12], social workers [46], clerks and case officers [45, 47], and police officers [48]. However, Wastell et al. [49] found that ICT intended to reduce discretion instead provided erroneous information leading to reduced decision-making quality, and Bruhn [50] concluded that data intensive cases enlarged the scope for discretion since ICT was not able to handle the data complexity. Larsson and Jacobsson [45] concluded that case officers still had some discretionary power in selecting and interpreting information. Furthermore, research suggests that street-level bureaucrats trust the information provided by databases and do not search any further for more information [12, 47, 51].

Paulin [8] was the only empirical study reporting from ICT used to prevent errors. He concluded that ICT could not assist since, in this case, core legal principles were broken. Other studies investigated how ICT can enforce adherence to rules and procedures. Shaw et al. [52] found that social workers returned to their discretionary practices after finding that strict adherence to rules did not work. In other studies, officials were found to suffer from decreased discretion and increasing routinization [51, 53]. They became fearful of opposing system protocols and information on computer screens, being left with the opportunity to make only minor changes in cases [51]. In addition, routines have been enforced because of external or internal inspections [54]. The result of reducing their discretionary power was a further demoralization of the street-level bureaucrats [43], and the erosion of service quality [50, 53].

Yet other studies focused on how ICT could achieve cost reductions by empowering unqualified street-level bureaucrats and thus cheaper labor in street-level work. Pithouse et al. [43] suggested that a combination of unqualified staff in social work and ICT led to a lack of professional judgement, analysis, and interpretation leading to tensions within the organization. Handing over discretionary power to untrained staff is seen as a formula for chaos [42]. Also being motivated by high public expenditures, Wihlborg et al. [47] and Tummers et al. [55] found that the roles of street-level bureaucrats were characterized by rearranged relationships, competences, and action spaces. Other studies investigated how ICT led to changed work processes and as a result an increased efficiency and quality in decision-making [49, 50, 56].

In the final batch of articles, ICT is used to monitor street-level work. While the purpose of such monitoring is to control the discretion exercised by employees, several studies show that discretion is disguised, and managers must participate directly in street-level work to understand how discretion is used. When discretion is obscured, the result may be less openness contrary to initial objectives of managerial control [43, 57]. Henman and Adler [58] suggest that the amount of managerial control reflects union strength since unions do not accept managerial control of exercised discretion. On the other hand, Wenger and Wilkins [10] provide a more positive view where managerial monitoring identified “rogue” agents resulting in better decisions to the advantage of female claimants. While managerial monitoring is most discussed, Keymolen and Broeders [51] refer to social workers who monitored each other’s decisions for openness and transparency purposes.

Table 4
Implications of ICT for relational public service values

Societal problem	Leads to …	Purpose of ICT	Desired effect(s)	Article(s)
Wrong decisions due to lack of understanding of individualized concerns	Unfair and random decision-making	Reveal reasoning behind decisions Reveal actions made by street-level bureaucrats Enforce adherence to rules and procedures	Fair and uniform decision-making

4.2.4 People

Relational implications of ICT for public service values are discussed in this section. Table 4 provides an overview of ICT is intended to support people values. Eleven articles were categorized to discuss how ICT can influence the relational aspects of street-level bureaucracy. Nine out of these 11 articles were empirical whereas two articles were conceptual. Authors of the empirical studies do unanimously agree that ICT is not supporting relational public service values. On the contrary, they find that ICT is reducing the action space needed to take individualized concerns into account.

Researchers argue that citizens actively seek human judgment due to their need for individualized treatment. Their individual cases have specialized circumstances that rigorous rule-following technology cannot handle. A reduction in the discretionary power of street-level bureaucrats may make it difficult or impossible to pay attention to these individual needs resulting in what citizens believe are unreasonable outcomes [12, 42, 50, 59]. Moreover, human dialogue is claimed to improve public service provision since needs arise through this dialogue [41, 43]. Citizens are also more prone to accept decisions in their disfavor if they have discussed their case with a street-level bureaucrat [12].

Arguments by street-level bureaucrats are client oriented where attention to the particular over the standardized and the individual over the general are emphasized. Street-level bureaucrats are motivated by helping others and by taking individualized considerations [46, 60, 61]. They are demoralized by a lack of human contact [43]. What is more, when street-level bureaucrats need to prioritize, they identify work-arounds in the system so that clients are benefited [46, 47] since ICT is not providing the level of flexibility that is needed in street-level work [62]. De Witte et al. [46] show how social workers are motivated by helping others and that ICT is not supporting them in their daily work routines. Furthermore, they report that social workers get more concerned with processing and monitoring information than with focusing on the relational aspects of their job [46].

4.3 Digital discretion and context

While the first research question of this literature review addresses whether digital discretion is causing a shift in public service values in street-level bureaucracy, the second question focuses on gaining an understanding about the conditions under which digital discretion can cause this shift. It relates to context, or specifically why change is happening [63, 64, 65]. Pettigrew emphasizes the need for applying a holistic view when uncovering events leading to an outcome. He distinguishes between the inner contexts, i.e. questions about the role of history, structure, cultures, power, and politics in enabling and constraining change and the outer context, i.e. the social, economic, political and competitive environment [63, 64, 65]. In other words, when can and when can ICT not influence human judgment? By studying these conditions, we address an identified gap in the literature [13] and gain an understanding of why digital discretion can strengthen or weaken public service values.

In accordance with Buffat [13], we conclude from the reviewed studies that ICT has both constraining and enabling effects on street-level bureaucrats. Factors that explain whether ICT can influence or replace human judgment are seldom addressed directly in the literature, but rather discussed in relation to other research puzzles. Ten contextual factors were identified from the empirical studies which can explain the prevalence of digital discretion in street-level bureaucracies. These factors are categorized into four levels of analysis and presented in Table 5. Each category describes a different level of analysis. First, the macro-level concerns contextual factors related to the process of formulating and making policies. The meso-level deals with how street-level bureaucracies experience their working conditions and organize their work tasks. The micro-level involves issues related to how street-level bureaucrats adapt policies to real-life situations. The final category is technology discussing the capabilities of ICT of which actors on the macro, meso, and micro levels must take into consideration.

The factors shed light on considerations during policy making, how street-level bureaucracies organize their work and are influenced by ICT, and how diverse types of street-level work are conducted. Many of the reviewed articles discuss how street-level bureaucrats resist a reduction in their discretionary power. The resistance is often, but not always, justified by these contextual factors. Other factors such as demoralization [43] and change in work status [47] can also explain why street-level bureaucrats object to changes in street-level discretion. The ten conditions causing the shift are presented next.

4.3.1 Contextual factors at the macro-level

Formulation of rules

The complexity of society is reflected in the complexity of cases that street-level bureaucrats must deal with. Policy makers decide on policies that use both open-ended and fixed formulations determining the level of discretion in the regulatory foundation. The open-ended policies are formulated with terms such as ‘reasonable’ which must be interpreted in relation to previous interpretations. The reason for rules to be formulated open-ended is because it is impossible for the policy maker to account for every situation that can occur in society, and therefore rules must be formulated so that street-level bureaucrats can adapt them to specific situations. Fixed rules can be used when certain criteria are clear such as to identify the correct fine for speeding. ICT is found to be far more suitable for use with regulations that are schematically formulated.

4.3.2 Contextual factors at the meso-level

Formulation of organizational goals

If organizational goals are not clearly defined it may be difficult to accommodate them in an ICT system. The goal of fair decision-making serves to illustrate this. While a street-level bureaucracy may aim at fair decisions, the meaning associated to the term ‘fair’ may be disputed in an organization. If goals are not clearly defined it is difficult to operationalize measures to achieve these goals.

Formulation of routines

How routines are formulated depend to a considerable extent on what kind of tasks they are supposed to solve. A street-level bureaucracy may receive a wide variety of inquiries which are difficult to solve with fixed routines. Instead, street-level bureaucrats are expected to select a procedure that is suitable for the specific situation. ICT is identified to be associated with routines that follow a fixed set of procedures.

Inter-agency dependency

The degree to which a street-level bureaucracy is dependent on other agencies is a factor that can explain why digital discretion is prevalent or not. Certain street-level bureaucracies such as courts are independent on other public entities through the constitution and cannot be instructed to make certain decisions. Other street-level bureaucracies are heavily dependent on other public agencies and must follow prescriptions enforced upon them. Street-level bureaucracies that are independent of other agencies are more prone to resist pressures to utilize ICT to reduce discretion.

4.3.3 Contextual factors at the micro-level

Professionalization

The level of professionalization indicates how a street-level bureaucrat views his job and role in society. For example, judges and nurses are specialized professions that require a certain type of education, are protected by unions, and have standards for how to conduct their work. The strength of the unions indicates how prone a profession is to let its discretionary practices be influenced by ICT.

Table 5
Contextual factors as indicators of the diffusion of digital discretion

Level of analysis	Contextual factor	Description	Challenge(s)	Example	Article(s)
Macro-level Policy maker	Formulation of rules	Policies may use indefinite terms that need interpretation, or definite terms.	Social complexity can make it difficult or impossible to formulate policies with schematic rules.	Terms such as “reasonable” and “satisfactory” are difficult to interpret by ICT.	[12, 38, 39, 42, 44, 45, 47, 49, 52, 58]
Meso-level Street-level bureaucracy	Formulation of organizational goals	Whether organizational goals are clearly defined.	To initiate ICT measures to achieve goals is difficult if goals are not clearly defined.	The content of and measures to achieve fairness may be disputed.	[86]
	Formalization of routines	The degree to which routines are fixed or flexible.	Case complexity makes it difficult or impossible to create fixed routines.	A call center may receive very different inquiries.	[39, 44, 45, 49, 50, 51, 56, 58]
	Inter-agency dependency	Street-level bureaucracies differ in terms of how the constitution defines their dependency on other public entities.	It is difficult to enforce ICT, routines, and practices on independent public entities.	A court has an independent role in society, and can thus more easily reject rationality pressures.	[12]
Micro-level Street-level bureaucrat	Professionalization	The degree to which street-level bureaucrats are autonomous, have quality standards for their specific occupation, and are unionized.	Strongly professionalized street-level bureaucrats tend to adhere strictly to established practices for their occupation and reject new practices.	Judges are heavily professionalized, and protect their profession eagerly.	[12]
	Computer literacy	The ability to utilize computers for various tasks.	High computer literacy influences how street-level bureaucrats use ICT.	Street-level bureaucrats may utilize skills to abandon practices encouraged by computers.	[8, 12, 46]
	Decision consequences	The consequences of decisions may vary to a considerable extent with a potentially significant impact on clients.	Society expects decisions with profound consequences to be made by humans.	A judge can sentence a client to many years in prison.	[12]
	Information richness	Information of various richness is collected from several sources such as a client, public databases, and employers.	Direct contact with a client is often preferred since a narrative provides the best understanding of a case and its implications.	Selective data required by a form tend to lose information provided in a narrative.	[10, 12, 41, 43, 46, 48, 54, 57]
	Relational negotiations	The degree to which people are in need to negotiate with other people.	Just and fair outcomes of complex cases is dependent on constant negotiations between different stakeholders.	Needs are revealed through human relations which ICT hardly can grasp.	[43, 46, 54]
Technology	Features	Capabilities and characteristics of ICT; what ICT can do.	Technology lacking capabilities to conduct certain tasks or model rules correctly constrains opportunities.	If ICT cannot enforce certain routines, they may easily be subject to work arounds.	[8, 12, 43, 46, 53]

Computer literacy

While computers may be used to enforce certain practices upon street-level bureaucrats, they can nevertheless be ignored or manipulated so that street-level bureaucrats can choose their preferred approach instead. In other occasions, a high computer literacy is found to strengthen digital discretion since street-level bureaucrats trust computers and the information that is provided by them.

Decision consequences

Street-level bureaucrats may make several decisions every day dependent on their type of work. For example, a police officer may handle several incidents a day whereas a judge may use several days on one trial ending in a verdict. The consequences of these decisions vary to a substantial extent. While a police officer may issue a speeding ticket for a minor amount of money, a judge may sentence a person to jail for several years. The inclination to use ICT for decision-making with dire consequences is low.

Information richness

Street-level bureaucrats use information from various sources to solve cases. This information may stem from for example a client, other public agencies, or employers. When ICT is used, information tends to be stored in structured data formats ruling out rich information that can shed light on a specific case. Structured data formats are also better suited for automated decisions since they can be assessed through programmed algorithms. However, the narrative that is presented by a client to a street-level bureaucrat, often over time, provides a better basis for making an individual assessment of a case strengthening relational public service values.

Relational negotiations

Related to information richness are the ongoing negotiations that take place between clients and street-level bureaucrats. In this process, a client can discuss her case with a street-level bureaucrat face-to-face instead of entering information in a computer system. In many cases this is sufficient for a client. For example, a defendant may be satisfied with being able to discuss his case with the judge even though the verdict is opposite to his wishes [12]. In other cases, face-to-face contact is required. For example, where a judge is expected to inform a child of a certain decision regarding where the child should live in the future – a task that obviously is difficult for a computer [12].

4.3.4 Technology features

Often when technology in organizations is studied, ICT is under-theorized and invoked “in name only, but not in fact” [66, p. 128]. In this article, ICT is recognized as “a composite made up of some combination of software, hardware, database and network components with an information processing capability aimed at enabling individual, group and organizational tasks” [67, p. 224]. ICT is thus characterized by certain capabilities that determine what street-level bureaucrats can use it for. However, while ICT has certain inherent capabilities affording certain actions, street-level bureaucrats do not necessarily make use of them. Various technologies are adopted in street-level bureaucracies influencing discretionary practices differently. The various technologies include case management systems, web sites, databases, and automated systems. Table 6 provides a list of ICTs discussed in the empirical studies. The list provides descriptions of the technology, the street-level context in which the technology is applied, and its use. Seven of the empirical studies are not represented in the list as they did not discuss any technology explicitly referring to it in passing only.

Table 6
Technologies discussed in empirical studies

Technology	Description	Context	Use	Article(s)
Telephone	Communication channel used to interact with clients.	Social work.	Receive claims.	[10]
Multifunctional computer	Multifunctional computer available remotely.	Policing.	Enable remote access and transmission of relevant documents, videos, and other information for police operations.	[48]
Database	Organized repository of data.	Court, financial services, social work.	Register client information. Provide access to various resources.	[12, 43, 46, 51, 52, 54, 57, 61]
Web site	Set of web pages made available through the Internet under a single domain name.	Generalist, financial services, health care.	Receive various inquiries. Make decisions based on collected data.	[39, 42, 50, 60]
Case management system	System that handles workflow and support for organizational processes.	Court, social work, financial services.	Administer work tasks. Provide overview of client information. Register client information. Exchange information. Provide templates for decisions. Exercise control activities.	[12, 38, 43, 52, 58, 61]
Automated system	System that conducts tasks without human intervention.	Financial services, social work.	Generate new data based on collected data. Make decisions based on collected data.

The most common technologies in use are databases, automated systems, and case management systems. The automated systems were often used to automate sub processes and more seldom for decision-making. In the latter case, discretion is obviously influenced. But for other technologies, the influence on discretionary practices seem to vary to a considerable extent based on their use. For example, the search algorithms embedded in a database determine what information a street-level bureaucrat is provided. If algorithms are poorly designed, results will be equally poor. Given that street-level bureaucrats are reluctant to question the information provided by a computer screen, even if their professional judgment indicates otherwise, the democratic control of public policy implementation can in these cases be handed over to software developers [5, 51]. Another example is the use of simple telephone technology to interact with clients. Wenger and Wilkins [10] found that by making claims through the telephone rather than showing up in person, more women received social benefits. The reason for this change was that rogue street-level bureaucrats no longer could make decisions based on their own biases. Yet another example is provided by Busch [12] where the ability of judges to utilize the features that the technologies offered actually affected their discretionary practices. These examples serve to illustrate how differently technologies can influence street-level discretion.

5. Implications for street-level bureaucracy and research on digital discretion

The key problem that Lipsky [1] addresses is the potential loss of democratic control of the public policy making process since street-level bureaucrats influence the outcomes that clients experience, and the actions they take can actually become public policy. This observation is made despite the many procedures that have been implemented to control their behavior. ICT has been introduced to ensure implementation of public policies according to the intentions of the policy maker. The diffusion of ICT into public agencies has caused structural changes in some street-level bureaucracies leading to computerized interaction with clients instead of face-to-face contact. While these observations can be made, Lipsky [1] holds that “the nature of service provision calls for human judgment that cannot be programmed and for which machines cannot substitute” (p. 161). In the digital era, we believe that this claim can be questioned. Digital discretion, understood as the use of computerized routines and analyses to influence or replace human judgment, can change what street-level bureaucracy fundamentally is. Guided by the literature, this review addresses two research puzzles: (1) whether digital discretion can cause a value shift in street-level bureaucracy, and (2) under what conditions digital discretion can cause such a value shift.

Addressing the first research puzzle, the review indicates increased diffusion of digital discretion which has implications for public values guiding street-level bureaucrats. The scarce number of empirical studies in this area makes it difficult to draw generalizable conclusions but the findings can rather serve as an indication of a general development. While digital discretion seems to be more suitable for strengthening ethical and democratic values, it generally fails in its attempts to strengthen professional and relational values. Street-level bureaucrats who willingly and knowingly act unethically are at the center of societal attention on a regular basis. The reviewed studies show that digital discretion can support ethical values by removing personal biases from decision-making [10, 38]. Traditionally when interacting closely with their clients, street-level bureaucrats became acquainted with them gaining knowledge about who appeared to deserve a better treatment thus leading to favoritism. Technology does not make individual considerations but focuses merely on objective predefined criteria. However, one study found that automation could lead to novel forms of corruption since system administrators had excessive control of system outputs [8]. Thus, the threat is not emerging from the use of ICT which in fact seems to prevent street-level bureaucrats from unlawful actions as intended, but rather from the design of algorithms and system control [5].

Democracy is founded on the principle that certain agencies or people are appointed to conduct tasks on behalf of the community. They are expected to do so according to policies decided by democratically elected representatives. Thus, the people controls the state. The responsibility given to others than those elected presupposes that those who implement policies such as street-level bureaucrats can be held liable for their actions. Democratic values are values that support this principle. A common characteristic derived from the studies is that ICT seems to be well suited for control functions. By limiting the scope of actions that street-level bureaucrats can take, democratic values such as the rule of law and accountability are enhanced [42]. However, other studies clearly indicate that ICT can actually obscure who is responsible for actions taken simply by referring to what the computer said [43, 44].

Concerning professional values, digital discretion seems to enhance efficiency but on behalf of the quality of decisions [12]. ICT, embedded with certain public values, seems to promote different goals, and thus often influence public service values [21]. While the attempt to make decision-making more time and cost efficient is legitimate, its conflicting consequence of reducing the quality of decisions is not. The reduction of discretion in street-level work is claimed to reduce service quality, demoralize street-level bureaucrats, and fail to achieve goals such as preventing errors to occur. However, the picture is not all black and white, and ICT is looked at with positive eyes when used as an enabling tool for street-level bureaucrats. In general, several of the studies conclude that ICT can be of considerable help to street-level bureaucrats by providing access to a vast amount of resources which enhances the quality of the decisions that street-level bureaucrats make. In addition, an increased diffusion of digital discretion is likely to influence the role of the street-level bureaucrat. While most street-level bureaucrats have gained a considerable competence within their work area through education and experience, ICT may turn them into mere ICT operators that simply follow computerized routines. Discretion is considered an award by street-level bureaucrats, and reducing or eliminating their discretionary power may result in reduced job meaningfulness [2] and ultimately in less attractive jobs which has consequences for recruitment [68].

In the last category of values, the classic tension in street-level work between concerns for individual treatment on the one hand, and commitments to efficiency and standardization on the other is salient. Street-level bureaucrats have traditionally considered how to balance these concerns. Insights from the review suggest that ICT has not changed this practice considerably. In fact, ICT is found to contradict people values by reducing the options street-level bureaucrats have to look at the specifics in each case and adapt policies to real-life situations. These concerns are important for street-level bureaucrats who are found to unequivocally prioritize clients in situations where they are confronted with this dilemma [60]. Furthermore, researchers argue that citizens actively seek human judgment due to their need for individualized treatment.

From the discussion above, we suggest that as long as the goals promoted by various types of ICT are known, the value shift caused by digital discretion is a matter of prioritization. In those cases where ICT seems to have emergent effects and promote public values that were non-intended, digital discretion is causing a value shift outside the control of public managers and public policy makers. However, the effects of ICT are most often a result of both IT strategic decisions as well as emerging from the use of ICT. Thus, it is difficult to unequivocally make conclusions about a value shift based on our review. We suggest that digital discretion more easily supports ethical and democratic values than professional values whereas digital discretion seems to contradict people values. Findings indicate that we may witness the beginning of a value shift towards values favoring standardization and equal treatment of clients on behalf of values emphasizing individualized concerns. We hold that ultimately it must be the outcome of decisions that is important and not the logic behind them [32]. If ICT can enhance public values that result in fair and robust decisions, clients will be satisfied with public service provision and the underlying logic will be of less importance. Furthermore, findings show clearly that the influence is dependent on the context within which ICT is implemented. This conclusion leads us to the second research puzzle; namely to explain the conditions under which digital discretion can cause changes in public values.

The review of academic contributions illustrates that researchers studying digital discretion agree on context as vital for understanding the implications of digital discretion. Beyond this shared understanding, there is a significant difference in what researchers perceive to be the effects of digital discretion and which contextual factors that facilitate these effects. While street-level bureaucrats share commonalities such as the ability to exercise discretionary power, close interaction with clients, and scarce resources at their disposal, they are nevertheless very different. Diverse types of public services differ in terms of clients involved, the seriousness and consequences of each case, type of policies and the formulation of rules, and the expertise of street-level bureaucrats. To explain how computers could take over tasks conducted by humans, Sheridan [69] developed a 10-point scale to demonstrate nuances in degrees of automation. The scale can be divided into two main categories: (1) Low-level automation where the computer leaves discretionary practices and decisions to humans, and (2) high-level automation where the computer is increasingly able to execute decisions by itself [44]. Whereas the computer will offer no assistance to a human at the lowest level in Sheridan’s scale of automation, the computer will act autonomously at the highest level. Cases of child abuse and neglect illustrate situations where computers can offer limited assistance to humans. In these cases, street-level bureaucrats are confronted with tragic situations that involve vulnerable children being neglected or even seriously harmed. Under extreme circumstances, the children die and sometimes due to professional errors among social workers [9, 51]. These cases are so complex and span over many years making it very difficult to utilize ICT tools, and certainly to influence discretionary practices which is associated with higher levels of automation. Tax reporting can serve as an example of public services that can be exposed to high-level automation. The reporting is based on schematic rules and numerical data which makes such cases ideal for automation. The criteria that decide the outcomes of a tax report are clear being merely dependent on collecting data from required sources such as the client employer and bank. While Bovens and Zouridis [5] claimed that street-level bureaucracies were turned into system-level bureaucracies which are driven by the logic of the information system rather than the individual judgement of the street-level bureaucrat, they made some important caveats as well. They argued that mass transactions were most prone for automation, and believed that the suitability of ICT to influence the discretionary practices of traditional street-level bureaucrats such as teachers and nurses seemed to be more limited. A tendency we observe is that the number of empirical studies is increasing whereas the number of conceptual articles is decreasing. Furthermore, the view of digital discretion becomes more nuanced as more empirical studies are published.

From the review, three main reasons emerge for why digital discretion is diffusing more rapidly in some cases whereas more slowly in other cases. First, the automation of mass transactions has been very successful in terms of rationality objectives, and politicians and government officials constantly experience pressures to find more efficient solutions for public service delivery [70]. The imperative for public managers to prioritize efficiency is illustrated through a study of Rose et al. [4] who found that municipal managers were under considerable pressure to prioritize efficiency, and that they often did go by rationality objectives.

Second, while work routines have been a focus of researchers in this area, powerful actors are in general more interested in how the established power relations in the organization can be either changed or maintained dependent on the agenda of these actors [71]. This means that a change in work routines is not a problem as long as street-level bureaucrats can adapt their practices to any constraints enforced by ICT. The reviewed articles are most frequently occupied with how digital discretion affects the street-level bureaucrat. What we observe from the articles is that street-level bureaucrats exclusively relate digital discretion to the traditional public administration paradigm and do not see digital discretion as an opportunity to transform government. For example, transparency is emphasized to reveal how governments work since the logic behind decisions is expected to reflect the way decisions are made today. The public administration literature has shown that public agencies are reluctant to change their practices. Existing structures are reinforced, and street-level bureaucrats continue to work as before [72, 73, 74].

Third, the technology in use has obvious limitations. The reviewed articles have studied several types of ICT but most often databases and case management systems. While several of the recent empirical studies have used student grant loans, electronic tax reporting, and social e-services as examples of public service provision that is automated [44, 47], we argue that new technology has begun to show evidence on its capability to perform tasks of traditional street-level bureaucrats. There is an increasing potential of ICT to transform non-routine street-level work such as teaching, nursing, and policing [32]. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a technology that has developed rapidly during recent decades describing computers that can act as autonomous agents and approximate the human brain. By time, they will have improved their own capacity to make accurate decisions [75] that overcome the many constraints of rule-based systems [76]. For example, IBM’s Watson can now better identify symptoms of diseases than experienced physicians [76], and AI has proved to conduct better assessments of English essays than teachers [77].

The findings and conclusions from this literature review point to a number of implications for street-level bureaucracy. While we observe that digital discretion is increasingly diffusing, that ICT is influencing the practices of street-level bureaucrats, and that digital discretion in some cases is substituting human judgment, can we still talk about street-level bureaucracy? Is it not turning into something else such as a screen-level or system-level bureaucracy [5], an infocracy [7], an e-bureaucracy [70], or a digital bureaucracy? From the research and policy literature it is observed that digitization is increasingly on the agenda of public policy makers, and from this we can conclude that digital discretion is likely to continue to increase its impact on street-level bureaucracies. The main characteristics of a street-level bureaucrat, as Lipsky [1] defined him or her, are (1) close interaction with clients during work hours, and (2) the ability to exercise a substantial amount of discretion. If digital discretion causes significant changes in how clients and street-level bureaucrats interact as well as limit the ability that they have to exercise human judgment, the two main characteristics of the street-level bureaucrat are changing due to digital discretion. While this development can be observed, it is acknowledged that certain types of street-level work seem to be unaffected by ICT which advocate for still talking about a street-level bureaucracy, for example in nursing and social work. However, the scope of street-level bureaucracy is decreasing, and opening space for a theory of digital bureaucracy where ICT is the core ingredient characterized by digital bureaucrats working in front of computers, who do not interact face-to-face with their clients, and who are limited to operating computers all with the intentions of improving public service provision in terms of enhancing ethical, democratic, professional, and relational values.

The most promising research avenue for digital discretion appears to be for public services where certain aspects of discretionary practices can be taken over by a computer. These are services that cover situations that are neither very complex nor straightforward. In between these situations, one will find that discretion is not “an ‘all-or-nothing’ phenomenon”, but rather a result of “gradations of power that exist in the relationship between managers and professional workers” [78, p. 881]. In this mid-position, many questions are unresolved such as how ICT can obscure the discretionary practices of street-level bureaucrats contrary to intended objectives [57], how street-level bureaucrats may create work arounds for computerized routines, and how discretion can be influenced by ICT without street-level bureaucrats being fully aware of it [12]. In some cases, street-level bureaucrats experienced to be empowered by technology having more information about citizens and being able to control information flows. What is more, technology-induced change is caused by street-level behavior emerging “from a dynamic interaction of external circumstances and internal motives or interest” [79, p. 585], thus making it hard to predict effects of ICT implementations. Like socio-technical arguments claiming that technology cannot be viewed isolated but rather related to a social context shaping its use [80], digital discretion researchers increasingly view ICT as one of many factors that influence the outcomes of the use of ICT.

6. Conclusion

In this study, we report from 44 scholarly articles on ICT and street-level discretion. Societal problems such as increasing and more complex demands on public service provision, and errors and corruption are creating pressures on politicians and government officials to provide services of higher quality and in a more efficient manner. The review shows that the environment in which ICT is implemented and used is vital for understanding why digital discretion diffuses and how the impacts of it are. For certain types of street-level work such as mass transactional tasks, ICT has reduced or even eliminated the use of human judgment. Examples of mass transactional tasks are the handling of student grant loans and tax reports where the data is numerical and readily available for government agencies, and where decisions are made based on schematic rule sets. In other types of street-level work such as social work, the discretionary practices of street-level bureaucrats are influenced by ICT to a lesser degree or not influenced at all. Contextual explanations for the prevalence of digital discretion can be attributed to factors such as the degree of professionalization, formulation of rules, computer literacy, and the level of information richness required. The impact of digital discretion is less explored in types of street-level work in between these extremes which opens avenues for future research. Another promising area for future research seems to be the increasing use of advanced technology such as artificial intelligence. This technology is now to a considerable extent able to deal with tasks of high complexity, and can thus address many of the shortcomings that the critics of digital discretion put forward.

The review further reveals that digital discretion has the potential to change the nature of public service provision. By using the concept of public service values, we found that digital discretion is strengthening ethical and democratic values but weakening professional and relational values for traditional street-level bureaucracies. Thus, digital discretion impacts the role of street-level bureaucrats and the work practices they perform in public service provision. Researchers in this area are mainly negative to digital discretion and conclude that street-level discretion is necessary to ensure values that are vital for public service provision such as making well-founded and fair decisions.

We conclude the literature review with claiming that the scope of street-level bureaucracy is decreasing. While certain types of street-level work seem to avoid extensive changes due ICT, it makes more and more sense to talk about digital bureaucracy and digital discretion since an increasing number of street-level bureaucracies are characterized by digital bureaucrats who operate computers instead of interacting face-to-face with their clients.

This literature review calls for more research. One third of the reviewed articles were conceptual, and the task now at hand is to evaluate the effects of digital discretion empirically, to explain under which circumstances ICT is influencing street-level discretion, and to explain how several types of technologies play a role in this influence. These are all under-investigated areas which provide good opportunities for future research. Other researchers are encouraged to join in exploring these questions and continue the research in this emergent area of significant practical importance.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Reviews Editor, Karl Löfgren, and the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that have improved this article.

Appendix A. Literature search words

Literature database	Search query	Search results
Web of Science	TOPIC: (discretion) AND TOPIC: (e-government)	6
	TOPIC: (discretion) AND TOPIC: (“information technology”)	21
	TOPIC: (discretion) AND TOPIC: (ICT)	10
	TOPIC: (“street*level bureaucracy”) AND TOPIC: (e-government)	3
	TOPIC: (“street*level bureaucracy”) AND TOPIC: (“information technology”)	4
	TOPIC: (“street*level bureaucracy”) AND TOPIC: (“ICT”)	4
Scopus	(TITLE-ABS-KEY(discretion) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (e-government))	14
	(TITLE-ABS-KEY(discretion) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (“information technology”))	65
	(TITLE-ABS-KEY(discretion) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (ict))	23
	(TITLE-ABS-KEY(“street-level bureaucracy”) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (e-government))	9
	(TITLE-ABS-KEY(“street-level bureaucracy”) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (“information technology”))	3
	(TITLE-ABS-KEY(“street-level bureaucracy”) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (ict))	4
EBSCOhost	AB discretion AND AB e-government	7
	AB discretion AND AB “information technology”	51
	AB discretion AND AB ICT	31
	AB street-level bureaucracy AND AB e-government	3
	AB street-level bureaucracy AND AB “information technology”	4
	AB street-level bureaucracy AND AB ICT	1
IEEE Xplore	((“Abstract”:discretion) AND “Abstract”:e-government)	2
	((“Abstract”:discretion) AND “Abstract”:“information technology”)	3
	((“Abstract”:discretion) AND “Abstract”:ICT)	1
	((“Abstract”:“street-level bureaucracy”) AND “Abstract”:“information technology”)	2
E-government	discretion AND e-government [abstract]	5
reference library	discretion AND information technology [abstract]	60
(EGRL) v. 12.0	discretion AND ICT [abstract]	5
	street-level bureaucracy AND e-government [abstract]	2
	street-level bureaucracy AND information technology [abstract]	1
Total		362

Appendix B. Theoretical frameworks and research methodologies

Article	Year	Theoretical framework	Research methodology
Aas [84]	2004
Ameen and Ahmad [82]	2011
Angell and Samonas [92]	2009	Weberian bureaucracy
Barth and Arnold [75]	1999
Ben and Schuppan [48]	2016	“Professionalization theories”	Case study
Bovens and Zouridis [5]	2002	SLB ${}^{1}$
Bruhn [50]	2015	SLB	Case study
Busch [12]	2017	SLB, institutional theory	Case study
Devlieghere et al. [61]	2016		Qualitative study
De Witte et al. [46]	2016		Case study
Henman and Adler [58]	2003	Governmentality (Foucault)	Survey
Hill et al. [56]	2012	SLB	Multiple case study
Houston [9]	2015	Self-proposed framework on holistic rationality
Jansson and Erlingsson [39]	2014	SLB	Case study
Jorna and Wagenaar [57]	2007	SLB	Multiple case study
Kalu [88]	2001
Kang [81]	2005
Keymolen and Broeders [51]	2011		Case study
Landsbergen [91]	2004
Larsson and Jacobsson [45]	2013	SLB, NPM ${}^{2}$	Case study
Le Dantec and Edwards [53]	2008		Ethnography
Leenes [86]	2003	SLB
Marston [41]	2006		Case study
Parton [90]	2008
Paulin [8]	2013	Social contract theory	Multiple case study
Peckover et al. [54]	2008		Ethnography
Petrakaki [87]	2010	Weberian bureaucracy
Pithouse et al. [43]	2011	Concepts of risk and systemic trust	Ethnography
Reddick [42]	2005	SLB, e-government stage model	Survey (secondary data)
Reddick et al. [83]	2011	Concepts of. discretion and e-government effectiveness	Survey
Shaw et al. [52]	2009		Multiple case study
Smith et al. [44]	2010	Concept of accountability	Multiple case study
Smith [38]	2011	Concepts of institutional trust and institutional trustworthiness	Multiple case study
Snellen [40]	2012	SLB, Mintzberg’s technostructure
Snijkers [85]	2005	Theory concerning ICT, intergovernmental relations, and state-citizen relations
Tata [62]	2000	Concept of discretion
Tummers et al. [55]	2009	Concept of policy alienation	Case study
Tummers and Rocco [60]	2015		Qualitative study
Varavithya and Esichaikul [89]	2005	Hartian positivism and Dworkin’s interpretivism
Varavithya and Esichaikul [59]	2007	E-government discretionary framework
Wastell et al. [49]	2010	SLB, NPM	Ethnography
Wenger and Wilkins [10]	2009	Concept of discretion	Quantitative analysis
Wihlborg et al. [47]	2016	Actor-network theory	Case study
Zuurmond [7]	1998	Weberian bureaucracy, SLB	Case study

${}^{1}$ Street-level bureaucracy; ${}^{2}$ New public management.

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Digital discretion: A systematic literature review of ICT and street-level discretion

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

1.1 Is digital discretion causing a value shift in street-level bureaucracy?

1.2 Under what conditions can digital discretion cause a value shift in street-level bureaucracy?

2. Public values

2.1 Ethics

2.2 Democratic values

2.3 Professional values

2.4 People values

3. Methodology

4.1 Descriptives

4.2 Digital discretion and public service values

Table 1 Implications of ICT for ethical public service values

Table 2 Implications of ICT for democratic public service values

Table 3 Implications of ICT for professional public service values

Table 4 Implications of ICT for relational public service values

4.3 Digital discretion and context

4.3.1 Contextual factors at the macro-level

Formulation of rules

4.3.2 Contextual factors at the meso-level

Formulation of organizational goals

Formulation of routines

Inter-agency dependency

4.3.3 Contextual factors at the micro-level

Professionalization

Table 5 Contextual factors as indicators of the diffusion of digital discretion

Computer literacy

Decision consequences

Information richness

Relational negotiations

Table 6 Technologies discussed in empirical studies

6. Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Appendix A. Literature search words

Appendix B. Theoretical frameworks and research methodologies

References

Table 1
Implications of ICT for ethical public service values

Table 2
Implications of ICT for democratic public service values

Table 3
Implications of ICT for professional public service values

Table 4
Implications of ICT for relational public service values

Table 5
Contextual factors as indicators of the diffusion of digital discretion

Table 6
Technologies discussed in empirical studies