A theory of the infrastructure-level bureaucracy: Understanding the consequences of data-exchange for procedural justice, organizational decision-making, and data itself

Widlak, A.C. & Peeters, R. (2025) Government Information Quarterly Vol 42, Issue 2, June 2025, 102021

Highlights

• Many problems in contemporary digital government can be traced back to organization of information flows.
• Data-exchange rather than the design of individual government applications can best explain the loss of procedural justice.
• Loss of capacity for democratic control of data-exchange is best observed on the level of the information infrastructure.
• We formulate hypotheses on affordances and limitations of information infrastructures for data, organizations and citizens.

Abstract

The interconnectedness of government organizations through data-exchange is proliferating. This is relevant for many debates in public administration today since all applications of data-driven government rest on a foundation of data. In this article, rather than focusing on specific applications, we analyze the way supra-organizational data-exchange shapes such applications and specifically automated administrative decision-making (AADM). We argue that the whole of bureaucracy that is connected through data-exchange implies the organizational separation of the collection or gathering of government data from the exchange, modification, combination and/or analysis and subsequently its (re)use in decision-making processes. To analyze the consequences of this new division of labor we further develop the concept of the infrastructure-level bureaucracy and formulate hypotheses on its consequences for data itself, organizations, and citizens. Ultimately, we argue infrastructural information flows pose challenges for democratic control and for procedural lawfulness in the constitutional state.

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Burdens on the Gateway to the State: The Construction of Administrative Burdens in the Registration of People Experiencing Homelessness in Belgium and the Netherlands

Robben, L.-l., Peeters, R. & Widlak, A.C. (2024) Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 1–24

Population registries are the gateway to a state’s public services, benefits, and rights. However, despite clear formal rules and procedures, people eligible for registration may still face administrative burdens in obtaining access. In this article, we study the case of the municipal registration of people who experience homelessness in Belgium and the Netherlands – a group that typically suffers from administrative vulnerability. Using data from 61 interviews with social workers and civil servants, we find that burdens are constructed at the municipal level to disincentivize homeless people’s access to registration. However, using the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework, we also identify mechanisms in the governance of population registration mechanisms and the decentralization of social policies that create incentives for strategic behavior by municipal policy makers and street-level bureaucrats. By analyzing the interaction between multiple institutional levels, we contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms through which administrative burdens are constructed.

Keywords: administrative burdens; administrative exclusion; address registration; homelessness; institutional analysis

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Administrative exclusion in the infrastructure-level bureaucracy: The case of the Dutch daycare benefit scandal

Peeters, R. & Widlak, A.C. (2023) Public Administration Review 83(4): 863–77

A key insight in the literature on administrative burdens and exclusion is that they can be a form of policy making by other means to disincentivize people's access to services, rights, and benefits. Using the case of the Dutch daycare benefit scandal, in which tens of thousands of citizens were wrongfully accused of welfare fraud and subsequently excluded from benefits, we argue for a broader understanding of the way administrative burdens can be constructed. We introduce the concept of the ‘infrastructure-level bureaucracy’ to understand how new forms of intra- and supra-organizational data exchange and algorithmic analysis can lead bureaucracies to fail to understand the reasoning underlying their own administrative decisions and, subsequently, cause Kafkaesque situations for citizens. Our findings point towards the importance of institutional analyses of the way information technologies structure political and operational behavior as well as the burdens that citizens may face in their interactions with the state.

One of the authors, Arjan Widlak, was awarded the Louis Brownlow Award by the American Society for Public Administration for best Public Administration Review article written by a practitioner for this paper.

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Volwassen Digitale Overheid (Boek)

Widlak, A.C. (2022) Boom bestuurskunde, Den Haag

Website van het boek >>

Een functioneringsgesprek met je algoritme?

Arjan Widlak en Ola A. Al Khatib (2022) Tijdschrift voor Klachtrecht 2022-2, p. 3-6

In een bekend artikel uit 2002 beschrijven Bovens en Zouridis hoe de discretie verplaatst van de ambtenaar aan de balie naar de ambtenaar ‘die de discretionaire ruimte heeft om juridische raamwerken te vertalen in concrete algoritmen’. Hoe vollediger organisaties het handelen van mensen delegeren aan software, hoe meer de vraag zich opdringt: tot welke interventie moet een klacht leiden? Wat als het een algoritme is, dat onbehoorlijk handelt?

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Towards Principles of Good Digital Administration (hoofdstuk)

Widlak, Van Eck & Peeters (2021) in Peeters & Schuilenburg, 2020, Algorithmic Societies, Routeledge, London

Automated decision-making in public administration makes it necessary to redifine older administrative law principles. In this paper administrative law and public administration science is combined to adjust old principles in principles of good digital administration. The paper consists real life illustration of individual cases and elaborates the possibilities of mechanisms resonsive to changing action situations.

Lees verder >>

Geen ruimte, maar richting

Widlak, A.C. (2021) Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Bestuursrecht, 2021/73 aflevering 3, Wolters Kluwer, Deventer JCDI:ADS255069:2

Lees op deze site >>

Administrative Errors and the Burden of Correction and Consequence: How Information Technology Exacerbates the Consequences of Bureaucratic Mistakes for Citizens

Widlak, A.C. & Peeters, R. (2020) International Journal of Electronic Governance 12(1):1.

Administrative errors are an overlooked cause of administrative burdens. Citizens face costs in the correction of an error and in the material and immaterial consequences of an error, such as loss of access to benefits or services. This problem is especially relevant given the characteristics of information technology in the public sector, which is increasingly used to share data among multiple organisations through master data management systems. We conceptualise administrative errors and their burdens through the analysis of an exemplary case of a Dutch woman's Kafkaesque problems because of a registration error by the police regarding her stolen car.

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The digital cage: administrative exclusion through information architecture – the case of the Dutch civil registry´s master data management system

Peeters, R. & Widlak, A.C. (2018) Government Information Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp.175–183

This article analyses the unintended consequences of master data management systems in the administrative state for the access of citizens to public services and benefits. We analyse the case of the Dutch civil registry, in which hundreds of (semi-)public organisations use the information from the civil registry to determine whether people are eligible for their services. We use the framework of administrative burdens and administrative exclusion to show that this system turns the consequences of mutations in registration into a black box, produces legal contamination by forcing its own address definition upon user organisations, reduces the discretionary space of street-level bureaucrats to handle social complexity and unintended consequences of the system, and creates a behavioural incentive in which municipalities are pushed into the role of enforcers rather than registers. The result is a ‘digital cage’: an exclusionary infrastructure that hinges on information architecture instead of Weberian rules and procedures. These findings increase our understanding of master data management systems, emphasise the importance of understanding information architecture as an ethical issue, and help us develop a new vocabulary for understanding and studying administrative burdens as part of a bureaucratic infrastructure.

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De Digitale Kooi (boek)

Widlak, A.C. & Peeters, R. (2018) Boombestuurskunde

Distinguishing Standards and Regulation for Innovation Research – Accommodating Standards in Lessig’s Framework of Regulatory Modalities

Egyedi, T.M., Widlak, A.C. & Ortt, J.R. (2018). International Journal for Standardization Research 16(2): 1-21.

Tineke M. Egyedi, DIRoS, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Arjan Widlak, Kafka Brigade Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands
J. Roland Ortt, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

ABSTRACT
Certain influential innovation impact studies do not sharply distinguish standards from regulation. Is differentiation needed? In what way do they differ in how they work and work out? This article applies and extends a framework of regulatory modalities to open up the black box of direct innovation effects. It includes standards as a separate regulatory modality following careful consideration of alternatives, i.e., accommodating them as a special instance or as a hybrid of law, norm, market and architecture. The authors capture the essential differences between standards and law. They reconcile Lessig’s emphasis on constraints with findings of enabling and constraining effects in innovation research by differentiating direct inherently constraining effects of regulatory modalities and modality-specific direct generic effects - as opposed to indirect effects. They conclude that standards and law merit separate treatment in innovation research, and recommend complementary frameworks to uncover unaddressed  issues.

KeywoRDS
ADICO Grammar, Architecture, Code, Community Innovation Survey, Constraints, Direct Effect, Inner Workings,
Regulatory Modalities, Regulatory Standards, Self-Regulation, Tools of Governance Approach