Information Technology Reference
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sector cooperation is fundamentally changing and whether there is any significant
influence of a set of (less controllable) professional decisions on these changes. This
is a relevant question in the larger scheme of public sector management because it
would suggest that a specific technology, and its related set of professional practi-
tioners handling this technology, could influence if, when, how, and why public
sector agencies cooperate and integrate. This harms the integrity of the public sec-
tor. However, this potential risk and how it relates to ICT-related decisions have
received limited attention in public administration so far.
One way to evaluate the role of professional ICT decisions is through the con-
cepts of “discretionary space” and “discretions.” Discretionary space refers to the
degree of freedom that individual actors claim to reach to decisions, which may be
adverse to either institutional or (inter)organizational requirements. Discretionary
space is utilized through discretions, which are decisions made by individual actors
based on personal judgments rather than organizational procedures and fully
rational assessments. Davis refers to discretions as the “freedom to make a choice
among possible courses of action and inaction within the effective limits of some-
one's power” (1976, p. 4). Hupe and Hill (2007) argue that the presence of discre-
tions is inevitable once such effective limits exist. Lipsky, one of the first authors to
point to discretions of “street-level bureaucrats,” argues that the sum of all discre-
tions in a public sector system influences the overall governance of that system, and
as a result, the sum of all discretions is also part of how the government functions:
“The actions of most workers actually constitute the services 'delivered' by govern-
ment. Moreover, when taken together the individual decisions of these workers
become, or add up to, agency policy” (1980, p. 3).
In public administration discourses, discretions are usually associated with
uncontrollable power of street-level bureaucrats (Hudson, 1989; Lipsky, 1983).
Because certain processing procedures allow public sector professionals to make
autonomous decisions on resources, they become a source and agency of uncontrol-
lable or even invisible power. Lipsky (1983) argues that this is problematic because
a large number of discretions or a wide range of discretions will hamper the pos-
sibility of verifying the accountability of an organization. Because the original
discussions on discretionary space were confined to “good-and-bad” or “present-
or-absent” dichotomies, the critique has been that “Discretions
should be regarded
as a series of gradations of freedom to make
decisions and, therefore, the degree
of freedom professionals
have at specific conjunctures should be evaluated on a
situation-by-situation
basis” (Evans & Harris, 2004, pp. 871-872). Thus, public
administration science needs more empirical evidence on the degree of discretion
and the extent of the discretionary space to assess the changes in power relations
and accountability of public sector organizations.
Bovens and Zouridis (2002) argue that given the rapid intrusion of ICT in public
sector activities, evaluating discretionary space should no longer be focused only on
street-level bureaucrats and their discretions, but more on system-level bureaucrats, who
are key actors in the design and implementation of information systems. Zuurmond
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