Data driven management has become a central part of the Danish public sector discourse about digitalization and digital transformation. Well-established ideas that form part of this discourse are, that for the public sector to become truly digital and thus more efficient and more innovative, data must be an integral part of public governance. This implies that not only must new IT systems and infrastructures be implemented and developed and new IT skills and competences brought in, new organizational mindsets and new modes of thinking about data, information and knowledge must concomitantly be cultivated. Indeed, public managers and leaders are determined to develop a new kind of ‘data culture’ in their organization. This subproject dives into these ideas and attempts amongst top managers in Danish municipalities. It investigates the relation between management and data by zooming in on the different kinds of discussions, experiments and proto-typical set-ups that managers are engaged in these days, all geared towards rehearsing different ways of analyzing data and making them count as grounds for strategy and decision-making.
Project members: Post doc Lise Røjskjær Pedersen, Professor Brit Ross Winthereik, Associate Professor Christopher Gad
Research question: How does data become a management objective in the municipality? Partners: Danish municipalities
