Making good decisions first requires that good information is available. Managing information means getting the right information to the right person at the right time. This is a difficult problem and too often regarded as a “black box” to be avoided or ignored because it is too complex or too difficult to understand. If we are to fulfill the promise of making government work better, however, we need to realize that in many cases government is mostly about processing information and making decisions using information. Opening up that black box and seeing how all the parts do work together, and how they should work together, requires understanding the intersection of law, technology, management and policy information.
Dr. David Landsbergen’s previous work has focused on integrating information systems so that they are interoperable; making information systems secure and trustworthy; identifying best policy and managerial practices for open source software; providing recommendations on how to improve the standards-setting process; and designing policies and systems that protect privacy and improve public records access. As a John Glenn Scholar, he helped develop a Central Ohio response to the Digital Divide.
Recently completed work includes a “Social Media Prototype Evaluation: Policy, Strategy and Best Practices” for the City of Columbus. He was also the principal investigator on “Modernizing Ohio’s Public Benefits and Job Assistance Programs: Benefits, Costs and Implementation Issues,” a project funded by the Living Cities Foundation.
Currently, Landsbergen is working with a regional consortium of 12 local governments on how to successfully utilize social media. A second project is examining an integrated legal, policy and managerial approach to managing social media as public records.
Landsbergen has published in a number of journals including: Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, IEEE Transactions, Communications of the ACM, and Government Information Quarterly.
Landsbergen earned his juris doctor degree from the College of Law and a doctorate from the Maxwell School, both at Syracuse University.
This commentary is intended as an addendum and recent update to the original research article published in World Affairs, “The High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Unusual Institutional Arrangement of a Non-Authoritarian, yet Controlled, Democracy”