Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Aug 14

🤓 Take a look at our co-authored article with lead author Juliane Schmeling on "Data collaboration in digital government research: A literature review and research agenda" published in Government Information Quarterly: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Data collaboration in digital government research: A literature review and research agenda

Sovereign data infrastructures are a central building block of the European Data Strategy, yet little is known about how public administrations share …

www.sciencedirect.com

Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Jul 10

Candidates’ explanatory style – how they attributed causes to bad events – predicted election outcomes.

Optimism predicted Trump’s victory: explanatory style during the 2024 presidential campaign

Candidates’ explanatory style – how they attributed causes to bad events – predicted election outcomes. We analyzed causal explanations from the 2024 presidential campaign using Content Analysis of...

www.tandfonline.com

Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Jul 1

The next step in dismanteling science: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Trump team axes contracts with publishing giant Springer Nature

The action comes as high-ranking US officials criticize top journals as ‘woke’ and ‘corrupt’.

www.nature.com

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Jun 26

A.I. Is Starting to Wear Down Democracy www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/t...

A.I. Is Starting to Wear Down Democracy

www.nytimes.com

Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Jun 26

Not surprising:

www.npr.org/2025/06/02/n...

Former DOGE engineer says federal waste and fraud were 'relatively nonexistent'

NPR's Juana Summers talks with Sahil Lavingia, who worked for the Department of Government Efficiency as a software engineer assigned to the Department of Veterans Affairs, about his experience.

www.npr.org

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Jun 5

✨ Our new paper, co-authored with Noella Edelmann and Nathalie Haug, was just published in the journal Digital Government: Research and Practice: "Outcomes of Value Co-Creation and Co-Destruction in the Digital Transformation of Public Services." ✨

🆓 Read it here: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Outcomes of Value Co-Creation and Co-Destruction in the Digital Transformation of Public Services | Digital Government: Research and Practice

Transforming public services from an analog to a digital delivery mode is generally assumed to have positive effects. Most recently, these transformations include the co-creation of newly designed dig...

dl.acm.org

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · May 26

There are elections next week.

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Apr 15

Our paper "Digitally-induced change in the public sector: a systematic review and research agenda" was the top-cited article in Public Management Review.

You can read it here open access: lnkd.in/eTbE-MSj

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Mar 22

Le sigh... 🫣

Adam Grant @adamgrant.bsky.social · Mar 22

63 studies: women who assert their ideas, make direct requests, and advocate for themselves are liked less.

They're also less likely to get hired—and it hasn't improved over time.

When will we stop punishing women for violating outdated gender stereotypes?

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Reposted by Ines Mergel

Mark Cuban @mcuban.bsky.social · Mar 2

If you worked for 18F and got fired, Group together to start a consulting company.

It’s just a matter of time before DOGE needs you to fix the mess they inevitably create.

They will have to hire your company as a contractor to fix it. But on your terms.

I’m happy to invest and/or help

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Reposted by Ines Mergel

Waldo Jaquith @waldo.net · Mar 1

18F, the federal government’s technology shop, was just demolished by Musk’s team. It was a cost-recoverable org, charging agencies for their expertise, using a consulting model. Its cost to government was negligible, its benefits huge. My team there once saved DoD $500 million.

A thread about 18F:

Waldo Jaquith @waldo.net · Mar 1

18F is *precisely* what Musk and team claim should exist within government. But when his team found it, they destroyed it, because it is evidence that government works well (can’t have that!), and because like Zelensky, 18F didn’t bend the knee.

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Reposted by Ines Mergel

Alt18F @alt18f.bsky.social · Mar 1

18F was doing exactly the type of work that DOGE claims to want – yet we were eliminated shortly after midnight. Read our letter to the American people:
18f.org

We're not done yet | 18F

18f.org

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Feb 28

❤️ A very special thank you goes to Jessica Sowa, a brilliant scholar and world-class editor at PPMG who takes on tasks that go so far beyond what you might expect from an editor. She makes academia a kind place and is deeply invested in the articles she helps to move forward in the process.

Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Feb 28

We use the theoretical framework of co-production to highlight who is involved in which phase. Based on the empirical evidence, we advance our conceptual understanding of what co-production looks like when it comes to digital public services (instead of analog public service co-production).

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Feb 28

❗ In this article, we interviewed digital transformation experts who explained to us how they proceed to implement digital public services.

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Feb 28

New article alert 🤓

"Co-Production Phases in the Development and Implementation of Digital Public Services," co-authored with Noella Edelmann and Nathalie Haug

Now published in Oxford University's Perspectives on Public Management and Governance journal: doi.org/10.1093/ppmg...

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Feb 24

Website to track firing of federal employees in the US: trumpcostsamerica.com?fbclid=IwY2x...

Trump Costs America

Highlighting the real people whose lives have been ruined, the good American jobs that are being destroyed, and the important public goods being lost.

trumpcostsamerica.com

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Feb 23

Not Incentivized Yet Efficient: Working From Home in the Public Sector: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Feb 12

Why not help out? 🇩🇰

denmarkification.com

Help Denmark Buy California – Because Why Not?

Buy it from Trump, the bigliest crowdsourcing ever

denmarkification.com

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Jan 28

openai.com/global-affai...

Introducing ChatGPT Gov

ChatGPT Gov is designed to streamline government agencies’ access to OpenAI’s frontier models.

openai.com

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Reposted by Ines Mergel

Will Oremus @willoremus.com · Jan 23

I talked with three experts on government efficiency about DOGE taking over the Obama-era US Digital Service, including its co-founder @pahlkadot.bsky.social. They all said Elon Musk has a rare opportunity to make government work better. And they all worried he might blow it. wapo.st/4jHi3s3

Analysis | How DOGE could succeed — or fail miserably

Government efficiency experts say Elon Musk has a chance to build on what the U.S. Digital Service accomplished — or ruin it.

wapo.st

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Jan 22

DOGE will take over the US Digital Service - effectively destabilizing its integration into the bureaucracy given that DOGE itself is only a temporary organization: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/u...

How Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency Will Work

The structure and goals of the cost-cutting effort have changed over the past 10 weeks. Here’s how.

www.nytimes.com

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Jan 6

Sad loss to the community of public management researchers :(

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · Jan 6

I was lucky enough to chair the Gaus award committee in the year Hood won, and we offered a decent summary of his amazing career. His first book was in 1976, and continued to produce excellent work for the next 45 years or so. politicalsciencenow.com/christopher-...

Christopher Hood Receives the 2021 John Gaus Award -

The John Gaus Award is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor a lifetime of exemplary scholarship in the joint tradition of political science and public administration. Christopher Hood (www.christopherhood.net), a baby boomer and the first of [...]

politicalsciencenow.com

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Ines Mergel @inesmergel.bsky.social · Dec 30

Hello editors, what can we do to make our academic content more accessible? We need to write in plain language, avoid wild abbreviations, explain better/easier than convoluted language, maybe put the research design into an appendix, and get right to the core of the findings.

Academic writing is getting harder to read—the humanities most of all

We analyse two centuries of scholarly work

www.economist.com

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Reposted by Ines Mergel

David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · Dec 30

Not only keep them out of evaluations, but stop entirely. Do not use.

Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · Dec 30

Did you see this experiment my colleague Kristina conducted not just at my university but *in my department*? She and the male instructor assumed eachothers’ names for an online course: and the difference in feedback they received was horrifying.

Student Evaluations Can’t Be Used to Assess Professors. They’re Discriminatory.

And that means they’re illegal.

slate.com

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