I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY).
My research focuses broadly on the intersection of public and nonprofit management, science and technology policy, and social equity. I am interested in understanding and improving the ways that public and nonprofit organizations use data and evidence, design thinking, and digital technologies to solve problems and engage diverse communities.
Recently, my project, “User Experience (UX) Design and Digital Citizen-State Interactions,” was awarded the Paul Volcker Junior Scholar Grant from the American Political Science Association’s Public Administration Section. Drawing on the study and practice of user experience (UX) design, cognitive and behavioral science, and public management principles, my goal is to understand the ways that citizens interact with government agencies in digital environments (e.g., websites, open data portals, social media, chatbots, and virtual assistants, etc.) and the role of UX design principles in enhancing those interactions in ways that increase engagement, reduce administrative burdens and improve digital equity and inclusion. I plan to use a series of both survey and laboratory experiments to develop a more holistic understanding of an individual’s digital experience and the affective, behavioral, and cognitive factors that shape it.
Similarly, I am also interested in exploring the “dark side” of user-centered design across different public service domains (i.e., datafication of citizens, commodification of citizens as data, algorithmic reductionism, etc.) and have recently begun to explore some of the design conflicts and design paradoxes that may exist in these contexts, including the inevitable tradeoffs they result in.
I am also currently working on a handful of projects related to the adoption and implementation of AI and algorithmic decision-making systems in the public sector. Topics include transparency and explainability of AI and algorithmic decision-making systems, contestability of untrustworthy algorithmic decisions, pathways to accountability, and the role of public procurement in AI adoption and implementation in the public sector.
See my published research here: Google Scholar
Selected Research Talks
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Civic Tech: The European Perspective
Presentation given at the pre-conference workshop “Civic Tech, Administrative Burdens and Public Management” I co-organized for the 2024 Public Management Research Conference (Seattle, Washington). The talk has now evolved into a working paper on the differences between civic tech in the European context compared to the U.S. and the potential drivers of those differences.
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Contesting Untrustworthy Algorithms in the Public Sector: The Role of Algorithmic Explainability
Presentation of research in progress to the Public Values research group at VU Amsterdam. Our research uses two pre-registered survey experiments to test the effect of algorithmic explainability (XAI) on individuals’ understanding of algorithmic decisions and their ability to detect algorithmic errors to understand how people make sense of inherently untrustworthy algorithmic systems and to what degree XAI can aid in contestability of flawed algorithmic decisions.
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What Do You Meme? Understanding Meme-Centric Public Communication Strategies and Citizen Responses
Presentation of research in progress given at the International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM) Conference in Tampere, Finland in April 2024. This mixed-methods research examines U.S. government agencies at the local, state, and federal levels that are engaging in a unique social media strategy that leverages memes, pop culture, and internet “speak” to engage audiences. The strategies are, by all accounts, creative, experimental, and probably not what one would expect from a government social media account, but many have experienced social media success (e.g., gone “viral”). Yet, little is known about the impact of these non-traditional accounts beyond social media metrics. To address this, we will use a series of survey experiments to test the effects of the strategies we identified in our qualitative analysis of the social media data on outcomes such as trustworthiness, credibility, and reputation.
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UX Design Principles & Digital Citizen-State Interactions
B&P Research Seminar presentation on the conceptual framework I’ve built linking UX design principles to citizen-state interactions in the digital environment and applying it to the case of the Biden-Harris President’s Management Agenda and its emphasis on transforming the federal customer experience.
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Communicating the Evidence: Understanding Individual-Level Responses to Increased Transparency of the Evidence in Evidence-Informed Policies
Rockefeller Brown Bag presentation (February 2024) of a working paper on communication strategies for how governments can more effectively communicate evidence to the public in ways that promote understanding and support for the policies the evidence informs.
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Open Data and Usability
I presented descriptive results from my study on open government data portals and usability attributes at the International Conference on Open Data (November 30, 2022).