Wintersession 2025 Courses (January 3 – January 10) Maxwell-in-Washington

PAI 771 | Public Management of Technological Development | Sean O'Keefe

Intro Sessions - November 15, 2024 (2 p.m. - 5 p.m.)

Additional Sessions - January 24, 2025 (2 p.m. - 5 p.m.) and January 31, 2025 (2 p.m. - 5 p.m.)

This course provides a survey of major public policy influences on the formulation and implementation of commercial technology and innovation strategies.

The primary public influence of commercially developed technology and innovation is regulatory in nature, but also pertains to public financed contracts and grants managed by public agencies to support technology developments for application to public programs and services.  Government policy and statutory requirements can create the need for technology solutions or impede the development of others.  Similarly, the public sector can actively affect market opportunities through the promotion of specific policies and government sponsored programs, as well as the elimination of others.

Technology development offers public and private organizations new avenues to explore productivity enhancement and improved service delivery or increased profitability and market expansion which, in turn, leads to the imperative for innovation change. Successful technology strategies are closely linked to business strategies which match the organization’s existing capabilities or offer a road map to a new service or product developments.  To the extent there is an application or impact to public objectives, public policy and public management practices can either facilitate or deter market incentives to achieve the objectives.

The public sector is frequently both the consumer and regulator of technology advances.  For aspiring public managers, this course will examine the active and passive government influences, which can and have been exerted over technology and innovation management.  For aspiring business managers and technical professionals in engineering or information systems, this course will provide a perspective of the applications of public policy and public management practices and will offer constructive avenues on how government actions on behalf of the public may be anticipated.