The Organizational Dynamics of State Data Production

• In Event: Law and Politics in Contemporary Latin America

Abstract

This paper examines how agency problems within national and local governments affect the quality of state data and its use in policymaking. Much administrative data across contexts is collected by central government agency requests to decentralized governments for information/data for use in policymaking. In collaboration with a national government agency in Colombia, I examine organizational dynamics associated with the collection, reporting, and use of data within both decentralized governments and the central government partner agency itself. In the context of a nationwide administrative data collection effort, I measure how communication between bureaucrats and politicians within local governments changes the data reported to the national government by embedding a randomized encouragement design in the data collection process. The encouragement design increases levels of communication between local bureaucrats and politicians within local governments. I show this communication affects bureaucrats' certainty about as well as the accuracy and content of the reported data. I then use participant observation and semi-structured interviews to document how the resultant data is processed and used by the national government partner to inform the targeting of social policies. Both components demonstrate that agency problems within bureaucracies shape the production and use of administrative data. These findings illuminate the political processes underlying state information and data.

Author

• Tara L Slough, New York University