A Public Technology Option

Authors

Hannah Bloch-Wehba, Texas A&M University School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2023

Journal Title

Law & Contemporary Problems

ISSN

0023-9186

Abstract

Private technology increasingly underpins public governance. But the state’s growing reliance on private firms to provide a variety of complex technological products and services for public purposes brings significant costs for transparency: new forms of governance are becoming less visible and less amenable to democratic control. Transparency obligations initially designed for public agencies are a poor fit for private vendors that adhere to a very different set of expectations.

Aligning the use of technology in public governance with democratic values calls for rethinking, and in some cases abandoning, the legal structures and doctrinal commitments that insulate private vendors from meaningful transparency and accountability requirements. This Article offers three suggestions to achieve this realignment: reducing protections for trade secrecy, enhancing whistleblower protections, and developing a “public option” to compete with private domination.

First Page

223

Last Page

255

Num Pages

33

Volume Number

86

Issue Number

3

Publisher

Duke University School of Law

Recommended Citation

Hannah Bloch-Wehba, A Public Technology Option, 86 Law & Contemp. Probs. 223 (2023).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/1972

File Type

PDF