The main reason why governments get involved in mobility platforms is that they see a relation with public values. These are values that ‘the public’ finds important enough to be secured by governments. Platforms may either secure these values or their establishing might threaten them. Public values are highly dynamic, because they are political. As a consequence, implementation is challenging, because it involves bureaucracy, investments and points of no return, which could be at odds with the dynamics of public values.
Key words: public values, implementation, dynamics, politics
Public values are those aspects that public entities, governments, have accepted they want to secure. The public values related to data platforms for mobility can vary. Obviously, it makes sense that mobility data platforms adopt the public values of mobility policies. Mobility policies generally find their basis in economy (to reduce congestion or to strengthen an urban core), health (to reduce NOx emissions or increase fitness), sustainability (reduce CO2 emissions) or livability (improve the quality of urban space or reduce special fragmentation through infrastructure).
Public values have got growing attention after the privatizations in the late 20th century. With a growing role of private companies in the delivery of public services, interest reemerged on those aspects that were at the core of public services, the values that public services should create. Also in the field of mobility, the role of private companies grew and driving their performance in line with the public values has been a major point of concern, with various instruments available to secure public values. It is to be expected that the same mechanisms would occur.
Public values are developed in interaction between government and the public, both through representation and advocacy. In representative bodies, parliaments, public values are often formulated in general terms: for instance “availability of transport services to all should be secured.” In bureaucracies, they often get the character of goals: for instance “in ten years everyone should have a bus stop at less than a 10-minute walk.” On the level of service delivery, they can get the character of a design rule: for example “the operator should provide a bus stop at maximum of 300 meters of each home.” So the public value is the same, the specificity varies. Obviously, in the interaction between government and the public, ideas about rights and obligations of citizens, and the principles of government play an important role (Bozeman 2007).
Public values can be secured by all kinds of means. They can be secured by means of technology, for example by realizing infrastructure to secure specific accessibility. Another way is securing public value by institutions, for example by laws that codify privacy standards, or by contract, for instance to secure service availability of a data center. All these instruments to secure public values have a different life span. Infrastructure can be there for centuries, laws for decades, contracts for years. This can be challenging, as the debate moves on and the prioritization of public values is changing continuously. After a major railway accident, safety is a key public value and often new securing instruments are demanded.
The idea sounds simple and ideal: in a political context public values are formulated and then later translated to specific actions. However, theory on public values identifies a series of dynamics that questions at least this simplicity (De Bruijn & Dicke 2006, Steenhuisen 2009).
First, as with subsidies for transport services, every instrument itself triggers new public values. For subsidies, it became clear that efficiency had to be secured. For data platforms, privacy obviously is a major public value that has to be secured. Moreover, because in the field of data, mobility platforms can align with public values in that field. Open data is an instrument that has been related to economic development and transparency. So, instruments that are implemented to secure public values trigger new policy cycles on other public values.
A second dynamic is about coordination issues from formulating public values to implementation. May and Wildavsky (1978) show how this coordination works in various policy cycles and various levels. We apply them to the issues around data platforms. Governments can use data platforms and collectivized apps to secure public values. A public data platform for mobility will be set up to secure those values that the political process has prioritized. The literature on public values shows the challenges that exist to deliver on those values. Like the need to translate the broad values coming from a political context to narrow indicators in a contractual context. This often leads to poor representation of the original values, as what is objectifiable and measurable takes priority over what is desirable. Was the original intent at considering budget for the platform better sustainability, the travel time gains might eventually be the driver at implementation.
A third dynamic is related to strategic behaviour at the bureaucracies and service providers. This may misalign the effect of the instrument, in our case the mobility data platform, with its original intent. A hypothetic example: a platform was aimed at improving the quality for pedestrians, but in the hands of the road agency, it was refocused on car traffic flow at traffic lights.
Finally, instruments and politics may develop at a different pace. Moreover, when public values are secured through an instrument, the design is often rather inflexible. This is problematic because public values are highly political and therefore dynamic. Political priorities – for instance anticipating or following elections or media attention – can change dramatically. For example, privacy has changed as a public value through the massive growth in the use of social media.
The key challenge of a data platform for mobility will be to keep align in implementation with the original public values and make its organization, governance, and institutions flexible enough to realign with future changes in the priorities in public values.