Information Technology, Organization, and Productivity in the Public Sector: Evidence from Police Departments

We examine how information technology (IT) contributes to organizational change, labor demand, and improved productivity in the public sector using a new panel data set of police departments covering 1987-2003. While IT adoption is associated with increased administrative and organizational complexity and use of more highly educated officers, IT itself does not appear to enhance crimefighting effectiveness. These results are robust to various methods for controlling for agency-level characteristics and the endogeneity of IT use. IT investments do, however, appear to improve police productivity when complemented with particular management practices–in this case, those associated with the Compstat program. JEL Classification: L23, M5, O33, K42 ∗Garicano thanks the Toulouse Network for Information Technology (TNIT) and Heaton the National Consortium on Violence Research (NCOVR) for financial support. We also thank Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, Austan Goolsbee, Robert Topel, and Toulouse Network members for their comments. All opinions expressed in the paper are solely those of the authors and not the aforementioned organizations. The authors can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].