Editor’s Note: The work of UC Berkeley Social Sciences faculty helps shape California public policy. In this series, learn more about their research and projects and how they resonate with state policymakers and address solutions to the most pressing issues facing California, from food access to homelessness.
UC Berkeley Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies Professor Alison Post uses her expertise on urban politics and policy to conduct research that highlights the importance of reducing barriers for small California public agencies and increasing transparency in public decision-making across California.
Post’s research addresses the adoption of “smart city” technologies in California, which are tools and systems that use various forms of data to make cities operate more efficiently and improve services. Her research focuses on the adoption of these technologies in the transportation and security sectors, which includes the examination of policing tools such as gunshot detection and transit technologies such as automated license plate readers.
The smart city research project, led by Professor Post, came together with the programmatic support of UC Berkeley’s Global Metropolitan Studies program and financial support of UC Berkeley’s Institute for Transportation Studies. The project is a collaboration between many UC Berkeley social scientists and engineers, including Political Science Ph.D. candidate Ishana Ratan; Sociology Ph.D. candidate Ángel Ross; Civil Engineering Professor Kenichi Soga; and Civil Engineering Ph.D. candidates Shih-Hung Chiu and Tianyu Han
Professor Post spoke to UC Berkeley Social Sciences about her research project and how it connects to California regional and state-level policy. This interview has been edited for clarity.
Can you talk about your research on the adoption of "smart city" technologies in California in the transportation and security sectors?
Alison Post: This project documents the adoption of “smart city” technologies by local governments and other service providers in California. “Smart city” technologies potentially allow cities, counties, infrastructure agencies and private service providers to manage their assets more effectively or sustainably and make services more accessible. They can also raise concerns about privacy and surveillance. Our ongoing data compilation effort tracks the acquisition of such technologies in the transportation and security sectors using a variety of techniques, including interviews, web-scraping, surveys and automated text analysis. The data is published in an interactive web portal. We are also analyzing the extent to which each of these data sources can contribute to our understanding of how local public agencies make decisions regarding whether to adopt new technologies.
What are some of the key developments in your research?
Alison Post: One might assume that voter concerns about crime would encourage the adoption of policing technologies like gunshot detection or that municipalities with higher Democratic vote shares would be more likely to adopt technologies intended to curb police brutality, such as body worn cameras. However, we find that adoption tends not to be correlated with the "problems" technologies are ostensibly designed to solve, like crime. Rather, across a range of technologies, larger agencies are more likely to adopt new "smart city" tech.
For example, transit agencies serving larger populations moved earlier to publish real-time transit data (also known as General Transit Feed Specification or GTFS) through Google Maps and other platforms than smaller agencies. Meanwhile, police agencies with larger numbers of sworn officers were more likely to adopt technologies as different as body worn cameras, automated license plate readers and drones. In the case of GTFS, medium-sized and smaller agencies have gradually caught up, with the assistance of their larger neighbors and state-level technical assistance programs.
Our findings suggest that technology adoption occurs mainly at the discretion of agency employees rather than in response to pressures from voters, even though voters may have opinions about their use. These findings are discussed in a few papers — one of which has been accepted for publication ("Studying Tech Adoption with 'Text-As-Data'"), while another is at the revise and resubmit stage.
Is there anything else you would like to highlight about your research?
Alison Post: As we compared the availability and quality of data on the adoption of "smart city" technologies, we found that the digitization of public meeting records in the form of minutes and video recordings has opened new possibilities for research on technology adoption, and local government processes more broadly.
For California transit agencies, meeting minutes and recordings are available for a much larger (and more representative) sample of agencies than is typically available through surveys of agencies. These digitized records constitute an amazing new resource for qualitative researchers as well as those interested in conducting quantitative text analysis.
How does your research connect to discussions about California public policy decisions at the local or state level?
Alison Post: Our research underscores the importance of state-level and regional technical assistance programs for smaller public agencies. For example, the widespread diffusion of real time transit information publication (GTFS) across almost all agencies in California was supported in recent years by the state's California Integrated Travel Project (CAL-ITP) program. Barriers typically encountered by small agencies, such as staffing constraints and difficulties with procurement, can be reduced through such programs.
Our research also connects to discussions about transparency in public decision-making in the state. By collecting and publishing data on the adoption of "smart city" technologies in the state and allowing users to observe visual patterns and correlations through our web portal, we aim to make government decision-making about tech adoption more transparent to members of the public.