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 paneldata set of police departments covering 1987-2003. While IT adoption is associatedwith increased administrative and organizational complexity and useof more highly educated officers, IT itself does not appear to enhance crimefightingeffectiveness. These results are robust to various methods for controllingfor agency-level characteristics and the endogeneity of IT use. IT investments do,however, appear to improve police productivity when complemented with particularmanagement practices–in this case, those associated with the Compstatprogram.[...]