Ines Mergel

Human-Centricity in Digital Delivery: Enhancing Agile Governance

Submitted by on Thu, 10/06/2022 - 09:00

In this report, the author discusses how digital service teams bring “service designers” into government to transform service delivery. These designers use human-centered design approaches to help public sector organizations refine strategies, rethink the nature of services, and reflect the way that citizens want to use a public service.

Ines Mergel

Submitted by on Sun, 04/29/2018 - 16:10

Professor Dr. Ines Mergel is Full Professor of Public Administration at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz, Germany. From 2008 to 2016, Professor Mergel served as Assistant and Associate Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, in Syracuse, NY.  She was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Program of Networked Governance, and at the National Center for Digital Government.

Digital Service Teams: Challenges and Recommendations for Government

Submitted by on Wed, 05/31/2017 - 08:52

The British government successfully pioneered the use of a national, semi-independent “surge team” to tackle large-scale technology-driven challenges facing it. The U.S. federal government adapted this approach to improve the success of its own operations in 2014, titling its top-level team as the “U.S. Digital Service.”  It then created a small internal software development and service organization, dubbed “18F,” to support both USDS and individual agencies.  And individual agencies are creating their own internal digital service teams, as well.

The Social Intranet: Insights on Managing and Sharing Knowledge Internally

Submitted by on Tue, 03/22/2016 - 09:09

While much of the federal government lags behind, some agencies are pioneers in the internal use of social media tools.  What lessons and effective practices do they have to offer other agencies?

A Manager’s Guide to Designing a Social Media Strategy

Submitted by on Thu, 08/23/2012 - 11:47

The 2009 White House Open Government Directive requires all federal government agencies to “open new forms of communication between government and the people.” In response, agencies quickly adopted a wide range of social media platforms, such as blogs, wikis, webcasts, and social networking sites, that have become popular channels to increase participation, transparency and collaboration of government agencies with the public. However, there were few government-wide standards. In June 2011, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)

Working the Network: A Manager’s Guide for Using Twitter in Government

Submitted by on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 09:36

Like many technological tools, Twitter does not come with an instruction manual. To help both government executives who must decide whether Twitter is a useful tool for their organizations and frontline managers who will create and administer the Twitter account, Ines Mergel has written this guide, detailing the benefits - and risks - of hosting a Twitter feed, as well as the specifics on how to maintain a Twitter feed to achieve optimum results.

Using Wikis in Government: A Guide for Public Managers

Submitted by on Mon, 05/23/2011 - 01:53

Public leaders face the challenge of finding ways to bridge silos in their organizations. In this report, Dr. Mergel examines one tool that can help them do this—Wikis. Many of us are familiar with Wikipedia, which relies on thousands of active contributors who share their knowledge freely on a dazzling breadth of topics, with an accuracy rate rivaling that of traditional encyclopedias.

Professor, Public Administration
University of Konstanz, Germany
Department of Politics and Public Administration
Universitätsstr. 10, Mailbox 91 | Room D 234
Konstanz, Germany, 78464
United States
+49 7531 - 88 3553

ines.mergel@uni-konstanz.de

Professor Dr. Ines Mergel is Full Professor of Public Administration at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz, Germany. From 2008 to 2016, Professor Mergel served as Assistant and Associate Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, in Syracuse, NY.  She was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Program of Networked Governance, and at the National Center for Digital Government. Professor Mergel teaches courses on innovation management and especially new technology management in the public sector. Her research interest focuses on the adoption and affordance of new technologies in the public sector.

A native of Germany, Professor Mergel received a BA and MBA equivalent in business economics from the University of Kassel, Germany. She received a Doctor of Business Administration in information management from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and spent six years as pre- and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she conducted research on public managers’ informal social networks and their use of technology to share knowledge.

Professor Mergel’s work has been published in, among others, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, Public Management Review, American Review of Public Administration, Journal of Public Affairs Education, International Public Management Journal and Government Information Quarterly. She serves as Associate Editor of Government Information Quarterly.

Her books, Social Media in the Public Sector: A Guide to Participation, Transparency and Collaboration in the Networked World and Social Media in the Public Sector Field Guide: Designing and Implementing Strategies and Policies, were published in 2012 with Jossey-Bass/Wiley. The IBM Center has published four previous reports by Dr. Mergel: Working the Network: A Manager’s Guide for Using Twitter in Government, Using Wikis in Government: A Guide for Public Managers, A Manager’s Guide to Assessing the Impact of Government Social Media Interactions, and The Social Intranet: Insights on Managing and Sharing Knowledge Internally.