Public Integrity

ISSN: 1099-9922 (Print) 1558-0989 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mpin20

Beneficence and the Expert Bureaucracy

Ethics for the Future of Big Data Governance

Sara R. Jordan

To cite this article: Sara R. Jordan (2014) Beneficence and the Expert Bureaucracy, Public
Integrity, 16:4, 375-394

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.2753/PIN1099-9922160404

Published online: 07 Dec 2014.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 308

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 2 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=mpin20
 Beneficence
and the Expert
Bureaucracy
Ethics for the Future of
Big Data Governance
SARA R. JORDAN

Abstract
The future of public administration lies in its ethical knowledge work and expertise.
Government knowledge in years ahead will rely on Big Data research and analy-
sis. Given the strong role that data analytics will play, three principles of research
ethics—beneficence, precaution, and refinement—are arguably the ideal ethical
principles for the future.

Keywords: beneficence, Big Data, governance, precaution, refinement, research

ethics
Intelligence agencies cannot function without secrecy, which makes
their work less subject to public debate. Yet there is an inevitable bias
not only within the intelligence community, but among all who are
responsible for national security, to collect more information about the
world, not less. So in the absence of institutional requirements for regular
debate—and oversight that is public, as well as private—the danger of
government overreach becomes more acute. This is particularly true
when surveillance technology and our reliance on digital information is
evolving much faster than our laws. (President Barack Obama, January
17, 2014; emphasis added)

The expectation that government will serve as a repository for expert knowledge
and evidence-based expert decision-making has increased since Public Integrity
published its inaugural issue. Today, citizens expect that government agencies, from
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to local police departments, will provide
expertly gathered information freely and with minimal barriers to its use. The public
also expects that bureaucracies will use information wisely to beneficently protect
the nation from nefarious external actors or internal threats.

Public Integrity, Fall 2014, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 375–394.

© 2014 ASPA. Permissions: www.copyright.com
ISSN 1099–9922 (print)/ISSN 1558–0989 (online)
DOI: 10.2753/PIN1099-9922160404
 Sara R. Jordan

A cursory perusal of the news stories that dominated the beginning of 2014
shows the tension inherent in public expectations of the uses of data and informa-
tion technology. People cried out for large retail firms like Target and Neiman
Marcus and the attorneys general of their states to “do something” to rectify data
breaches due to hacking, and at the same time recoiled in horror at the revelation
that the National Security Administration (NSA) engages in what appears to be
indiscriminate worldwide gathering of text message data (Ball 2014; Finkle 2014;
Prah 2014). The demand for government to intervene to block criminal challenges
to the “data integrity” of individuals,1 coupled
with demands that government minimize its
gathering and use of individuals’ publicly or
“How ought government protect the
privately traded data (e.g., Facebook and text
public against the use of their data but messages), introduces a complex problem
also protect the public through use of for officials. The problem is neatly summa-
their data?” rized in the following question: How ought
government protect the public against the
use of their data but also protect the public
through use of their data? This is the heart of the conundrum that government faces
as it attempts to leverage the technological innovation of Big Data, already widely
adopted by private organizations, such as Amazon.com and even Target stores
(Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier 2013; Sathi 2013; Siegel 2013).
Yet the important questions about Big Data are likely to be ethical, not technical.
When we ask what the government is obligated to do to protect the public through
the use of data, it is essential to understand that this question is an ethical one related
to beliefs about the relationship between government expertise, analytic techniques,
individual privacy, and public interest values. Given this, the purpose of the present
article is to answer the question of how the government can ethically use Big Data
analytics tools to protect the public against threats without at the same time, through
its use of these tools, threatening ethical values.
Anecdotes and rigorous analysis by social scientific researchers suggest that
trust in government, whether in general or in respect to the information government
reveals about itself, is declining (Chanley, Rudolph, and Rahn 2000; Tolbert and
Mossberger 2006). The paucity of public trust is most certainly related to the scale
and magnitude of current scandals like the exposure of U.S. communication data
sweeps like PRISM or DISHFIRE, but it is also likely to be related to the govern-
ment’s inattention to the identification or public discussion of ethical principles
for guiding the use of individual information in government decision-making
(Ball 2014). As the U.S. government lurches from one data-gathering or data-use
scandal to the next, there has been little discussion, scholarly or popular, of what
the government should do to police itself against future assaults on individual
data integrity.Larsen and Milakovich (2005), and other scholars, have described
and prescribed ideal management techniques for e-government, but they do not
attend directly to the ethics of electronic governance expertise.2 The lag in the
analysis of the ethics of governmental knowledge work, including information
technology development, is lamentable. In light of the recent scandals (which
threaten to be commonplace through the revelations of Edward Snowden), it is
reasonable to expect a groundswell of concern to establish regulations to guide
administrators into the data-driven future, whether they are public officials, gov-

376 s PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014

 Beneficence and the Expert Bureaucracy

ernment contractors, or employees of nongovernmental entities reporting data to

government organizations.
The data-driven future comes on the heels of the hollowing out of the state
under the auspices of New Public Management. The relocation of governmental
expert functions outside the state apparatus did not decrease the importance of
expertise for governmental decision-making. While nongovernmental actors, such
as nonprofit citizen-action groups, universities, hospitals, and for-profit ventures,
provide critical information services, it is
the role of the government to superintend
the information revolution. As superinten-
“As superintendents of the data that
dents of the data that drive governmental
decision-making, government employees drive governmental decision-making,
at the local, state, and national levels must government employees at the local,
make value choices about the content, pre- state, and national levels must make
sentation, security, and use of information value choices about the content,
for the provision or denial of public services.
presentation, security, and use of
Leaving aside for the moment the technical
issues of managing decentralized expertise, information for the provision or denial
the important question for the state in regard of public services.”
to the accumulation and use of individuals’
data for governmental purposes is an ethi-
cal one: How can the government be an ethical guardian of the vast quantities
of information it gathers both directly and indirectly? If the issue of managing
decentralized expertise is accounted for, then the following additional question
should be added to consideration of the larger problem: What ethical commitments
ought a bureaucracy to demand of itself and its contractors in the production of
knowledge for policy decision-making purposes?
This article seeks to start the conversation about the appropriate ethical principles
for government use of large-scale data-gathering exercises (e.g., for Big Data) by
positing a set of ethical commitments (which have precedent in the regulations gov-
erning the production of knowledge through research funded by the government). As
will be elaborated below, the principles that should apply for government knowledge
work are beneficence, refinement (of methods), and precaution.

What Is Big Data? How Does Government Use It?

Like cloud computing, massively parallel processing, search engine optimization,
and other technology-infused terms, Big Data is as much a buzz word as a promis-
ing tool for improving people’s lives and livelihoods. Confusion over the meaning
and purpose of Big Data analytics adds to the seemingly faddish nature of the Big
Data revolution. Clearing up what Big Data is and is not can help both scholars and
government workers charged with using Big Data to understand the role of this new
version of an old tool.
Among the many definitions of Big Data, Berman’s (2013) is most useful here:
Big Data is defined by the three V’s: 1. Volume—large amounts of data; 2.
Variety—the data comes in different forms including traditional databases,
images, documents and complex records; 3. Velocity—the content of the data is
constantly changing, through the absorption of complementary data collection,

PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014 s 377

 Sara R. Jordan

through the introduction of previously archived data or legacy collections, and

from streamed data arriving from multiple sources. (p. xx)
But Big Data is also value added from existing data repositories, won from the work
of those who bring it together.
Quite simply put, Big Data is the for-purpose construction and analysis of large,
complex, and highly disaggregated databases by tools designed to effectively mine
through masses of noisy, dynamic, rapidly
evolving data. In discussions of Big Data,
“Big Data is the for-purpose the inputs into Big Data aggregates can be
construction and analysis of large, traditional quantified statements of a phe-
complex, and highly disaggregated nomenon (e.g., representation of a “strongly
agree” survey answer as 5 on a Likert scale)
databases by tools designed to
or they can be the “datified” representation
effectively mine through masses of of any number of images, texts, phrases,
noisy, dynamic, rapidly evolving data.” transactions, locations, actions, or even
bodies. But Big Data is also the analytical
tools (e.g., machine-learning algorithms)
that capture and “use” these bytes to produce an end-product, such as through data
visualization.
The personnel who make the decisions that establish the purposive nature of a Big
Data exercise should not be forgotten. Big Data is an object, processes, and person-
nel. It does not exist without a database somewhere (although the location is likely
to be virtual). It also does not exist as a static entity. Its databases are a managed
amalgamation of multiple preexisting and simultaneously updated databases. Like
cloud computing analysis—which uses the analytic capacities of multiple servers
to perform large-scale analyses that cannot be done on a single server bank, or that
clients prefer to be performed or available in multiple disaggregated locations—Big
Data is a managed unity of parts. And it only “exists” insofar as it is the product of
discrete actions on the part of integrated technical and managerial processes.
Technically, half of Big Data exists when the architecture to support the unification
of disaggregated data sources is constructed and maintained. Big Data architecture
includes data-capture and curation programs that synchronize with long-term (ar-
chival), medium-term (infrequent analysis), and immediate-term (frequent analysis)
storage units. The other half of Big Data consists of the personnel who make the
essential decisions determining what to capture, search, share, analyze, or present.
Among the many persons who make up the managerial structure of Big Data, those
responsible for building, cleaning, maintaining, and analyzing the gathered data play
an essential role in shaping the technical and object body of Big Data. That is, data
architects determine how, when, and why variables are imported, cleaned, and pre-
sented; the individuals behind the data are essential to determine the “Bigness” and
usefulness of the data object. Consequently, the selection of individuals—resolution
of the problems of human resources and Big Data—is an essential component of
Big Data management.
Given the promise of Big Data to help managers make decisions, governments,
publicly traded companies, small businesses, university researchers, and a litany of
others are interested in harnessing its potential power. However, the organizational
drive to engage in the Big Data revolution must be measured against the desires of
individuals to protect their individual rights to personal and decisional privacy, and

378 s PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014

 Beneficence and the Expert Bureaucracy

also against the imperative of organizational competition to overpromise on the

rise of a new technology. Particularly in the context of government engagement in
Big Data gathering and analytics, the “tension that results when the interests of the
data holders conflict with the interests of the data subjects” must be kept in mind
(Berman 2013, p. 197). This tension exposes an open question about the intent of
data holders to benefit their data subjects.
The pressure to use Big Data in beneficent ways has already been expressed in
presidential and agency-level initiatives to promote Big Data use. In early 2012,
the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced the “Big
Data Research and Development Initiative” to incentivize federal departments and
agencies to improve their “ability to extract knowledge and insights from large and
complex collections of digital data” (Kalil 2012, p. 1). The White House initiative
promised that Big Data initiatives would “help accelerate the pace of discovery in
science and engineering, strengthen our national security, and transform teaching
and learning” (p. 1) The purpose of the initiative is to bring together data scientists
(Konkel 2013b) in order to give federal agencies the power to extract, systematize,
and analyze petabytes and more of the rapidly evolving and accumulating data in
order to provide “important societal benefits—from empowering consumers with
the full landscape of information they need to make optimal energy decisions; to
enabling civil engineers to monitor and identify at-risk infrastructure; to informing
more accurate predictions of natural disasters; and more” (Kalil and Zhao 2013).
In these discussions and the policy-making for production and management of
Big Data for agencies, there is a continuing emphasis on the beneficent outcomes
(or “societal benefits”) of Big Data analysis. This focus on future societal benefits,
however, must be combined with a stronger concern for principled, beneficent
practice in the use of Big Data.

Current trends in the Big Data field would suggest that the next several decades
will be marked by abuses. Societal effects will be, in many cases, detrimental.
Those who stand to benefit most from Big Data will be the powers that create
and control the resources: corporations, data brokers, and governments. Many
of the best things to come from Big Data are long-term goals: personalized
medicine, complete and accurate electronic medical records, crime prevention,
and error reduction in industry, effective system safety protocols, global resource
management, rational food distribution, and universal human rights. The greatest
benefits from Big Data will fall upon a population that has not yet been born.
(Berman 2013, p. 226)

The obligations that we, as constitutive of both governors and governed, have
to future generations are similar in content to what we owe each other at present.
“Obligations to future generations are essentially an obligation to produce—or to
attempt to produce—a desirable state of affairs for the community of the future,
to promote conditions of good living for future generations” (Golding 1972, p.
86). Philosophical analysis of the problem of obligations to future generations
would define our obligation as of the kind where the future has a presumptive
right to make a claim against us for our present actions taken strictly to benefit
ourselves. Future generations, logically and temporally, may not be able to press
a claim against our self-interested actions, but if the future were somehow made
present, then its claim against us would stand as a block against our being able

PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014 s 379

Sara R. Jordan

to act without incurring moral culpability. In the case of the obligations of our
generation of governors to future recipients of programs crafted based upon Big
Data analytics, the obligation is to protect from harm and to create better out-
comes than would otherwise come to pass. While Big Data seems promising as a
solution to “wicked problems” in business and government, as Davis (2012) and
boyd and Crawford (2012) point out, the gathering and use of Big Data presents
ethical problems, not only for the privacy and data integrity of the individuals
whose data are used, but for the ethical integrity of the data analysts.

Responsible and Beneficent Risk Taking

The promise of societal benefits from Big Data analysis suggests a limitless trove of
progress.3 Yet substantial risks abound. The promise of Big Data includes protection
from unseen threats, such as acts of terrorism or outbreaks of infectious disease. In
his press conference on the review of U.S. intelligence programs, President Obama
referred to the ability of such programs to find “an email between two terrorists
in the Sahel” (Office of the Press Secretary 2014). Programs that mine email are
based upon Big Data analytics platforms, such as massively parallel processing of
unstructured data using Hadoop or related open-source mining software, that combine
vast amounts of high-volume, high-velocity communications data from the existing
customer-use databases of multiple mobile information providers. These are the same
Big Data architectural principles that allow Google or Yahoo to perform efficient
searches or the Centers for Disease Control to collaboratively mine social media
and search engine data to identify influenza or other disease outbreaks (Sathi 2013,
pp. 31–60). The benefits to individuals from harm prevention, whether victimization
in a terrorist attack or infection with a problematic strain of influenza, are obvious.
However, the risks are also clear.
Most obvious are the risks to individuals’ data integrity and privacy. Other risks
include the breakdown in citizens’ public trust in government or the public trust of
one government in another (Barkin 2014). As revealed in the leaked documents pro-
vided to The Guardian, a British media outlet, the PRISM and DISHFIRE programs
routinely and “indiscriminately” gather phone, email, Internet traffic, and email data
in order to achieve aims that range from specified “foreign intelligence targets” to
“unselected SMS [text messaging] traffic” to the phone traffic of diplomats and heads
of state, such as Angela Merkel. Indiscriminate or even apparently indiscriminate
collection of data threatens the public trust by raising the possibility that a govern-
ment that knows more about us than we do about ourselves could perpetrate acts
that we would not wish or will upon ourselves.
Beneficence and its intermediate-range ethical principles, precaution and re-
finement, are illustrated in Figure 1. The discussion that follows outlines how a
commitment to the overall value of these principles can ensure that the move from
small-data Big Government to Big Data governance is not dogged by the pitfall of
harm to citizens.

Basic Concepts of Ethics for Big Data

Conceptual befuddlement is a notable problem for many fields of social science,
including public administration research and teaching. Problems of conceptual clarity

380 s PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014

 Beneficence and the Expert Bureaucracy

Figure 1
Beneficence, Precaution, and Refinement

slow the progress of research, whether theoretical or empirical, as readers struggle

to understand what they have read and then apply it to new problems large or small.
Although full attention to the issue of conceptual clarification is beyond the reach of
this article, the matter is addressed here head-on by offering working definitions of
certain essential concepts—beneficence, refinement, precaution, expertise, knowl-
edge, and “inherently governmental”—before seeking to apply these concepts to
a multidimensional problem of current import, the use of Big Data analytics tools
and analysis in American government practice.

Beneficence
Beneficence, or the mandate to maximize the good while minimizing harms, com-
pels scientific or governmental knowledge producers to question the public utility
of their research question, the risk-benefit ratios of their methods, and the utility of
the communication of their results. Beneficence is an applied philosophical principle
guiding behavior that benefits others irrespective of the benefit to self or that reduces
known or perceived harms to others.4 Frequently, but incorrectly, beneficence is
reduced to mean strictly that a policy or action has a favorable risk-benefit ratio.
Historically understood, however, beneficence does not compel beneficent individu-
als to be cost-benefit maximizers. Revisiting the classic definition of beneficence
makes this clear.
Aristotle (Aristotle 1167b–1168a) describes beneficence as a characteristic of
a noble human nature that compels us to love the product of our own labor more
than the object created could love us in return (Aristotle 1908/2009). Persons with
beneficence actively love or seek to benefit others, irrespective of the benefits to
themselves or even to the universe of others. Beneficence is both a weak and a
strong principle. In its weak form, beneficence is interpreted as charity. To be
charitable requires that one ascertain the needs of others and respond appropriately

PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014 s 381

Sara R. Jordan

within one’s means. However, as noted by Aristotle, Cicero, and others, charity does
not require a beneficent intent, and charitable giving can be motivated by a desire
to accrue social esteem or alleviate guilt. Strong beneficence requires significant
time, effort, and, following Aristotle, craftsmanship to ensure that the recipient
of beneficent actions accrues genuine benefits. To perform truly beneficent acts,
then, requires knowledge work—the needs of the recipients must be ascertained
and analyzed, the knowledge gained must be applied, a decision must be made to
abide by such intent, and actions must be taken to fulfill the goal of performing
beneficent actions.5

Precaution and Refinement

As used here, beneficence is a general principle supported by two interrelated
mid-range principles, precaution and refinement, that press individuals to reflect
critically on their knowledge and to possibly change their thinking and their skills
to improve the welfare of others. Precaution, the first of the mid-range principles
for knowledge work, is a standard that governs the accumulation and analysis of
the information the goals set (e.g., in acts of public policy-making). Refinement,
the second principle governing ethical knowledge work, is an example of techne,
or rightly guided skills used to implement public policy decisions.
Refinement means to reduce the severity of the harms that may come to any subject
of an action by improving the choice of methods used to satisfy a good. For instance,
the principle of refinement should prompt a data engineer tasked with building an
analytics architecture for gathering text messages to only use query terms with a
known relation to threats. The limitation of terms to those with a known relation to
the discussion of threats of harm to civilian or military interests might be profitably
constrained by the principle of precaution. Precaution means that harms are duly
minimized to the limit of reasonable certitude in the known harms. Taking precau-
tion into account, in the example given here, one might conduct extensive searches
of preexisting data to better refine the list of harmful terms for query in the newly
constructed data-gathering system.
The principle of precaution requires a bit more explanation than these short
definitions allow, particularly with respect to its historical use in decision-making
ethics. The principle is an extension of the general idea of precaution that con-
strains decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. As Carter (2007) neatly
summarizes,
The Precautionary Principle recognizes that
(1) There is often insufficient scientific evidence to make an unequivocal
judgment about the particular outcomes of a proposed course of action.
(2) We ought to exercise rational prudence towards the environment.
(3) Living systems are valuable.
(4) We ought not degrade or impoverish items of value. (p. 77)
A strong interpretation of the principle instructs officials and regulators to restrict
themselves or regulated entities from acting until such time as they can provide
sound empirical evidence that the intended act would be safe. A weaker interpre-
tation mandates that officials and regulated bodies weigh the benefits against the
probable risks, to determine the scope and rigor of the regulations the regulators

382 s PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014

 Beneficence and the Expert Bureaucracy

invest themselves in or induce regulated entities to invest in, gathering evidence of

safety and alternative courses of action (Berman and West 1998).

Expertise
Expertise is a trait possessed by an individual deft in the application of knowl-
edge (the union of philosophical wisdom and practical wisdom) and of skill to
satisfy an end.6 Expertise requires an unusually high level of excellence in the
accumulation of brute facts and application of knowledge. Following the classic
Aristotelian formulation of arête (excellence) as the union of sophia (wisdom)
and phronesis (practical knowledge), expertise must be directed toward, or put
into the service of, an end. In the case of governmental expertise, knowledge
must be put to the ends established by citizens and their legitimate and authori-
tative representatives.

Knowledge
Knowledge is the union of philosophical and practical wisdom. To “know” philo-
sophically requires an appreciation of universal forms and particular ideas and the
difference between the two. Practical knowledge is won by gathering information
intelligently and by ethical and prudential use of information gathered through
experience. An individual who is philosophically knowledgeable can reason using
abstract concepts and principles divorced from personal experience of the phenom-
enon discussed. Practical wisdom requires the application of abstract forms to the
realm of sensation and experience. Application of wisdom includes three forms of
reasoning: investigating the goodness of an event or action (ethics), considering the
organization of power to satisfy abstract principles (politics), and making judgments
about the appropriate skill to use to satisfy a goal (techne).
In the context of this article, the primary concern is with the role of government
agents as experts in knowledge work—the technically excellent (i.e., expert) produc-
tion and management of knowledge. To produce knowledge means to speak, write,
or otherwise put forth, for intersubjective agreement or disagreement, materials that
communicate philosophical or applied knowledge to an audience. To manage knowl-
edge means to organize into discrete and explicable categories the communications
of other knowledge producers for the purpose of streamlining and simplifying the
process of gathering information for an audience seeking information. Governments
produce and manage knowledge both directly and indirectly. A matrix of the roles
of government in knowledge work is shown in Table 1.

Inherently Governmental
In addition to the conceptual clarification described above, the arguments presented
here rest upon a concept that may not have a well-known definition. In current
regulatory interpretations, inherently governmental activities are defined as actions
“so intimately related to the public interest as to require performance by [federal]
government employees” (Office of Federal Procurement Policy 2011, p. 56227).

PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014 s 383

Sara R. Jordan

TABLE 1
Government Roles in Knowledge Work

Direct Indirect

Production of knowl- Information gathering by gov-Information gathered for gov-

edge ernment employees ernment-sanctioned reasons by
(e.g., Congressional Researchnongovernmental employees (e.g.,
Service, military espionage) Department of Health and Human
Services grants to universities and
nonprofit organizations)
Management of Government regulation of Government regulation of knowl-
knowledge knowledge production by edge management by nongov-
governmental and nongovern- ernmental actors; government
mental agents; government centralization of indirect knowl-
aggregation of knowledge edge production (e.g., National
produced by government Libraries of Medicine PubMed
employees (e.g., U.S. Common and Open-Access requirements for
Rule [45CFR46], CIA World grant-funded research)
Factbook, U.S. Census, U.S.
Uniform Crime Statistics)

The provision of expert information, whether through direct or indirect knowledge

production or knowledge management, is an inherently governmental function. This
definition and its use to establish an inherently governmental role for knowledge
work will be discussed more widely below.

“Performance of Inherently Governmental and Critical Functions”

The question “What must government do?” has been addressed by the succession
of political philosophers referenced above in at least three general ways: Either the
governors must call in expertise from others and then make the decisions themselves,
or they must contract with citizens to gather information and negotiate decision-
making, or they must collaborate with citizens to define, refine, and implement
evidence-based government. While consensual government may be theoretically
preferable, what is explored here is whether the predominant contractual model of
government comports with the definitions of “inherently governmental functions”
and “critical functions” of the government in recent U.S. federal guidance issued
by the Office of Management and Budget.
The functions considered to be “inherently governmental” and “critical” were
defined in 2009 by the Office of the President, and in 2011 through the Office of
Management and Budget (Office of Federal Procurement Policy 2011, p. 56227).
Inherently governmental tasks include interpretation and execution of laws, and
the application of federal authority for “the making of value judgments in making
decisions for the Federal Government,” where the decisions are “of significant public
interest” and relate to the exercise of sovereign power and the exercise of discretion
to bind the government to do or to refrain from doing any act. An appendix to the
OMB announcement outlines twenty-four examples of inherently governmental
functions (see Table 2).

384 s PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014

 TABLE 2
Selected Examples of Inherently Governmental Functions and Functions Closely Associated
with the Performance of Inherently Governmental Functions
Inherently Governmental Functions
“The control of prosecutions and performance of adjudicatory functions (other than those
relating to arbitration or other methods of alternative dispute resolution” (Appendix A,2).
“The determination of agency policy, such as determining the content and application of
regulations” (Appendix A, 7).
“The selection of grant and cooperative agreement recipients including: (a) approval of
agreement activities, (b) negotiating the scope of work to be conducted under grants/ coop-
erative agreements, (c) approval of modifications to grant/ cooperative agreement budgets
and activities, and (d) performance monitoring” (Appendix A, 16).
PUBLIC INTEGRITY
“The approval of agency responses to Freedom of Information Act requests (other than
routine responses that, because of statute, regulation or agency policy, do not require the
exercise of judgment in determining whether documents are to be released or withheld),
and the approval of agency responses to administrative appeals of denials of Freedom of
Information Act requests” (Appendix A, 18).
“The conduct of administrative hearings to determine the eligibility of any person for a se-
curity clearance, or involving actions that affect matters of personal reputation or eligibility
to participate in government programs” (Appendix A, 18).
FALL 2014 s 385
Closely Associated Functions
“Services in support of inherently governmental functions, including, but
not limited to the following: (a) performing budget preparation activities,
such as workload modeling, fact finding, efficiency studies, and should-
cost analyses; (b) undertaking activities to support agency planning and
reorganization; (c) providing support for developing policies including
drafting documents, and conducting analyses, feasibility studies and strat-
egy options; (d) providing services to support the development of regula-
tions and legislative proposals pursuant to specific policy direction; (e)
supporting acquisition, including in the areas of (i) acquisition planning
… (ii) source selection … (iii) contract management … ; (f) preparation
of responses to Freedom of Information Act requests” (Appendix B, 1).
“Work in a situation that permits or might permit access to confidential
business information or other sensitive information (other than situations
covered by the National Industrial Security Program described in FAR
4.402(b))” (Appendix B, 2).
“Dissemination of information regarding agency policies or regula-
tions, such as conducting community relations campaigns, or conducting
agency training courses” (Appendix B, 3).
“Service as arbitrators or provision of alternative dispute resolution
(ADR) services” (Appendix B, 5).
“Provision of non-law-enforcement security activities that do not directly
involve criminal investigations, such as prisoner detention or transport
and non-military national security details” (Appendix B, 9).
Beneficence and the Expert Bureaucracy
Sara R. Jordan

Notably, for present purposes, Policy Letter 11–01.3(b)(1) states that the defi-
nition of an inherently governmental function “does not normally include—(1)
gathering information for providing advice, opinions, recommendations, or ideas
to Federal Government officials.” In other words, simply gathering information
is not an activity restricted to government employees. Gathering and analyzing
information may be performed by government contractors in either the public
or the nonprofit sector. This covers a broad range that includes data-gathering
activities performed by universities (university-affiliated research centers, or
UARCs), federally funded research-and-development centers (FFRDCs), or even
in the context of workaday reporting by nonprofit organizations, such as hospitals
reporting statistics on the use of their emergency care facilities for treatment of
influenza. What differentiates the inherently governmental from the contractor’s
“critical function” role in information is what these actors might permissibly
do with the information they gather. Governmental knowledge work consists
in the use of knowledge and skill to establish and maintain citizens’ authorized
purposes. Individuals and organizations that are not part of the government may
be instrumental for the accumulation of information useful to the propagation of
government purposes, but as instruments these contractors may not decide the
ends to which they are used to achieve the ends legitimately determined by elected
officials or their appointees.

Linking Research Ethics to Ethics for Governmental Knowledge Production

If inherently governmental functions are functions that serve the ends of gov-
ernment where these are normatively desirable goals, such as protection of a
state and its people against existential threats and protection of state interests
in people and property, and governmental expertise is the accumulation and use
of information for the purpose of these normatively desirable goals, then the
ethical principles that school government expertise are reasonably analogous
to the principles that guide the activities of knowledge production that could
otherwise harm individuals or groups in the production of that knowledge. In
the analogy drawn here, the government could take as the ethical principles to
guide its expert knowledge work and decision-making the self-same principles
that guide professional researchers to whom the government has already outlined
the required ethical principles (for a brief correlation between these, see boyd
and Crawford 2012, pp. 671–673).
The ethical commitments of researchers may range widely due to the disciplin-
ary and public/private orientation of their research. For the purpose of explaining
governmental knowledge work ethics, however, the range can be narrowed by high-
lighting that governmental policy implementation is, in the ideal sense, extensive,
morally neutral, philosophically falsificationist field-testing of causal hypotheses
about human behavior. For example, publication of a new environmental regulation
presupposes that individual or collective benefits will increase due to a change in
individual or collective behaviors (e.g., regulations requiring carbon sequestration
by manufacturers are supposed to increase the level of respiratory health function
for individuals within and near the factory). This hypothesis, though, requires the
accumulation of data from living individuals, which makes government policy
implementation a form of continuous human-subject experimentation, except that

386 s PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014

 Beneficence and the Expert Bureaucracy

the barriers to participant withdrawal are so high as to render voluntariness a ruse.

Consequently, it is proposed that in the “laboratories of democracy,” we can restrict
the ethical commitments to those who already have been proposed to police research
with human and animal (involuntary) participants.

Beneficence and Big Data in Government Knowledge Work

Ethical behavior in the construction, analysis, and use of Big Data can be ensured
by reiterating the necessity of beneficence, precaution, and refinement throughout
the process of bringing this tool to bear on government problems. Beneficence, or
the intent to act for the purpose of promoting the good of something loved (spe-
cifically, where it is the case that the benefactor loves the object of his or her love
more than the object of love could return benefits or love), instructs governmental
agents to consider the ends, such as public protection, to which their actions logi-
cally and morally flow. In the case of Big Data, this means that agencies “should
have a short list of the big things they want to know from their data. If agencies
can’t articulate a top ten list of questions that will move the needle in their agency’s
mission performance, then they won’t even know where to begin in seeking out the
right technology for their mission” (Sullivan 2013, quoted in Government Business
Council 2013). In short, the ends to which Big Data knowledge work is put must
comport with the goods authorized in agency missions.

Refinement
Gathering information from “clouds” and “[data] lakes” requires methodological
refinement on an unprecedented scale. The goal of refinement in data analysis is to
succeed in satisfying public interest principles. To mine data to improve national
security—for example, to succeed in “finding tiny nuggets of data that might turn out
to be a terrorist communication or signal, and that is a huge undertaking” (Konkel
2013a)—requires a level of data analysis and visualization that extends well beyond
the capacity of ordinary citizens. For example, the NSA has disclosed unparalleled
levels of graphic visualization for more than four trillion data points. In the case
of such massive data work, refinement requires advances in supercomputing, but
also in intuitive threat and risk perception by individuals. Thus, refinement entails
hardware, software, and human resources improvements.
Refinement in Big Data methods include adaptation of extraction platforms, secu-
rity software, retrieval and management techniques, and data archive management,
to name a few, in order to match citizen-negotiated ends. However, regardless of its
level of refinement, if the ends to which the tool is used are ill-suited to the prefer-
ences of the population, it should not be used. The principle of beneficence requires
that there be some foreknowledge of the needs and requirements of the recipient of
beneficent acts. If, for example, extraction programs monitor social media access
in ways that could expose individuals’ relationships, preferences, and families to
unwanted public scrutiny, then regardless of the efficiency of the extraction, it should
not be done by governmental entities without explicit permission.
Also among the requirements of refinement for governmental use is disclosure of
systematic biases in data analysis (Berman 2013). Refinement of human bias may
be the least magnificent of the advances in Big Data knowledge work, but it is likely

PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014 s 387

Sara R. Jordan

to be the most difficult and imperative. Refinements of ordinary bias can come in
two ways. The first is insistence on a provisional and falsificationist approach to
the practice of knowledge production. The second is insistence on transparency in
the practice of knowledge management.
Falsificationism is the idea, advanced by Karl Popper (1963), that scientific inquiry
should be designed to disconfirm hypotheses rather than confirm them. In practice, a
falsificationist approach requires that analysts approach their data questioningly, as if
the data could show their assumptions to be wrong or demonstrate that the proposed
program will not work. This may include questioning whether an instrument should
be used at all, as in the case of “fixing” or “cleaning” messy data. Discovering and
disclosing bias requires that analysts avoid falling into the trap of intellectual narcis-
sism, the belief that bigger data produce conclusive results, and similarly that they
do not take as social gospel the statistical significance of all their findings.
The intermediate principle of refinement requires improving technical skills as
instruments useful for ends compatible with the public interest as revealed or as
forecast. While Big Data could be put to use by citizens and government clients to
rationalize their policy demands before presenting them in the political marketplace,
the risky near future means that barriers to citizen access to and use of Big Data
may need to be restrained by the ordinary processes of executive accountability to
legislative and judicial oversight.
On the governmental side, one key promise of Big Data is that it could allow
governments to forecast policy demands and administrative needs before citizens
even express their views in the voting booth. As Timothy Andrews reiterates,

What’s so transformational about Big Data is that it fundamentally alters the

way we can solve problems. Before, we always had to decide what answers
we wanted to know, to a very granular level, from the data. With Big Data,
we can start with questions first from a much more exploratory stance. We
can ask a lot of really challenging questions and get answers from all of the
data, even new data that is uploaded later on. In many operations, you don’t
know what data and how much data you’re going to have by the end. But
now you can ask new questions as you go along, and ask that of all the data.
(Government Business Council 2013)

One example of this is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
BioSense2.0 and Special Bacteriology Reference Laboratory (SBRL). The SBRL
may enable researchers to define whether an emerging pathogen has the characteris-
tics of a substantial threat before its pathogenicity is known, so that harm reduction
can be achieved before harm occurs to humans or animals. Consequently, before
the public knows what it wants, the government can know what is in the public’s
interest. Such potential opens the door to paternalistic choices.
Refinement must be bolstered by another commitment—transparency. This is
particularly important to ensure that data are properly verified and user access agree-
ments are clear and nonprejudicial.7 Data verification should be refined to include all
of the information relevant for an outside individual to understand the provenance,
compilation, changes to (e.g., creation or weighting of variables), and user require-
ments for the data. User requirements may include strongly technical language, but
beyond necessary technical and legal barriers to entry, no further stipulations should
be made that restrict access to data. The rules governing Freedom of Information

388 s PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014

 Beneficence and the Expert Bureaucracy

Act (FOIA) requests are one possible set of reasonable rules for implementation
of access to Big Data produced by government. These rules establish regulatory
guidelines that protect national security and data privacy, but they do not rise to
meet the standard of an ethical principle, such as precaution, that outlines when
data should or should not be shared.

Precaution
The best methods and most public-interested approach to data management and
analysis will not prevent all potential harms from government use of Big Data. De-
cisions made with even the most rigorously analyzed empirical data may still have
unforeseen ill consequences. Examples from healthcare research abound, but the
removal of vetted “blockbuster” drugs, such as Vioxx, from pharmacy shelves due
to unanticipated risks due to long-term use provides a reasonable cautionary tale.
Even for those not directly harmed by adverse decisions, there are knock-on effects,
such as reductions in service, increases in unwanted services, and loss of privacy,
that arise even from well-intentioned uses of Big Data. Instances of mistaken place-
ment on no-fly lists, mistaken denials of credit, and incorrect information on health
records are but a few examples. The National Academy of Sciences enumerated the
privacy risks of Big Data in the following way:
The rich digital record that is made of people’s lives today provides many benefits
to most people in the course of everyday life. Such data may also have utility
for counterterrorist and law enforcement efforts. However, the use of such data
for these purposes also raises concerns about the protection of privacy and civil
liberties. Improperly used, programs that do not explicitly protect the rights of
innocent individuals are likely to create second-class citizens whose freedoms
to travel, engage in commercial transactions, communicate, and practice certain
trades will be curtailed—and under some circumstances, they could even be
improperly jailed. (National Research Council, 2008, sec. 3.2)
Outside the realm of analysis-based decision-making, the dangers of Big Data also
include “over-provisioning access, inadvertently exposing personally-identifiable
information and transferring data outside of a required geographical location”
(Robinson 2013). Taking the 2014 proposal to build a “Big Data to Knowledge”
(BD2K) initiative in the National Institutes of Health as an example, the dangers
become quite obvious if the beneficently intentioned initiatives are not constrained
by an attitude of precaution and an imperative to refinement. The BD2K program
proposes to:
s Facilitate the broad use and sharing of large, complex biomedical data sets
through the development of policies, resources and standards;
s Develop and disseminate new analytical methods and software;
s Enhance training of data scientists, computer engineers, and
bioinformaticians; and
s Establish Centers of Excellence to develop generalizable approaches that
address important problems in biomedical analytics, computational biology,
and medical informatics. (Kalil and Green 2013)

PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014 s 389

Sara R. Jordan

Initiatives to improve horizontal integration among health providers, such as

the Veterans Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug
Administration, and other agencies, may induce these organizations to overprovision
access to their patients’ and employees’ data, even under the aegis of the laudable
goal of improving quality and efficacy in health services. Risks from exposure of
individuals’ information persist even in cases where such data have been nominally
de-identified. An ethic of weak precaution seems apt in such cases; a weaker interpre-
tation of the precautionary principle mandates that officials and regulators invest, or
induce regulated entities to invest, in gathering evidence of safe alternative courses
of action that allow regulators to efficaciously weigh benefits against probable risks
to determine the scope and rigor of regulations to ensure data subjects’ privacy and
rights along with data users’ rights and obligations.
The principle of weak precaution—to verify then trust—can be informed by the
Seven Global Privacy Principles put forth in the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor Principles
(Department of Commerce 2009):
1. Notice: inform individuals about the purpose for which information is
collected
2. Choice: offer individuals the opportunity to choose (or opt out) whether and
how personal information they provide is used or disclosed
3. Onward Transfer: only disclose personal data information to third parties
consistent with the principles of notice and choice
4. Security: take responsible measures to protect personal information from loss,
misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction
5. Data Integrity: assure the reliability of personal information for its intended
use and reasonable precautions and ensure information is accurate, complete,
and current
6. Access: provide individuals with access to personal information data about
them
7. Enforcement: a firm must be accountable for following the principles and
must include mechanisms for assuring compliance.
If the organizations with which the government intends to share or collect data
cannot provide assurances that they meet these principles or do not have defensible
reasons for not meeting the principles, particularly the first four listed, then they
should be excluded from access or given only limited access until they are able to
develop policies that conform to the principles.
A government agency deciding to whom it is willing to grant access to data, or what
methods of verification and analysis should or must be employed, or to what ends the
data tools will be used, must attend to the principles stipulated in the contract between
the governed and their governors. Government officials, working in an inherently
governmental capacity, must bear in mind their paramount commitment to the public
interest, under which even the principle of beneficence must lie. The discussion in
the concluding section examines how even a beneficent intent, if taken to an extreme,
could confound the overarching principle of protecting the public interest.

Beneficently Governing Big Data in the Public Interest

In the past seventy-five years, members of the American Society for Public Admin-
istration, including many scholars and practitioners published in Public Integrity,

390 s PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014

 Beneficence and the Expert Bureaucracy

have queried fads, scandals, and “tectonic shifts” as seemingly ponderous as Big
Data. Many of these fads evaporated, and the players in the scandals were relegated
to infrequently used case studies. What remained constant is the heart of this ar-
ticle and this journal—thinking openly and accessibly, through timeless virtues
and values, to find a solution to the problems of the day. In the mission statement
of Public Integrity (www.mesharpe.com/mall/results1.asp?ACR=pin/), the editors
reiterate that the “driving force [of modern public service and the journal] is the
notion of integrity that is so basic a part of democratic life.” Thus, it is asked here
whether a commitment to beneficence, precaution, and refinement in government
knowledge work could undermine the value of protecting the public interest against
government interests.
In the opening paragraphs of this article, the problem of Big Data was posed
in the form of a question: How ought government protect the public against the
use of their data but also protect the public through use of their data? In the sub-
sequent pages, I showed how the production and management of knowledge by
government employees is an “inherently governmental task” rooted in the basics
of political organization and “so intimately related to the public interest” that it
must be governed by principles designed to constrain the actions of individuals
in a relationship of legitimate and authoritative, but disproportionate, power to
the recipients of their intended beneficent acts. I posited that a comparable set
of ethical principles for inherently governmental Big Data work already exists
in the form of the ethical principles outlined for the use of government funds to
produce generalizable knowledge using human participants in research projects.
I outlined that the optimal guiding principle for both research and knowledge
work is beneficence, where the intent to act beneficently must be complemented
by mid-range ethical principles that inform how knowledge is gathered (refine-
ment) and how it is used (precaution). These suggestions were outlined to support
a conjecture that the biggest challenge for integrity in public administration for
the next decade (at least) is the management of decision-making guided by Big
Data–driven governance. Certainly government employees have an obligation
to “responsible risk-taking,” beneficence, and the public interest, but where do
these obligations end and the rise of a total-information, privacy-rights-denying,
technocracy begin?
Beneficence is a virtue for governing disparate power relationships, and even
a beneficent government will wield disproportionate power. If it exercises power
beyond the limits of its contract with the people, it threatens to become a pater-
nalistic overseer. If it does so by using tools of technological intervention that are
unavailable to any except the lucky few chosen to govern, then even a purportedly
beneficent government becomes a paternalist technocracy. The example of Big Data
use by the NSA represents a clear example of this possibility.
Big Data use does not have to decline into technocracy or paternalism if it is con-
ducted with the ethics of genuine beneficence in mind, whereby an open discussion of
the principles and the practices of refinement of tools and implementation of precau-
tions become part of the public conversation on technology and governmental roles.
To the extent that governments do not undermine their own legitimacy by usurping
authority contracted to them by the people, and ensure that their mandate to provide
security is tempered by the value of securing space for decisional autonomy and liberty,
the descent of Big Data governance into technocratic paternalism can be avoided.

PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014 s 391

Sara R. Jordan

NOTES
1. Data integrity refers to the idea that data are complete, accurate, unbiased, and
correctly correlated with the appropriate personal identifiers throughout an individual’s
lifetime.
2. For the purposes of this article, e-government is part of knowledge work. E-
government is “the use by the government of Web-based Internet applications and other
information technologies, to—(A) enhance the access to and delivery of government
information and services to the public, other agencies, and other government entities; or
(B) bring about improvements in government to operations that may include effective-
ness, efficiency, service quality or transformation” (E-Government Act of 2002, quoted
in Larsen and Milakovich 2005, p. 57).
3. The meaning of societal benefits will not be contested here, but elsewhere I con-
test the vagrant uses of this term and related terms, such as benefits to society (Jordan
2014).
4. An analogy could be drawn between this definition of beneficence and the Is-
lamic principle of ăl-’ămr bĭ-’l-mă‘rūf wă-’n-năhī ‘ănĭ ’l-mŭnkăr (to enjoin the good
and forbid evil). Although used as justification for restrictions on behavior, this principle,
philosophically speaking, commands believers to beneficence in the same manner in
which Christians might be enjoined to charity.
5. Note, for example, Cicero’s discussion in De Officiis (2.61–65) of “one-off”
charitable giving versus true charity as an example of weak versus strong beneficence.
6. This definition is restricted to individual expertise at the expense of developing
a further definition of collective expertise, as the problem of aggregating the level and
application of knowledge is more than can be well explicated here.
7. “Data verification is the process that ensures that the data was collected, annotated,
identified, stored and made accessible in conformance with a set of approved protocols
for the resource” (Berman 2013, p. 153).

REFERENCES
Aristotle. 1908/2009. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by William David Ross, trans.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ball, James. 2014. “NSA Collects Millions of Text Messages Daily in ‘Untargeted’
Global Sweep.” Guardian, January 16. Available at www.theguardian.com/
world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted-global-
sweep, accessed January 16, 2014.
Barkin, Noah. 2014. “Spying Plunges U.S.-German Ties Lower Than Iraq War: Merkel
Ally.” Reuters, January 16. Available at www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/16/us-
germany-usa-spying-idU.S.BREA0F0TX20140116, accessed January 17, 2014.
Berman, Evan M., and Jonathan P. West. 1998. “Responsible Risk-Taking.” Public
Administration Review 58, no. 4: 246–352.
Berman, Jules J. 2013. Principles of Big Data: Preparing, Sharing, and Analyzing
Complex Information. Waltham, Mass.: Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier.
boyd, danah, and Kate Crawford. 2012. “Critical Questions for Big Data.” Informa-
tion, Communication and Society 15, no. 5: 662–679.
Carter, Lucy. 2007. “A Case for a Duty to Feed the Hungry: GM Plants and the Third
World.” Science and Engineering Ethics 13, no. 1: 69–82.
Chanley, Virginia A.; Thomas J. Rudolph; and Wendy M. Rahn. 2000. “The Origins
and Consequences of Public Trust in Government: A Time Series Analysis.” Public
Opinion Quarterly 64, no. 3: 239–256.
Davis, Kord. 2012. Ethics of Big Data: Balancing Risk and Innovation. Sebastopol,
Calif.: O’Reilly Media.
Department of Commerce. 2009. “Safe Harbor Privacy Principles.” Available at www.
export.gov/safeharbor/eu/eg_main_018475.asp, accessed July 1, 2014.

392 s PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014

 Beneficence and the Expert Bureaucracy

Finkle, Jim. 2014. “Exclusive: Cybercrime Firm Says Uncovers Six Active At-
tacks on U.S. Merchants.” Reuters, January 17. Available at www.reuters.com/
article/2014/01/17/us-target-databreach-idU.S.BREA0G18P20140117, accessed
January 17, 2014.
Golding, Martin P. 1972. “Obligations to Future Generations.” Monist 56, no. 1:
85–99.
Government Business Council. 2013. “Turning Optimism into Reality: How Big Data
Is Transforming Government—A Candid Survey of Federal Employees.” Available
at www.govexec.com/gbc/turning-optimism-reality-how-big-data-transforming-
government/61934, accessed August 13, 2013.
Jordan, Sara R. 2014. “Beneficence in Public Administration Research; or, Who Needs
the NSF Anyway?” Administration & Society 46, no. 1: 112–121.
Kalil, Tom. 2012. “Big Data Is a Big Deal.” Office of Science and Technology Policy
Weblog, March 29. Available at www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/03/29/big-data-
big-deal, accessed August 21, 2013.
Kalil, Tom, and Eric Green. 2013. “Big Data Is a Big Deal for Biomedical Research.”
Office of Science and Technology Policy Weblog, April 23. Available at www.
whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04/23/big-data-big-deal-biomedical-research, accessed
August 21, 2013.
Kalil, Tom, and Fen Zhao. 2013. “Unleashing the Power of Big Data.” Office of
Science and Technology Policy Weblog, April 18. Available at www.white-
house.gov/blog/2013/04/18/unleashing-power-big-data/, accessed August 21,
2013.
Konkel, Frank. 2013a. “Hot to Spot a Data Scientist.” FCW: The Business of Federal
Technology, April 24. Available at http://fcw.com/Articles/2013/04/24/define-data-
scientist.aspx, accessed August 21, 2013.
———. 2013b. “NSA Shows How Big ‘Big Data’ Can Be.” FCW: The Business of
Federal Technology, June 13. Available at http://fcw.com/Articles/2013/06/13/NSA-
big-data.aspx, accessed August 21, 2013.
Larsen, Bettina, and Michael Milakovich. 2005. “Citizen Relationship Management
and E-Government.” In Electronic Government, edited by Maria A. Wimmer,
Roland Traunmüller, Åke Grönland, and Kim V. Andersen, pp. 57–68. Berlin:
Springer.
National Research Council. 2008. Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle
Against Terrorists: A Framework for Program Assessment. Washington, DC: Na-
tional Academies Press.
Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor, and Kenneth Cukier. 2013. Big Data: The Revolution That
Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Office of Federal Procurement Policy. 2011. “Publication of the Office of Federal
Procurement Policy (OFPP) Letter 11-01, Performance of Inherently Governmental
and Critical Functions.” Office of Management and Budget. 76 FR 176: 56227–
56242. Available at www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-09-12/pdf/2011-23165.pdf.
Office of the Press Secretary, White House. 2014. “Remarks by the President on
Review of Signals Intelligence.” Available at www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2014/01/17/remarks-president-review-signals-intelligence/, accessed January
17, 2014.
Prah, Pamela M. 2014. “Target’s Data Breach Highlights State Role in Privacy.” USA
Today. Available at www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/16/target-data-
breach-states-privacy/4509749/, accessed January 17, 2014.
Popper, Karl. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.
London: Routledge.
Robinson, Laura. 2013, July 3. “The Security Pitfalls of Mining Big Data.” USA
Today. Available at www.usatoday.com/story/cybertruth/2013/07/03/cybersecurity-
pitfalls-of-mining-big-data/2486783/, accessed August 21, 2013.
Sathi, Arvind. 2013. Big Data Analytics. Boise, Ida.: MC Press.

PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014 s 393

Sara R. Jordan

Siegel, Eric. 2013. Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie
or Die. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley.
Tolbert, Caroline J., and Karen Mossberger. 2006. “The Effects of E-Government on
Trust and Confidence in Government.” Public Administration Review 66, no. 3:
354–369.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sara R. Jordan is an assistant professor at the Center for Public Administration and Policy,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. At the time of writing this article,
she was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, University
of Miami. Her research interests bring together expertise in research ethics, healthcare
policy, and ethics for science and technology policy and practice. Her work is available in
Public Management Review, Accountability in Research, and Journal of Academic Ethics.
She is interested in collaborating with other scholars on issues of ethics for sustainability
and innovation in public service.

394 s PUBLIC INTEGRITY FALL 2014