Policy dialogue, collaboration and ICTS: A mobilization Decision Theory Perspective

The use of ICT to support activities in the policymaking process is on the increase. At the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic, Government agencies around the world relied on ICTs to either remotely support and/or enable policy-making activities. Policy-making activities occur via collaborative processes between interested parties by means of dialogue. Some extant ICTs utilized by government agencies support and enable collaboration and dialogue. However, the decision on what ICT to adopt is not always easy as a result of the failure of some ICTs to support the task they were designed for. As a result due diligence is needed by public service administrators to decide on which ICT to adopt. This implies a decision process required to decide if the public agency will mobilize resources to acquire and implement the ICT. But as most government agencies around the world have adopted ICT to support dialogue and collaborative activities in their policy making decision. This paper provides the result of a study where the mobilization-decision theory was used to analyse and explain reasons why government agencies around the world, aside the pressure from COVID-19, made the decision to mobilize resources to acquire, implement and utilize ICTs for policy dialogue and collaboration.