Essays on the Effective Execution of U.S. Federal Government Technology Initiatives

Abstract

Governments around the world serve as custodians of taxpayer contributions and play a critical role in utilizing these contributions for delivering essential services to the public. However, deep budget cuts, increased regulatory pressures and satisfying the needs of multiple stakeholders (e.g., citizens, policymakers, contractor firms) present a challenging environment for government agencies to fulfill their objectives. Despite significant investments of taxpayer contributions in the execution of government technology programs and contracts, the challenges associated with their effective execution has received little attention in the existing operations management literature. Focusing on this context, this dissertation has the following objectives (i) empirically investigate the challenges that are associated with executing government technology initiatives, and (ii) generate actionable insights that different stakeholders (e.g., federal agencies, contractor firms) can use to address some of these challenges. Towards addressing these objectives, the first dissertation study examines the performance of U.S. federal government technology programs and uncovers the drivers of baseline changes in their execution. The second dissertation study focuses on the performance of research and development (R&D) contracts awarded through the set-aside policy, a legislative provision that promotes the participation of small businesses in the U.S. federal government’s procurement process. The third dissertation study also focuses on the set-aside policy and investigates whether preferentially awarding contracts through this policy disincentivizes the growth of small businesses that execute R&D contracts for the federal government. Taken together, the three dissertation studies make a systematic attempt towards understanding the challenges that are associated with executing government technology initiatives and offer theoretically grounded empirical insights for effectively utilizing taxpayer investments in these initiatives.