Louis Meuleman
Coordinator European Semester
DG Environment, European Commission
Belgium

Abstract
From Garbage Can to Cloud Governance: New action perspectives for information providers and public decision makers

The conference theme "Convergence: Policies + Practices + Processes via PPP" addresses the need for greater coordination among policy-makers, technology providers and users to improve the use of environmental and geospatial data. This paper investigates if this challenge can be understood using an updated version of the Garbage Can theory on organizational decision making (Cohen, March and Olsen 1972). This theory states that decisions are not made in linear or cyclical processes but by “problems, solutions, and participants moving from one choice opportunity to another". Organisations can therefore be conceptualised as “crossroads of time-dependent flows of four distinct classes of objects: 'participants', 'opportunities,' 'solutions' and 'problems.' Collisions among the different objects generate events called 'decisions'" (Fioretti and Lomi 2008). The Garbage Can theory acknowledged the role of coincidence and introduced the decisive role of participants in decision-making.

Public decision makers considered this way of framing decision making closer to their daily reality than linear or circular models. However, when in the 1980s a managerial, control and efficiency-based mode of governance - New Public Management - gained dominance in Western administrations, the Garbage Can model lost popularity.

The current global governance trend, if any, is one of growing diversity of governance approaches, sometimes coordinated by mindful designing and managing situationally usable governance style combinations (metagovernance). We need again models which can handle complexity. A fresh look at the Garbage Can model could be useful. In this paper it is argued that the garbage can model lacks the analytical power to explain decision making in the 21st century. It will be illustrated for environmental data management, that the 'cloud' metaphor used in the digital world fits better, among others because it acknowledges that it is often not really clear where decision making takes place. We are beyond the Garbage Can and have entered Cloud Governance and need new coordination strategies and new action perspectives for information providers.