Agency leaders and organizational adaptation to administrative reform: evidence from IT reforms and the timely disbursement of unemployment insurance benefits in the American states

Abstract The timely disbursement of government program benefits is a core attribute of effective administration. In recent decades, American states charged with administering unemployment insurance programs have instituted information technology (IT) modernization reforms to improve the timely delivery of unemployment benefits. Variation among those 28 states instituting IT modernization reforms between 2002 and 2022 reveals that these reforms improved the timely delivery of initial unemployment benefits by increasing the rate of meeting target performance benchmarks by 5.26 percent, while reducing the tardy disbursement of unemployment benefits by 2.90 percent, thus constituting a net performance swing of 8.16 percent. These performance benefits, however, are most pronounced for agency leaders holding prior appointed administrative leadership experience. More broadly, these findings indicate that appropriate matching of the type of prior government experience held by agency leaders in accordance with the nature of administrative reforms is critical for realizing these performance benefits.