The evolution of the public governance concept: the technological future

This research aims to identify the state-of-the-art of Public Governance’s concept and present how it has developed over time. A bibliographic search was conducted in scientific articles published in 7 databases (Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, Emerald, Gale, Spell and Scielo). The expression "Public Governance" was used in the search, without any filter of academic area or temporal span. We found 1580 articles, already excluded the repeated works. Subsequently, their titles were read and among the most aligned works, 346 were available for reading. Subsequently, the 50 most cited articles published before 2014, the 25 most cited articles published between 2015 to 2017 and the articles published in 2018 that had received at least one citation were selected, totalling 81 articles that made up the bibliographic portfolio (BP). Important authors of the area are identified, such as Jacob Torfing and Stephen Osborne, the latter having the most quoted work of all BP. It should be noted that the concept of Public Governance is multidisciplinary and has developed within three paradigms of public administration: Bureaucratic Administration, New Public Management and last and most recent, recognized as New Public Governance. Finally, there was a tendency to include issues related to technology in the debate on this topic, mainly through movements such as Open Government and Electronic Governments.