Design, Implementation, and Management of Digital Government Policies and Strategies

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    Public Sector Digital Innovation Capability: Exploring the Contextual Conditions for Digital Reform in a Public Sector Organization
    (2025-01-07) Sjöström, Hannes; Skog, Daniel A.; Öbrand, Lars
    Digital reform of public sector organizations rests on their ability to innovate with digital technology. Since the public sector innovation literature pays limited attention to digital, and as digital innovation is rarely investigated in public sector contexts, current knowledge on digital innovation capabilities in such organizations is limited. Through a case study of digital reform in a local government organization, we identify how public sector conditions organizations’ capability for digital innovation. This includes legal structures that propagate infrastructural fragmentation, resource allocation systems that restrict innovation scopes, how political pressure leads to conflicting frames of the strategic role of digital, and how public and legal liability may lead to innovation paralysis. The paper contributes to the literature by illustrating the unique conditions for digital innovation in the public sector, and to practice by highlighting key shifts that increase organizations’ digital innovation capability.
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    Soft-lockins in Public Sector Acquisitions of Open Source Software-solutions: A Case Study on a Municipal E-Service Platform
    (2025-01-07) Persson, Per; Linåker, Johan
    Background: Open Source Software (OSS) is often seen as an option to mitigate risks of lock-ins. Yet, single-vendor OSS can still result in soft lock-ins due to knowledge asymmetries and technical barriers. Aim: This study explores actors that render such soft lock-ins. Research design: We conduct a qualitative case study of an E-service Platform (ESP) used by over 190+ municipalities. Results: User-driven lock-in factors emerged as a significant category, including limited and non-transparent communication, restrictive qualification requirements in procurement, confusion on maintainership, and comfort in the status quo. Technical lock-in factors include inadequate documentation, dependency management issues, and limited test coverage. Conclusions: Strong leadership and continuous training is needed to address presence of comfort and conservative culture among municipalities. Open Source Stewards, i.e., neutral hosts for OSS projects, can support municipalities in these tasks while also helping to foster an open, competitive collaboration that can enable a broader supplier ecosystem.
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    Balancing Insourcing and Outsourcing towards Digital Government: Establishing Obligatory Gateways as an Approach for Targeted Insourcing
    (2025-01-07) Thunes, Johanne; Kempton, Alexander
    While outsourcing has been the leading information systems (IS) sourcing trend since the 1980s, we now see more insourcing initiatives in the public sector. In this paper, we investigate how public sector organizations can balance insourcing and outsourcing, by building on the concept of targeted insourcing. We explore an approach of targeted insourcing through a case study on a Scandinavian municipality, who through in-house competence has built a platform that connects insourced and outsourced systems. Our study has two main contributions. First, we contribute to the literature on digital government by showcasing how government organizations can approach IS sourcing. Second, we contribute by expanding existing knowledge on targeted insourcing through identifying and conceptualizing an approach we term establishing obligatory gateways. Finally, we argue that more research is required on how IS sourcing affects digital government initiatives.
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    This is My Municipality: Unveiling the Significance of Citizens Identification With Their Municipality in Municipal E-Government
    (2025-01-07) Wetterling, Florian; Kern, Christopher; Noeltner, Markus; Bossler, Lukas Florian; Kroenung, Julia
    Municipal e-government adoption faces challenges from a federal governmental structure. Diverse local factors in municipalities, like region-specific culture and norms, can lead citizens to identify with their municipality. To study how their social identity and belonging to the municipality affect the adoption of municipal e-government services, we build a framework based on social identity theory and previous literature on municipal e-government adoption. We analyzed data from 140 inhabitants of a German municipality participating in an ongoing e-government pilot project using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Our research shows opportunities for increasing municipal e-government adoption by strengthening citizens' belonging to the municipality and by successfully communicating ongoing e-government initiatives. With our study, we emphasize the need to view internal aspects, such as technology-related factors, as well as external, community-related factors, and open new avenues for future research on municipal e-government and e-government pilot projects.
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    Managers as Creators of Inertia: A Study on Digital Transformation Narratives and Inertia in the Swedish Public Sector
    (2025-01-07) Tinjan, Malin
    Overcoming inertia is a top priority for managers in digital transformation; however, this study investigates how public sector managers create inertia in digital transformation through alibi narratives. Through a case study of managers in the Swedish public sector, the study analyzes how managers legitimize and reinforce stagnation rather than promoting change. Four meta-alibi narratives are identified, that facilitate managers´ understanding of the digital transformation process while simultaneously resulting in unintentional inertia. By exploring these alibi narratives, the study challenges the traditional view of managers solely as agents of change, revealing their complex role as both facilitators and impediments to digital transformation. This research provides valuable insights into the micro-level dynamics of digital transformation while highlighting the need for nuanced strategies that address the resistance within public sector organizations.
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    Striking the Right Chord: Tensions in Calibrating Digital Policy Instruments
    (2025-01-07) Rudmark, Daniel; Mankevich, Vasili; Sandberg, Johan
    Increasingly connected vehicles offer drivers benefits related to safety, navigation, and maintenance. They also provide policymakers new opportunities to trace and modify behavior using data insights. For such efforts to be effective, policymakers need access to policy instruments. These instruments must also be adopted by regulated entities such as technology providers, vehicle manufacturers, and drivers. Reuse and scaling across jurisdictional boundaries are crucial for the efficient development, adoption, and use of these digital tools. However, establishing digital tools that scale across diverse contexts requires navigating trade-offs between generalization to meet global demands and specialization to provide desired functionality. Using digital trace data and interviews, we conducted a longitudinal study of the development of the Mobility Data Specification standard for, free-floating e-scooters, over three years. We identified four key instrument tensions related to privacy, scope, richness, and the pace of evolution. We detail the nature of these tensions, analyze how they were mitigated, and suggest implications for the development of digital regulatory tools that span jurisdictional boundaries.
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    Decoding Policy Narratives: A Topic Modeling Approach to National Quantum Technology Strategies
    (2025-01-07) Pöhlmann, Gina; Ma, Charles; Suter, Viktor; Meckel, Miriam; Steinacker, Lea
    Quantum technology (QT) is potentially crucial for future technological and economic progress. However, we do not know much about the specific narratives and topics in national QT policies, despite their importance in shaping quantum approaches and progress around the world and in ensuring responsible development. We address this issue from the perspective of narrative policy analysis combined with computational topic modeling. Our research investigates policy documents from 23 countries, which we analyze using BERTopic modeling and the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). The results show that national QT policies focus primarily on technological leadership for security and economic prosperity, assessing technological readiness, and, to a lesser extent, commercialization and societal impacts. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for guiding policy makers, researchers and stakeholders in aligning QT developments with societal needs and fostering international collaboration.