JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government

Frontline workers’ role in digital self-service co-production: Channel promoters, digital helpers, or intermediators

Hanne Höglund Rydén — 2024-11-13

When public services move online, citizens are expected to serve themselves on digital platforms and enrol in public services through self-service procedures. In this digital encounter, many citizens struggle to live up to the “self” in self-services and seek in-person assistance from public professionals. These professional actors play an essential role in enabling the co-production of self-services for citizens who struggle to be truly self-serving. This article explores the frontline workers’ roles in self-service co-production when interacting with citizens seeking help in the service procedures. Service interactions have been studied in two meeting centres of the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration. We have conducted observations of office interactions in general and at digital self-service stations in particular. Interviews with public officials have complemented these observations. We use intermediation and co-production theory as analytical lenses in our data analysis. The findings show that the role of frontline workers can be both flexible and narrow in nature and that they take on the role of intermediaries when acting as a bridge between the analogue world and the digital domain. We also see that the intermediating role frontline workers take will vary and is influenced by organisational, personal, and external circumstances that can enable or restrain the co-production of self-services.

Looking beyond “the tool itself”: Towards a political systems understanding of e-participation

Martin Karlsson — 2024-11-13

In this paper, we argue that e-participation research is at a crossroads as its theories and empirical scope are increasingly detached from the contemporary relationship between information technology and political participation. We illustrate this challenge through two developments: (1) the dissolving boundaries between online and offline spheres of political participation and (2) the growing dissociation between ICTs and democracy. In light of these developments, we present a potential path forward for the field, inspired by the so-called "systemic turn" in research on deliberative democracy and democratic innovations. We argue for a perspective that emphasises the relationship between e-participation and the political system in which it is enacted. This allows us, in our conclusion, In our conclusion, this allows us to present alternative potential directions for future research within the field.

Between continuity and change: A longitudinal analysis of Swedish local government digitalization strategies

Aya Rizk — 2024-11-13

The terminology associated with the use of information and communication technologies in the public sector has shifted over time, from information technology to digitalization. This change raises the question of whether corresponding shifts in government practices have accompanied it. To investigate this issue, we use topic modeling to analyze a corpus of IT- and digitalization strategies from Swedish local governments, produced over three decades. Our analysis reveals salient topics covered in these strategies and classifies them, displaying patterns of both continuity and change. Some of these patterns reflect dominant discourses about technological governance and the provision of digital services based on citizens’ needs, but there is also a notable absence of content related to democracy and participatory practices. Taken together, our study contributes empirically with an evolutionary perspective on digital government strategies and methodologically with the adoption of computational methods for this purpose.

Dynamic capabilities in the public sector: Research agenda in the context of digital transformation

Larissa Galdino de Magalhães Santos — 2024-11-13

Dynamic capabilities, which were initially developed for the private sector but have increasingly been applied to public sector organizations, can be used to frame the analysis of digital transformation. This article considers the research agenda on the capabilities enabling public sector organizations to implement digital transformation, manage multi-stakeholder collaborations, and improve service delivery in a changing environment. There are five emerging areas of dynamic capabilities in the public sector: conceptual discussion, management and performance, measurement frameworks, innovation and public value creation, and digital transformation. Future research agendas should focus on understanding multiple actors involved in the digital transition, and longitudinal and comparative studies.

Editorial 16(2)

Andrea Chapman — 2024-11-13