Mid Sweden University

Syftet med den här rapporten är att sammanställa forskning om digitaliseringens effekter i offentlig sektor, med fokus på nyttor, kostnader och mätbarhet. Rapporten har tagits fram inom ramen för det nationella forskningsprogrammet om digitaliseringens samhällskonsekvenser. 

Digital teknik har funnits länge, men de senaste årtiondena fått bredare genomslag och karaktäriserar alltmer sättet vi gör saker på i vårt dagliga liv, och även hur offentliga organisationer interagerar med medborgare. Det är därför relevant att sammanställa kunskap om de effekter som digitaliseringen förväntas leda till. 

Rapporten bygger på en litteraturöversikt med tematisk analys av 55 artiklar om digital förvaltning. 

Fyra teman identifieras i studien: kostnadseffektivitet, serviceanvändning, digital mognad, och relationella perspektiv. I rapporten diskuteras dessa teman i förhållande till referenslitteratur. 

Resultaten visar att nyttor, kostnader och mätbarhet adresseras baserat på kontextuell uppmärksamhet, och kunskapsteoretisk positionering. Detta skapar i sin tur spänningar mellan a) linjära kontra komplexa mått och angreppssätt, b) fokus på kortsiktiga respektive långsiktiga effekter, samt c) mätning av enskilda system kontra mer övergripande analyser. 

En övergripande observation är att det finns utrymme för nya eller uppdaterade teorier och djärvare hypoteser inom fältet digital förvaltning. Rapporten avslutas med tre uppslag för fortsatt forskning med syfte att skapa starkare band mellan forskning, policy och praktik.

Emerging technologies are often accompanied by optimistic “tech narratives” that emphasize their potential benefits to society. These narratives appear in various sources, including public policy documents, media coverage, and academic literature. However, identifying their origins and underlying rationale can be challenging. This paper addresses the research question (RQ): How can government tech narratives be traced and unveiled? To answer this question, we draw on the theoretical frameworks of “performativity” and “uncertainty assessment” to develop a two-step approach for investigating tech narratives. We apply this methodology to trace a narrative promoting the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) in the Swedish public sector back to its source, an emerging government AI policy program. Our analysis reveals a hybridization of economic and political interests, as well as a recognized ignorance reflected in the lack of scrutiny of highly uncertain calculations. By presenting this two-step methodology for tracing and critically examining tech narratives, this paper makes a methodological contribution. In applying this approach, we also provide empirical insights into how tech narratives facilitate the materialization of technological infrastructures.

Bourdieu-inspired journalism scholarship, and journalism studies at large, could benefit from an approach that can holistically explain how journalists make sense of technology-related change in the journalistic field. By merging key insights from field theory with philosophy of technology, and by analyzing 40 qualitative interviews with agents across a wide range of positions in the Swedish journalistic field, we uncover how journalists view technological change in relation to the field's autonomy, capitals and habitus. At the macro-level, the analysis shows how technology is constructed in the journalistic field at large, indicating a digital heteronomy. At the meso-level, findings indicate that positions become rearranged when new skills such as metrics and engagement management become collectively recognized as capital. Field-specific, journalistic, capital is supplemented with a virality capital. At the micro-level, we unravel an emerging journalistic habitus formed in relation to structural transformations in the field – the feel for engagement.

Hopes are high for enhancing public sector capabilities in addressing complex challenges and creating value from digitalization through various multi-actor and multi-level approaches. Yet, scholars also raise concerns that an emphasis on digital resource configurability may overlook important contexual dimensions, leading to increased managerialism and reduced legitimacy within new public sector paradigms. This paper explores the concept of public service ecosystems, both as an analytical lens and a subject of critique, focusing on the shifts brought about by digitalization, while scrutinizing the optimism and technological focus that often accompany these transformations. Drawing on a longitudinal case study from the Swedish public sector, we unveil how a public service ecosystem, facilitated by modular open-source architecture and multi-actor engagement, faces challenges including i) demand-supply gaps in digital services, ii) governance issues, and iii) integration between digital and physical channels. As such the framework of public service ecosystem is challenged as a sometimes naïve idea underplaying the complexity of e-service development in the public sector. At the same time it worked as a lens to structure and nuance the findings and bridge the gap between technological and contextual focus, and informed suggestions for further research.

To what extent did the Covid-19 pandemic affect the tools, priorities and organisation of cultural policies? And did the pandemic enhance the digital aspect of these policies? This paper compares pandemic cultural policy measures in seven European countries to answer these questions. The countries all installed a plurality of mitigating measures, combining grants and subsidies, compensation of lost income, income support and financial flexibility, creating a tendency towards cultural policy turning into economic policy, fiscal policy, and labour market policy. Cultural policies have not been fundamentally challenged by the pandemic, in the sense that it has affected the essential political tools, divisions of labour, or core goals. The responses have confirmed an existing policy structure or enhanced existing developments. The importance of a state-centred or a federalist cultural policy system has not been challenged in a substantial way. Secondly there is little evidence to show a general acceleration of national digital cultural policies. 

To contribute to digitalization and accountability research, this study adopted a pattern arising from failure due to weak accountability that was initially identified in Great Britain. This was done to investigate if the pattern reappeared in digitalization initiatives at the Swedish municipal level. Attempting to answer this, the present study structured a survey sent to every municipality in Sweden, resulting in a response rate of 40.4%. It was not possible to statistically claim that the pattern repeated itself in the chosen context, making this study’s main contribution to stress that there might be a pattern as an effect due to weak accountability, without any knowledge of how this pattern presents itself. 

This chapter critically explores and analyses the framing of digitalization in current cultural public policy in Sweden to reach a deeper understanding of how the idea of digitalization is narrated and what kind of desired outcomes surface in these narratives. It is based on a thematic analysis of eight policy documents departing from Andrew Feenberg’s two-fold understanding of technology, as both essence and construct, in order to disclose the dominant and formative narratives of digitalization. As such, the chapter contributes to digital cultural policy research with a national-specific analysis of policy narratives on expectations and goals coupled with digital transformation. 

Public-sector digitalization has gained traction over the years, and with it has come a flood of official documents (policies and grey literature) highlighting what the (digital) future is supposed to look like and proposing a range of digital solutions to inspire action. Such policies and strategic documents propose what will be important in future societies. In this paper, we employ the policy-analysis framework, ‘what’s the problem represented to be’ (WPR), first developed by Bacchi. We conducted a workshop with a Swedish municipality, inviting key actors to work with the idea of digitalization to re-read their digitalization policy in light of the WPR framework. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what surfaced when the policymakers and public servants used WPR to dissect their own digitalization policy. The results show that the key actors’ reflections centred around the value of the policy itself, and the WPR framework seemed to enhance their ability to reflect upon the usability of the policy and the work needed to implement and evaluate it. Furthermore, they pinpointed that the digitalization policy appeared rather naïve in terms of contextual factors (lack of recontextualisation on the municipal level) and hindrances (lack of resources to tackle existing hindrances). 

Digital government often addresses how, where, and by whom digital transformation is brought into the complex institutional framed practices of governments and governance of society. However, digital transformation also points at critical demands to address the basic underlying institutional design of governments. The ongoing digital transformation of public welfare institutions opens for a gradual redesign of public institutions. It is important to address core values, such as inclusion, diversity, and literacy, to ensure a reflected transformation and re-design of public institutions. The purpose of this paper is to show how new forms of digital public services may have to be matched with institutional re-design to sustain public values and legitimate governments. We build on Ostrom’s eight design principles for institutional governance of common-pool resources and propose four principles for analyzing potential needs for re-design of institutions. Through a re-analysis of two case studies on automation in Swedish public organizations, we illustrate and discuss the institutional design. Hereby, we identify critical points for further analysis of emerging demands for institutional re-design. The analysis indicates that we must see beyond the organizational changes of digital government reforms and programs. We need to stretch into the institutional and foundational models of the public sector and how to provide equal and resilient welfare in a digital and changing world. We conclude by suggesting an agenda for research on institutional re-design in the digital era.