The Legitimacy of Algorithmic Decision-Making in Public E-Services

The research project on the legitimacy of algorithmic decision-making in public e-services is embedded in the literature on organizational legitimacy, algorithmic decision systems, and e-government.

Regularly, the reasoning for digitalizing and automating public services is based on promised gains in efficiency for public organizations and improved quality of service delivery for citizens. Moreover, the increasing automation of public e-services is resulting in a gradual reduction of human interaction within the citizen-state relationship. This research project focuses on the question, of how citizens' perceptions of a public e-service and a public organization change if no human public official is involved. To approach this question, methods of behavioral research like discrete choice experiments or survey experiments will be applied.

The objective of this research is to understand how the advancing digitalization of public administration influences the relationship between citizens and the state.