Understanding Digital Government Transformation: Organizational and Citizen-Level Perspectives

This cumulative dissertation examines key organizational challenges of digital government by analyzing how digital transformation is shaped within public organizations and how it is perceived in citizen–state interactions. It brings together complementary studies that address digital government from organizational and citizen-oriented perspectives. On the organizational level, the dissertation investigates how municipalities make sense of digital transformation and translate abstract reform agendas into concrete courses of action. Drawing on a qualitative study design, it shows how administrations construct strategic narratives about digital government transformation that frame problems, assign responsibility, and legitimize change. At the citizen level, the dissertation draws on a survey experiment to examine how digitalization, and in particular the use of algorithmic decision-making, shapes the evaluation of public e-services. The findings suggest that citizens’ perceptions of service quality and organizational legitimacy are driven primarily by concrete service design and performance, rather than by the decision-making mode itself. Overall, the dissertation contributes to a more nuanced understanding of digital government by highlighting that both the implementation and the consequences of digital transformation depend on how it is interpreted, communicated, and experienced in practice.