[Return to ELISE's Exploring Digital Government Transformation page] 

The policy brief "Digital Government Transformation in the EU" written by Gianluca Misuraca (Scientific & Technical Lead), Egidijus Barcevičius and Cristiano Codagnone, summarises the JRC research on ‘Exploring Digital Government Transformation in the EU: understanding public sector innovation in a data-driven society’, in short DigiGov.

DigiGov, was designed to contribute to the shedding of light on how ICT-enabled innovation in the public sector can transform systems of governance and support policy makers in better addressing systemic and unexpected challenges.

The headlines of the research are:

• Policy makers are faced with the urgency of embracing the complexity involved in the demanding task of ‘reinventing governance in the digital age’, at a crucial moment for the future of Europe and its role in the global policy debate.
• The future of Digital Government Transformation will depend on the capacity of governments to effectively ‘steer’ the digital transformation process, and the extent to which citizens will be actively in charge of their digital lives, with specific regard to their rights as data subjects.
• The Covid-19 emergency revealed the unpreparedness of our society to deal with unexpected challenges, but also raised hopes of exploiting the opportunities that emerged to achieve a real Digital Government Transformation.

 

Read the full document here.

DigiGov conceived within the framework of the JRC-led ELISE Action of the ISA2 Programme coordinated by the Directorate General Informatics (DIGIT), which has pioneered innovative data-centric approaches to interoperability and digital government.

The study performed an extensive analysis of the state of play, from which a Conceptual Framework (DigiGov-F) was derived and applied to four empirical case studies with an experimental component. Throughout the research, a selected group of recognised experts and representatives of key stakeholders were engaged to validate the findings and to contribute to the outlining of a set of policy and research recommendations, including the design of future scenarios for Digital Government Transformation at the horizon 2040.