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Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to renew organizational processes, culture, and customer experiences (Kane, Palmer, Phillips, Kiron, and Buckley, 2015; Vial, 2019). However, it is not about the technology alone (Andriole, 2017; Furr and Shipilov 2019; Tabrizi, Lam, Girard, and Irvin, 2019). Along with technology deployment, leading corporations use marketing techniques such as consumer journey mapping to design positive customer experiences (Becker and Jaakkola, 2020; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). As user experience is driven by the degree of effort that is required to access a product or service, simplifying the consumer journey and reducing the number of touchpoints has become a top priority for many digital and non-digital companies (Maechler, Neher, and Park, 2016; Rawson, Duncan, and Jones, 2013). Digital masters excel in this domain. Amazon’s one-click ordering feature for example erases several touchpoints and epitomizes corporate concerns to make the consumer’s journey as short and frictionless as possible.
Such digital transformation also concerns governments’ services. A survey conducted with over 1200 government officials from around 70 countries (Eggers and Bellman, 2015) notes that around 76 percent of respondents think that digital technologies have the potential to disrupt the public sector. In practice however, public services seem to be lagging, much to the frustration of citizens (Castelnovo and Sorrentino, 2018; Carvalho and Brito, 2012; Munro, 2020). One of the possible reasons for such users’ frustrations may be due to approaching digital transformation as a technological process with relatively less regard for the citizen for whom services are designed (Curtis, 2019; Janowski, 2015).
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of public services (Agostino, Arnaboldi, and Lema, 2020). Application of digital technology is part of the solution to fundamentally transforming the relationship between the public service and the citizen (King and Cotterill, 2007; Eggers and Bellman, 2015; Nili, Barros, and Tate 2019). However, digital solutions need to be paired with a fundamental cultural and organizational shift from a bureaucratic orientation to a citizen-centric focus (Claver, Llopis, Gascó, Molina, and Conca 1999; Curtis, 2019; Mergel, Kattel, Lember, and McBride, 2018). As Colin MacDonald, Chair of OECD e-Leaders notes, “If governments are to stay relevant, we need to be willing to fundamentally rethink how we serve our citizens” (MacDonald, 2017).