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191
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Introduction
Agile and digital transformation of the public sector
Skills and Expertise
Current institution
Additional affiliations
August 2016 - present
August 1999 - August 2002
August 2008 - July 2014
Education
June 2005 - August 2008
August 2002 - May 2005
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Field of study
- Visiting doctoral student
August 1999 - May 2005
Publications
Publications (191)
Governments need to adapt to changes in their internal and external environments and create systems that allow them to scan trends, identify developments, predict their potential impact on the organization, and quickly learn how to implement changes to their standard operating procedures. As a response, government organizations are adopting agile a...
Governments need to adapt to changes in their internal and external environments and create systems that allow them to scan trends, identify developments, predict their potential impact on the organization, and quickly learn how to implement changes to their standard operating procedures. As a response, government organizations are adopting agile a...
The evolving concept of agile has fundamentally changed core aspects of software design, project management, and business operations. The agile approach could also reshape government, public management, and governance in general. Here, we introduce the modern agile movement, reflect on how it can benefit public administrators, and describe several...
Agile refers to a work management ideology with a set of productivity frameworks that support continuous and iterative progress on work tasks by reviewing one's hypotheses, working in a human-centric way, and encouraging evidence-based learning. In practice, public administrations have started to use agile principles and methods to plan projects, w...
Public administration educators typically fail to incorporate evidence-based or even hypothesized guidance on the necessary digital competencies needed by public leaders and how they should be taught. Recognizing this gap, we apply participatory action research to derive eight competences and supporting teaching tools for digital government teacher...
Das vorliegende Kapitel beleuchtet die digitale Transformation des deutschen Staates in einem komplexen Mehrebenensystem, das von Bund, Ländern und Kommunen geprägt ist. Trotz umfangreicher Gesetzesinitiativen wie dem Onlinezugangsgesetz (OZG) bleibt die Umsetzung vieler digitaler Verwaltungsleistungen hinter den Erwartungen zurück. Koordinationspr...
AI implementation is part of the digital transformation efforts of National Libraries. To understand what the challenges are and derive recommendations for other libraries, we researched the AI implementation. Based on 90 interviews with library and AI experts, we identified ten European National Libraries and included the Library of Congress and t...
AI implementation in National Libraries is a multi-actor endeavour that includes many internal as well as external contributors. The literature on the subject is, however, sparse and still developing. In this chapter, I provide the theoretical framework and the research design for the EU LibrarIN project that is built on the co-production literatur...
The Royal National Library of Belgium (KBR) collects all Belgian publications and safeguards the country’s cultural and historical heritage. Given the increasing volume of records and the existence of records that are only catalogued on paper cards, there emerged a need for an AI-based solution. In response, KBR initiated a project called Retrocata...
The Library of Congress’ (LoC) project “Exploring Computational Description” (ECD) is investigating the use of machine learning (ML) to create metadata for e-books that have not yet been catalogued. In-house the LC Labs carried out this initiative with the U.S. Programs, Law, and Literature Division and an external vendor. An initial budget of $250...
This open access book explores how national libraries digitally transform their processes and services by using artificial intelligence and shows how they integrate co-creation strategies and provide actionable insights and recommendations for policymakers and library managers to help shape the future of libraries. It is the result of the LibrarIN...
As part of its commitment to innovation and to improve the accessibility of the library's collection of resources from the long nineteenth century, the British Library ran the "Living with Machines" project between 2018 and 2023. The Library's project uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to improve access to historical collections. The li...
The National Library of Finland developed and implemented an automated subject indexing and classification tool, Annif, which is now also used by other National Libraries. The tool is integrated into Finto AI, an in-house metadata management system launched in 2020. These two AI-driven solutions were created by the growing volume of digitally colle...
The German National Library (DNB), as mandated by the German National Library Act of 2006, is responsible for collecting all German cultural artefacts, including digital and non-physical resources. To meet this requirement, DNB engaged in a Machine Learning (ML) project to improve metadata generation. After a while the project transitioned to a com...
Applications of automated text analysis techniques have gained significant attention in recent years. Automated text analysis methods are transforming research by offering valuable tools for robust textual analysis and data-driven theory-building. These methods’ impacts on the rigor of qualitative text analysis remain under-researched. We use an ad...
Sovereign data infrastructures are a central building block of the European Data Strategy, yet little is known about how public administrations share and collaborate on both open and restricted data. This research addresses the gap by systematically analysing the existing literature on data collaboration within the field of digital government resea...
Transforming public services from an analog to a digital delivery mode is generally assumed to have positive effects. Most recently, these transformations include the co-creation of newly designed digital services by including users in the design, development, and delivery process. The outcomes beyond creating a digital public service are, however,...
Public bureaucracies can be digitally transformed by using co-production approaches to design and develop digital public services with input from their stakeholders. Drawing on interviews with international digital transformation experts, this article explores what co-production looks like-conceptually and empirically. We are making a theoretical c...
This exploratory analysis investigates self-reported work practices that managers consider to be crucial for driving smart city transformation. We build upon the literature on institutional work and highlight different institutional work types. Using interviews, we show that smart city managers use a combination of institutional work that includes...
Digital transformation has become a buzzword that is permeating multiple fields, including public administration and management. However, it is unclear what is transformational and how incremental and transformational change processes are linked. Using the PRISMA method, we conduct a systematic literature review to structure this growing body of ev...
innovations to push the conversation about the digital transformation of the public
sector forward. This special issue focuses on actual implementation approaches or
challenges that public managers are facing while they fulfil new policy that asks for
the implementation of AI in public administrations. In addition to assessing the
contributions of...
Kurzbeschreibung LibrarIN ist ein von der Europäischen Kommission finan-ziertes Forschungsprojekt, das neue Wege für ein partizi-patives Management und eine nachhaltige Finanzierung europäischer Bibliotheken als wichtige Kultureinrichtung erforscht. In dem Projekt wird untersucht, wie Bibliothe-ken neue Funktionen, Dienstleistungen und die Zusammen...
Digitalisation has changed society, and, as a result, public administrations are required to undergo significant changes to satisfy emergent societal needs. These changes impact all areas of the public sector, including the development and provision of digital services, the design of processes, and the development of policy. To implement the digita...
Der Verwaltungskontext in Deutschland wird in Forschung und Praxis oft als zu speziell angesehen, als dass Deutschland von Ländern wie Estland etwas über die digitale Transformation der Verwaltung lernen könnte. Der Beitrag hinterfragt, ob das wirklich stimmt.
Insgesamt mehr als 900 deutsche Delegationen haben inzwischen das e-Briefing Center in Es...
Fellowships sind eine Erfolg versprechende Methode, um Innovationen voranzutreiben. Voraussetzung sind eine gute Vorbereitung, Offenheit gegenüber neuen Arbeitspraktiken und agilen Methoden und die Übernahme vom Experimentierraum in die täglichen Routinen.
In this report, the author discusses how digital service teams bring “service
designers” into government to transform service delivery. These designers use
human-centered design approaches to help public sector organizations refine
strategies, rethink the nature of services, and reflect the way that citizens want
to use a public service. The report...
The European Commission’s eGovernment report states that “eGovernment in Europe is characterized by a “virtuous circle”: public administrations develop better and better digital services because user demand is high; and more and more users access government services online because these services are available and easy touse” [1]. In this report, Au...
Die Modernisierung der öffentlichen Verwaltung hin zu agilen und nutzerzentrierten Arbeitsweisen kann u.a. durch die Teilnahme an Innovationsfellowships erreicht werden. Diese Veröffentlichung beschreibt wie Innovationsfellowships erfolgreich umgesetzt werden können. Dazu werden zehn Handlungsempfehlungen beschrieben, die Entscheidungsträger in der...
This study focuses on the dynamic managerial capabilities of smart city managers and the organizational readiness of a city administration required to drive smart city transformation. After reviewing the literature, we conducted semi-structured interviews with smart city managers in 40 smart cities. We identified five dynamic capabilities that effe...
Design Thinking ist ein Innovationsansatz, der auf kollaborative Zusammenarbeit und gemeinsames Lernen ausgelegt ist, um komplexe Probleme zu lösen. Vorgestellt werden die notwendige Haltung und Methoden, mit deren Hilfe die Verwaltung agiler und digitaler werden kann.
Der Koalitionsvertrag pusht die Verwaltung insbesondere dazu digitaler und agile...
This report provides background information on GovTech dynamics in the EU. It starts by giving an overview of the current state of public procurement for innovation (PPI). The report highlights the rather uniform definitions of PPI, its purpose, existing barriers and obstacles, and explains different types of procurement models and their processes....
To support governments in the EU embracing GovTech, this report provides an overview of the diversity of GovTech programmes and shares lessons learnt for setting up government-run GovTech programmes. While the focus of this report is on national GovTech programmes, its findings and conclusions can be applied to other levels of government as well.
T...
Previous research has identified a variety of barriers to digital government, and regularly emphasizes the importance of individuals that navigate institutional contexts and strategically pursue digital government solutions. This exploratory analysis investigates how these individuals understand barriers to digital government and the strategies tha...
Living labs have gained increased attention in research and practice as both a practical and theoretical innovation phenomenon that emphasizes co-creation, real-life settings, and user/customer involvement. More recently, living labs have also emerged as a specific approach to open innovation processes in the context of publics across the EU. Never...
Living labs have gained increased attention in research and practice as both a practical and theoretical innovation phenomenon that emphasizes co-creation, real-life settings, and user/customer involvement. More recently, living labs have also emerged as a specific approach to open innovation processes in the context of publics across the EU. Never...
Public administrations are investing in the digital transformation of their citizen-oriented services and internal administrative processes. They are using co-production approaches and include different types of stakeholders into these transformative processes to increase service quality and generate public value. In this study, we investigate how...
Die Digitalisierung der OZG-Leistungen in den Digitallaboren zeigt einen Bedarf anneuen technologischen sowie überfachlichen Kompetenzen auf. Die Aneignungpassiert vor allem in diesem Experimentierfeld. Der Beitrag identifiziert dienotwendigen Digitalkompetenzen und macht Vorschläge zur Aufnahme in dieRoutinen der öffentlichen Verwaltung.
Living Labs—innovation units established to introduce new methods and approaches into public sector organizations—have received a lot of attention as methods for experimentation and open innovation practices in public sector organizations. However, little is known so far about how they co-create public value and which conditions influence these co-...
The public administration literature and adjacent fields have devoted increasing attention to living labs as environments and structures enabling the co-creation of public sector innovation. However, living labs remain a somewhat elusive concept and phenomenon, and there is a lack of understanding of its versatile nature. To gain a deeper understan...
Attracting highly skilled IT talent has become a priority and an immense burden for government organizations-especially when they have other-higher paying-employment opportunities. We set out to explore why IT professionals choose a government job to make an impact on society. We aim at disentangling the effects of different types of motives, such...
In the digital transformation of public administrations, objectives are no longer simply the implementation of new technology, but the involvement of all stakeholders into the process of digitalization. The Digital Roadmap of the Austrian government emphasizes the need of co-production of public services as a key element to public service delivery...
In the digital transformation of public administrations, objectives are no longer simply the implementation of new technology, but the involvement of all stakeholders into the process of digitalization. The Digital Roadmap of the Austrian government emphasizes the need of co-production of public services as a key element to public service delivery...
Digital transformation of the German public sector is embedded in a large-scale reform focussing on digitalisation and de-bureaucratisation of public services. By 2022, 575 public services will have been digitised. Digitalisation is, however, a contested topic in Germany: modernisation efforts have been stalled resulting in backlogs and the delay o...
We sometimes dismiss Agile methods too easily,
demeaning them as nothing but colorful post-its and
hype. How can we help public managers understand
how Agile concepts can—and should—be part
of their standard toolbox of teams and managers
working at all levels of government? Two points are
critical: First, Agile fits well with the core values of
mod...
The evolving concept of “agile” has fundamentally changed core aspects of software design , project management , and business operations . The agile approach could also reshape government , public management , and governance in general . In this Viewpoint essay , the authors introduce the modern agile movement , reflect on how it can benefit public...
We sometimes dismiss Agile methods too easily - that they are nothing but colorful post-its and hype. Our goal here is to help public managers see how Agile concepts can be part of the standard toolbox of teams and managers working at all levels of government. We have two main messages: 1) Agile fits well with the core values of modern government,...
Der digitale Wandel macht deutlich, dass der öffentlichen Verwaltung zur
Umsetzung Kompetenzen fehlen. Dieser Beitrag berichtet über die Ergebnisse von Experteninterviews und zeigt Wege zur digitalen Reife der öffentlichen Verwaltung auf.
La transformation numérique de l’État a acquis une importance croissante au sein des agendas
gouvernementaux durant la dernière décennie. En Europe, des directions du numérique rattachées
aux niveaux hiérarchiques les plus élevés de l’administration ont émergé pour impulser et
mettre en oeuvre la transformation numérique dans leur pays. Bien que ce...
In 2017, The New Yorker published a story titled ‘Estonia, the Digital Republic'(Heller 2017). The article's subtitle was ‘Its Government is Virtual, Borderless, Blockchained, and Secure. Has this Tiny Post-Soviet Nation Found the Way of the Future?’It summarizes the buzz around Estonia's digital transformation: from the outside, at least, it is se...
Estonia’s transition to free-market capitalism and liberal democracy is marked by three distinct features: economic success, digital transformation of its public sector, and a rapid increase and persistence of social inequality in Estonia. Indeed, Estonia has become one of the most unequal societies in Europe. Economic success and increasing social...
National governments are setting up digital service teams (DST) – IT units outside the centralized CIO's office – to respond to complex governmental and societal challenges in a responsive and agile manner. DSTs emerge as a third space between centralized and decentralized IT departments that are triggered by large-scale IT failures and the need to...
Digital transformation approaches outside the public sector are changing citizens' expectations of governments' ability to deliver high-value, real-time digital services. In response to the changing expectations and triggered by supranational agreements, governments are changing their mode of operation to improve public service delivery , be more e...
Die digitale Transformation der öffentlichen Verwaltung umfasst die Neukonzeption von internen und externen Verwaltungsleistungen. In Deutschland ist dieses Reformvorhaben maßgeblich durch das Onlinezugangsgesetz (OZG) angestoßen worden, auf dessen Grundlage bis 2022 alle Verwaltungsleistungen digital umgesetzt werden sollen. Basierend auf Intervie...
Bisher orientieren sich Digitalisierungsbemühungen
in der öffentlichen
Verwaltung vor allem an
den Fachverantwortlichkeiten und
Fachprozessen, die in oftmals isoliert
operierenden Ressorts organisiert sind.
Ein erster Schritt in Richtung Orientierung
der Dienstleistungen an den
Bedürfnissen der Bürger wurde mit dem
OZG angestoßen. Fachverantwortlic...
In 2017, The New Yorker published a story titled ‘Estonia, the Digital Republic’ (Heller 2017). The article’s subtitle was ‘Its Government is Virtual, Borderless, Blockchained, and Secure. Has this Tiny Post-Soviet Nation Found the Way of the Future?’ It summarizes the buzz around Estonia’s digital transformation: from the outside, at least, it is...
Koproduktion von öffentlichen Dienstleistungen bedeutet, dass diese nicht nur von Verwaltungsmitarbeitern erstellt werden, sondern in Zusammenarbeit mit Bürgern und der Zivilgesellschaft. Dabei muss die öffentliche Verwaltung zunehmend eine Nutzerperspektive einnehmen, um ihre Dienstleistungen effektiv und effizient erbringen zu können.
Koproduktion von öffentlichen Dienstleistungen bedeutet, dass diese nicht nur von Verwaltungsmitarbeitern erstellt werden, sondern in Zusammenarbeit mit Bürgern und der Zivilgesellschaft. Dabei muss die öffentliche Verwaltung zunehmend eine Nutzerperspektive einnehmen, um ihre Dienstleistungen effektiv und effizient erbringen zu können.
U.S. cities, among the vanguards of open data globally, are investing in renewed efforts to support Open Government with the creation of open data portals that are used to provide machine-readable administratively collected data sets. Transparency of the public sector is still widely seen as the main outcome of these efforts. Such a simplistic view...
Big Data und Data-Science-Ansätze finden Einzug in die öffentliche
Verwaltung. Dieses Kapitel bietet zunächst eine Definition von Big
Data in der öffentlichen Verwaltung an und leitet die unterschiedlichen
Datenquellen für historische, Echtzeit- und prädiktive Big-DataAnalysen
ab. Danach werden Beispiele für organisationale Einheiten
in der öffentl...
Digital transformation has emerged as a term that describes the departure from digitization efforts to a full stack revision of the policies, processes and services in order to create simpler user experiences for citizens and frontline workers. While previous waves of digitization focused on the transition from analog to (parallel) digital services...
Executive Summary
Digital service offices have emerged in governments around the world over the past six years as “tech surge teams” to respond to and repair urgent technology failures, or as an alternative structural approach to rethinking processes and implementation strategies in government digital transformation efforts.This report shares insi...
Social media measurement is important for understanding an organization ' s reach and engagement with its audiences. In response to Warren Kagarise and Staci M. Zavattaro ' s question about what works in social media measurement, this article discusses how public administration researchers and practitioners are using social media data that they can...
Online Open Innovation (OI) platforms like Challenge.gov are used to post public sector problem statements, collect and evaluate ideas submitted by citizens with the goal to increase government innovation. Using quantitative data extracted from contests posted to Challenge.gov and qualitative interviews with thirty-six public managers in fourteen f...
This article offers an overview of the conceptual, substantive, and practical issues surrounding “big data” to provide one perspective on how the field of public affairs can successfully cope with the big data revolution. Big data in public affairs refers to a combination of administrative data collected through traditional means and large-scale da...
Governments are facing an information technology upgrade and legacy problem: outdated systems and acquisition processes are resulting in high-risk technology projects that are either over budget or behind schedule. Recent catastrophic technology failures, such as the failed launch of the politically contested online marketplace Healthcare.gov in th...
Digital transformation is a holistic approach to move government organizations from simple digitization efforts to cultural, managerial, procedural, and developmental changes of the organization as a whole. Using a theory of change approach, this article derives a definition of digital transformation as the outcome variable and the necessary precon...
Since 1990 mortality and morbidity decline has been more extensive for some conditions prevalent in low- and middle-income countries than for others. One reason may be differences in the effectiveness of global health networks, which have proliferated in recent years. Some may be more capable than others in attracting attention to a condition, in g...
Public affairs schools face the challenge of including emergent topics in their core or elective curricula to prepare students for the changing requirements of the public sector job market. Some such topics reflect advances in the use of information technologies; others reflect updates to industry standards or changing needs of public sector inform...
Social media applications are extending the one-directional static e-government paradigm beyond information presentation and service delivery. They allow for bidirectional exchanges with citizens and across levels of government. Social media applications include social sharing, content creation, content curation, and open innovation platforms. In t...
Public Administration researchers are facing the opportunities and challenges to analyze large-scale datasets that are either passively created through online interactions between devices, websites, or social media users, and can be actively harvested by resources through open application programming interfaces (APIs) and derive meaningful implicat...
Open government initiatives in the U.S. government focus on three main aspects: transparency, participation, and collaboration. Especially the collaboration mandate is relatively unexplored in the literature. In practice, government organizations recognize the need to include external problem solvers into their internal innovation creation processe...
A key task in emergency management is the timely dissemination of information to decision makers across different scales of operations, particularly to individual citizens. Incidents over the past decade highlight communication gaps between government and constituents that have led to suboptimal outcomes. Social media can provide valuable tools to...
Many countries around the world are opening their data on all levels of government. Open data mandates are institutionalized in form of policies, followed by the publication of data. Depending on the degree of innovativeness, financial and political support, the implementation of open data release varies across government organizations. Important f...
The traditional norms of hierarchical government, expert-driven decision-making, institutional control, and centralization have begun to fade as the capacities of computation and communication technologies have increased, the costs of community engagement have declined, data have become increasingly available and accessible, and digital literacy an...
Background: Government agencies in the United States are creating mobile health (mHealth) apps as part of recent policy
changes initiated by the White House’s Digital Government Strategy.
Objective: The objective of the study was to understand the institutional and managerial barriers for the implementation of
mHealth, as well as the resulting adop...
This symposium will focus on the use of open data by government organizations to stimulate innovation through collaboration with private actors, including businesses, nonprofit organizations, and members of the community. This includes an emphasis on how Web 2.0 technologies can be used to facilitate processes of innovation that enable public agenc...
Open collaboration has evolved as a new venue for innovation creation in the public sector. Government organizations are using online platforms to crowdsource and co-produce public sector innovations with the help of external and internal problem solvers. Most recently the U.S. federal government has allowed agencies to collaboratively create and s...
A key task in emergency management is the timely dissemination of information to decision makers across different scales of operations, particularly individual citizens. Incidents over the past decade highlight communication gaps between government and constituents that have led to suboptimal outcomes. Social media provide tools to reduce those gap...
