The impact of the bureaucratic environment on public service digitalization

Abstract

Research on public-sector digitalization has traditionally focused on macro-level societal, economic and governance conditions, as well as individual-level challenges faced by civil servants in implementing digital public services. Yet it has overlooked the institutional incentives and constraints embedded in bureaucratic environments, and how cross-national variation in these traits shapes digital transformation. Our study addresses this gap by identifying how core traditional Weberian characteristics of bureaucracies comparatively affect public service digitalization. Drawing on cross-national datasets covering 193 countries over 22 years, we examine the effects of bureaucratic professionalization, bureaucratic closedness and the adoption of managerial performance-based practices on the production of digital public services. Our findings show that more professional bureaucracies alone do not necessarily lead to better digitalization, but rather this occurs when such bureaucracies include more ‘open’ elements in their structures, including more open hiring practices and side entries of specialized personnel.