From recovery resilience to transformative resilience: How digital platforms reshape public service provision during and post COVID-19

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates how government-sponsored digital platforms facilitated the transition from recovery resilience during COVID-19 to transformative resilience of city-level service provision post COVID-19. Using an in-depth case study of the Weijiayuan platform implemented in the Jiaxing City of China, we found that digital platforms played critical roles in both stages of COVID-19 and helped facilitate the transition from recovery resilience to transformative resilience. This transition was made possible by four conditions: adopting and experimenting digital platforms with public entrepreneurship, achieving a critical mass of usership, incentivizing the coproduction of public services, and generating accountability mechanisms for government responsiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Recovery resilience
• transformative resilience
• digital government
• platforms
• citizen participation
• resilient public service provision
• covid-19

Author bio

Yongdong Shen (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Affairs, Deputy Dean of the Academy of Social Governance, and Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of China’s System Research at Zhejiang University. His main research interests deal with government-nonprofit relations, digital governance, and collaborative governance.

Yuan (Daniel) Cheng (Ph.D.) is an Assistant Professor in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on government-nonprofit relations, coproduction, and the distributional and performance implications of cross-sectoral collaboration.

Jianxing Yu (Ph.D.) is Professor and President of Zhejiang Gongshang University. He is also Professor of for School of Public Affairs and Dean for Academy of Social Governance at Zhejiang University. His research focuses on government-nonprofit relations and local governance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. As the Jiaxing government officially defines, Weijiayuan means micro Jiaxing community.

2. Data from National Health Commission of People´s Republic of China (http://www.nhc.gov.cn/) and The People´s Government of Zhejiang Province (http://www.zj.gov.cn/col/col1228996608/index.html).

3. The Zhejiang provincial government executive ordered the first-level public health emergency response from 23 January 2020 to 2 March 2020. The entire province locked down, and mobility restrictions were imposed on Zhejiang’s cities. This included setting up building entrance checkpoints, establishing quarantine zones, public transit shutdowns, and limiting population inflows and outflows from the city and within-city mobility.

4. The platform’s vitality rate of citizen participation is measured by the number of monthly visitors divided by the total number of registered users on Weijiayuan.

5. Other public service programmes include ‘Neighborhood Mutual Assistance’ ‘Making an Appointment for a Mask’ ‘The Need for Community Services’ ‘Psychological Consultation’ and ‘Service Consultation’.

6. Interview with one resident from Jiashan County of Jiaxing on 11 December 2020.

7. Interview with the managing official from the Jiaxing Municipal Political and Legal Committee on 6 October 2020.

8. Interview with one resident from Tongxiang County, Jiaxing on 29 October 2020.

9. Interview with one resident from Nanhu District, Jiaxing on 23 September 2020.

10. Interview with a managing official from the Jiaxing Municipal Political and Legal Committee on 21 October 2020.

11. Interview with one resident from Jiashan County, Jiaxing on 12 December 2020.

12. Interview with one resident from Pinghu County, Jiaxing on 10 December 2020.

13. Interview with one village staff member from Nanhu District, Jiaxing on 23 September 2020.

14. Interview with one municipal leader of Jiaxing city on 10 December 2020.

15. Data from the internal ‘The Annual Report of Jiaxing Municipal Governance in 2020’.

16. Data from the internal ‘The Annual Report of Jiaxing Municipal Governance in 2019’. Interview with one resident from Jiashan County, Jiaxing on 12 December 2020.

17. Interview with one resident from Jiashan County, Jiaxing on 12 December 2020.

18. Interview with one supermarket manager from Jiashan County, Jiaxing on 11 December 2020.

19. Interview with one resident from Tongxiang County, Jiaxing on 30 October 2020.

20. Interview with one leader from the Jiaxing municipal government on 22 October 2020.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72022016; 71704156), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. LR20G030002, the Key Project of Humanities and Social Sciences in Ministry of Education of China (21JZD019) and Zhejiang Provincial Social Science Foundation of China (19YSXK02ZD-3).