Digital transformation going local: implementation, impacts and constraints from a German perspective

IMPACT

The digital transformation of public administration is expected to fundamentally reshape the institutional setting of local service delivery, administration, and governance in Europe. Against this background, it is a cause for concern and criticism that the actual state of implementation, the impacts, and the hurdles faced at the local level of government have only scarcely been studied in public administration. The results of this study reveal several unintended and negative impacts of digital government reforms on public employees and citizens. This article provides policy-makers and managers with guiding principles for the implementation of digital change in organizations.

ABSTRACT

Digital government constitutes the most important trend of post-NPM reforms at the local level. Based on the results of a research project on local one-stop shops, this article analyses the current state of digitalization in German local authorities. The authors explain the hurdles of implementation as well as the impact on staff members and citizens, providing explanations and revealing general interrelations between institutional changes, impacts, and context factors of digital transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Administrative reforms
• digital transformation
• e-government
• Germany
• local government

The effectiveness and quality of public service provision depend largely on the capacity of local authorities to adopt administrative structures and processes for fast-changing environments and increasing demands from citizens. Local governments all over Europe have been massively affected by various waves of crises, such as the global financial crisis, austerity policies, the refugee crisis and, most recently, Covid-19 (Franzke & Kuhlmann, 2021; Kuhlmann et al., 2021a, 2021b). Reforms used to deal with these crises have taken a variety of trajectories—from New Public Management (NPM), to re-organization of service delivery between the local public, private and non-profit sectors, functional re-scaling, territorial consolidation, and inter-local co-operation (Bouckaert & Kuhlmann, 2016; Kuhlmann et al., 2021c). Local governments are now shifting to ‘post-NPM’ reforms (Halligan, 2010; Kuhlmann & Bogumil, 2019), such as digital transformation (Dunleavy et al., 2006). Digitalization of local service delivery now goes beyond the mere conversion of analogue data into digital formats—new models of organization (Vonk et al., 2007), process re-engineering (Eppel & Lips, 2016), and the digital upskilling of staff members (Hansen & Nørup, 2017; Tummers & Rocco, 2015) are transforming the interactions between citizens and local authorities as well as within the local administrations (Barbosa et al., 2013; Berger et al., 2016; Heuermann, 2018).

There are major research gaps on the digital transformation of public administration in terms of local government service provision, frontline administrative procedures and impact on employees. This article contributes to filling these gaps by analysing the current state of digitalization at the local government level in Germany, the hurdles of implementation, as well as its impact on local government staff and citizens. Our focus is on German local one-stop shops and we address the following questions:

• What institutional changes have resulted from the implementation of new digital tools and what level of digital maturity has been achieved?

• How has the digitalization affected staff members and citizens so far (also looking at age stratification)?

• What are major explanatory factors for the achieved results?

State of research and analytical framework

The German case from an international perspective

Comparative data has revealed that the state of digital governance in the public sector and the pace of digital transformation are uneven across countries. Whereas some countries are quite advanced, others have shown less progress or even a resistance to the digitalization reform movement (Ma & Zheng, 2019, p. 201; Melitski & Calista, 2016). Comparing the status quo of digital public services in Europe, Germany ranks only 21st out of 28 countries (European Commission, 2019). Missing, unsuitable and/or unknown electronic services have resulted in comparatively low user rates in Germany: the use of e-government offers, for example, is not progressing significantly, 48% of citizens used e-services in 2020 versus 45% in 2012 (Initiative D21, 2019, p. 10). In Germany, the state of digitalization in the public sector is well behind the far-reaching hopes associated with this modernization theme (Fromm et al., 2015).

In 2019, 19% of local government services were available online—an increase of only 3% over 2017 (Opiela et al., 2019, p. 27). The interoperability between local governments is insufficient, which also has to do with the high degree of (organizational) local autonomy in Germany’s highly decentralized federal system (Beck et al., 2017, p. 9) and thus relates to organizational challenges rather than technological issues (Lenk, 2018, p. 220).

Digitalization as an institutional policy

From a public policy perspective, the digitalization of administrative processes and public service delivery can be conceived as an institutional policy or ‘polity policy’ (Wollmann, 2004, p. 3) directed at remoulding the procedures and organizational structures of public institutions. This conceptualization of digital transformation as an institutional policy takes the critique into account put forward towards previous e-government studies which were predominantly concentrated on the technological perspective. In this technological approach, the importance of institutional and political aspects as salient factors for explaining implementation processes and success rates were considered (Savoldelli et al., 2014, p. 68). To assess the impacts and effects of this type of public policy—in contrast to (‘normal’) sectoral policies—a more complex analytical framework must be applied (Kuhlmann & Wayenberg, 2016, p. 239; Kuhlmann & Wollmann, 2011). As with any type of impact assessment, and against the backdrop of the conceptual and empirical hurdles, it is necessary to specify suitable assessment criteria and indicators when exploring the impacts of institutional policies. In our analysis, we apply a three step-model of impact assessment, drawing on Kuhlmann and Wayenberg (2016, p. 239); as well as Kuhlmann and Wollmann (2011); see also Pollitt and Bouckaert (2017); and Reiter et al. (2010). As a first step, we examined the institutional changes which have resulted from the implementation of digital tools and assess the level of digital maturity with regard to the information, communication, and transaction functions combining the front office (e-government) and the back office (e-administration) perspectives. The objective of our second step was to find out how these institutional and procedural changes affected the staff situation and the administrative procedures in local one-stop shops in terms of processing times and working conditions. Finally, we investigated citizens’ reactions to the local digitalization reforms, focusing on the use or non-use of new electronic service offers and possible gaps between citizens’ expectations and the reality of digital service provision. This step was intended to reveal the impact of the reforms outside the administrative organization on the part of citizens (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Assessing impacts of digitalization in the local public sector.

Institutional change

In the first step of our assessment, we analysed the institutional changes within local one-stop shops driven by digitalization. The transformational power of digital innovations within organizations can reach different levels regarding the complexity and depth of value added of new digital tools—also called levels of digital maturity (Coursey & Norris, 2008, p. 524; Fountain, 2001; Layne & Lee, 2001; Wescott, 2001). We assumed that the degree of digital transformation (digital maturity) would be lowest if local one-stop shops only use electronic formats to provide information to their clients, for example on websites, social media or smartphone apps (information function). A higher degree of digital transformation would be if one-stop shops were reaching out to their clients, for instance by answering inquiries or by holding preliminary discussions on administrative acts via email, which is the (two-way) communication function. Finally, digital maturity is most advanced in the case of an electronic transaction function which enables clients to finalize administrative practices, ideally without media, i.e. without the gap between digital processes and analogue processes—such as printing out digital applications for paper-based registries (Budding et al., 2018; Layne & Lee, 2001; Moon, 2002).

The impacts of digital transformation on citizens and staff have been largely understudied in e-government research regarding the local public sector, although empirical findings suggest that the success of digital transformation is positively related to citizen satisfaction (Ma & Zheng, 2019).

Local government staff

Regarding the second step of impact assessment, we concentrated on the staff situation, particularly working conditions, job pressures, and changes in the administrative procedures—specifically processing times. Our assessment was based on local government employees’ attitudes towards digitalization and their perceptions of possible reliefs or pressures resulting from digitalization. From previous studies we know that the introduction of new technologies results in rather ambiguous impacts on employees. On the one hand, it often leads to problems of acceptance and satisfaction—or even technophobia. Sources of these problems are varied and range from dissatisfaction with the functioning of new technical tools to lack of resources and organizational problems related to the implementation of new technologies (Dukic et al., 2017, p. 535). Furthermore, resistance to change and critical attitudes towards digital transformation can also be caused by employees’ fearing or experiencing a higher work load, losing control of professional autonomy, worsening job conditions, and increasing uncertainty or even being replaced by computers (Baldwin et al., 2012; Meijer, 2015). Therefore, digital transformation might be seen as threatening and the perceived usefulness of digital tools as low (Dukic et al., 2017), which then results in non-acceptance of, and resistance to, change (Coursey & Norris, 2008; Savoldelli et al., 2014) On the other hand, empirical findings suggest that public employees also appreciate the advantages of digital communication with citizens, specifically the speed and ease of use of digital tools (Berger et al., 2016). Taking these mixed findings into account, we wanted to shed light on the actual impacts of digital changes on local government employees’ day-to-day work, their working conditions and possible reliefs or new burdens.

Citizens

Citizens’ reactions, specifically the use and non-use of new digital service offers, were our third step of impact assessment. To identify possible explanations for our findings, we compared citizens’ expectations regarding digital service provision with their attitudes towards the services offered. Assuming that good functionality improves the usage of e-services (Zheng, 2017), we examined citizens’ assessments of e-service functionality and usability. Previous research has revealed reluctance on the part of citizens to visit government websites and use e-services, specifically if these are more complex and advanced (for example involving transactions; see Gauld et al., 2010, p. 184). However, if citizens are encouraged to use e-services (i.e. the upsides of e-services are communicated) they are also more inclined to appreciate the resulting benefits, such as time-saving and ease of use (Faulkner et al., 2019). Furthermore, existing studies suggest that citizens’ satisfaction with e-services is positively associated with their trust in government (Welch et al., 2005, p. 387). While there is a huge amount of literature about factors influencing the intention to use a service by the citizens (see Rana et al., 2012), we focused on two main factors outlined in the technology acceptance model (TAM): perceived usefulness and perceived usability (Davis, 1989; Rufín et al., 2012). We analysed whether digital services can be easily used without barriers (usability) and to what extent citizens consider digital services as something with a value added (i.e. saving time or money). We explored which services citizens requested, what their motivation was to use (more) digital services or to refuse usage, and how their expectations compared to reality. We related these findings to step one and two of the model in order to provide explanations for citizens’ attitudes, taking age stratification into account (Helbig et al., 2009).

Why?

Finally, we looked at contextual factors in digital transformation, to address the ‘why’ question of our study and to reveal the causes for the (limited) degree of digital maturity, as well as for the (critical) assessments by employees and citizens. In pertinent studies, different factors have been identified which constrain the progress and success of digitalization projects in the public sector (Meijer, 2015; Savoldelli et al., 2014; Scholl & Klischewski, 2007), ranging from budgetary barriers, such as austerity measures and cutback policies, privacy provisions, hard- and software problems and administrative structures to lack of skills, digital divides, and resistance to change.

Methods and database

We used a database which combines qualitative and quantitative survey methods to examine the three major variables (institutional changes, impacts, explanatory factors) and their interactions. Besides in-depth case studies with experts’ interviews in three selected cities (Bochum, Mannheim, and Karlsruhe), three surveys were conducted in 2018 (for details see Table 1):

Table 1. Surveys conducted.

	Target group	Sample	Respondents
City survey (all German cities >15, 000 inhabitants)	Mayors	N = 721	221; 30,7%
	Staff councils	N = 746	263; 35,3%
Citizen survey (in the three case study cities)	Karlsruhe	Random sample: 6,000	1171; 19,5%
	Bochum	Random sample: 2,000	418; 21%
	Mannheim	Survey at the local one-stop shop	N = 201
Staff survey (in two of the three case study cities)	Staff in local one stop-shop, Bochum	N = 75	40; 53,3%
	Staff in local one stop-shop, Karlsruhe	N = 135	70; 51,9%

• A survey across all German municipalities with more than 15,000 inhabitants (721 cities in total), labelled as our ‘city survey’, which was addressed to mayors and staff representatives.

• Citizen survey in the three case study cities (Bochum, Mannheim, Karlsruhe).

• A staff survey in two of the three case study cities (Mannheim had to be excluded due to concerns expressed by the staff council).

The respondents of the city survey were staff council representatives (N = 746; response rate: 35.3%) and mayors (N = 721; response rate: 30.7%). Table 1 sums up the underlying data from the quantitative surveys.

The case study cities (Bochum, Mannheim, and Karlsruhe) were selected because they are among the cities in Germany with an advanced level of digitalization. The size of a municipality matters—rather than other institutional factors—when it comes to determinants for successful adoption (Manoharan, 2013, p. 169), and all of our cities were in the same size category (large district-free cities) in order to control for this. In Bochum and Karlsruhe, the research team polled a random sample of respectively 2,000 and 6,000 citizens aged over 18, who had used local one-stop shops in the past three years, with a response rate of 20%. In Mannheim, 200 citizens were polled right after having been at the local one-stop shop. The use of various surveys and case studies allows accounting for multiple perspectives (Enticott, 2004). Through the different views represented we could get a realistic picture of the digitalization of local one-stop shops and validate our results.

Assessing impacts of digitalization in local governments

State of implementation and institutional changes: Step 1

As our survey findings show, local governments almost nationwide fulfil the information function, namely informing on the services provided by the local one-stop shops. However, interaction and digital implementation of administrative services (through emails and forms) were rare. For all the services listed (see Table 2), the information provided was comprehensive, and was easily found on city websites. Yet, the values of the communication function, and thus interactions with the local one-stop shop via emails and front-ends, were considerably lower than those for the information function. Not a single service reached 50%. The ability to fully finalize administrative services online was overall extremely weak and complete online processing of services could be carried out in no more than 13% of the municipalities (and then only regarding criminal records). Hence, the degree of implementation and the level of digital maturity was low overall. The current state of digital ‘immaturity’ can therefore be regarded as a partial implementation failure.

Table 2. Digital maturity in German local one-stop shops (the 10 most important services offered).

Service	Information available online	Partially processed online (forms, emails)	Fully processed online	N
Passports	75%	25%	5%	210
Certificates (birth/marriage)	71%	25%	9%	119
Criminal records	71%	27%	13%	188
Registration of residency	61%	36%	7%	197
Authentication of certificates	89%	10%	3%	149
Dog registration	71%	33%	6%	122
Residents’ parking permits	76%	18%	9%	103
Parking permits for people with disabilities	80%	22%	1%	106
Housing benefits	76%	22%	4%	78
Vehicle registration (only county-free cities)	75%	24%	7%	68

Source: Question in city survey of mayors: ‘Which of your local one-stop shop services are available online and to what extent?’

Although most of the services in Table 2 could in theory be fully processed online or even automated (for example vehicle registration), there are many hurdles, including legal constraints (such as signing passports in person) and a lack of harmonization that prevents the possibility of full electronic processing or automation.

Impacts on staff: Step 2

While, from the citizen’s point of view, it appears desirable to expand the online offering of digital administration services (see Table 3), administrative staff were critical. They saw digitalization as entailing dysfunctional impacts, such as excessive demand or congestion—especially for the communication function (email traffic). The results of our staff survey demonstrated that most of employees did not perceive digitalization as a relief, rather they linked it to increased workloads. Of the staff polled, 82% thought emails would add to their workload. Separating our results into positive (functional) and negative (dysfunctional) impacts, respondents generally saw digitalization as negative rather than positive.

Table 3. Positive and negative impacts of digitalization on staff.

Perceived impacts of digitalization by staff	Fully & quite relevant	Rather not & not at all relevant	N
Positive impacts
Increased transparency in processing status	67.2%	32.8%	64
Usual opening hours and workdays less relevant	65.7%	34.4%	67
Overall time reduction in procedures	62.3%	37.7%	69
Simplified administrative procedures	61.2%	38.8%	67
Reduced workload	38.8%	61.2%	67
Negative impacts
Constant availability	86.9%	13%	69
Technical problems	84%	15.9%	69
Problems with software and service providers	77.6%	22.4%	67
Additional processing time per case	76.4%	23.5%	68
Feeling of being controlled	72.3%	27.7%	65
Shifting working time from front to back office	67.7%	32.4%	68

Source: Staff survey.

All groups surveyed largely agreed that, thanks to the new systems, the flow of clients could be managed better, the work atmosphere improved, the level of satisfaction increased, and waiting times could be reduced. In addition, waiting areas were less overcrowded and complaints were not as frequent as before. Positive effects notwithstanding, the staff provided several highly critical evaluations of the impacts of digitalization. In addition, there was no significant increase in the number of transactions finalized per time unit. Another negative effect was a feeling of being controlled by digital features (72% agreed in the polls). There is, for instance, a fear of future job loss, if performance controls are introduced and bad performance figures are penalized. Most of the staff said that an increase in workload (61%) and in processing time per case (76%) derived from digitalization. A possible reason for this observation could be that technical issues (a negative effect of digitalization for 84% of the respondents) and software complexity (lamented by 78% of the employees) worsens pre-existing problems.

Relating the findings of step 2 back to our results from step 1 of the impact assessment we can conclude that the low degree of digital maturity in local governments, which is basically limited to the information and communication functions largely leaving aside the transaction function, is one of the major reasons for the negative views of surveyed staff members.

Impacts on citizens: Step 3

To assess the impacts of digitalization on citizens we drew on two criteria:

• The acceptance and use of local online offers by citizens, including reasons for possible non-use.

• The fit (or misfit) between citizens’ expectations and reality regarding local e-service delivery.

Only 10% of citizens opted to contact their local one-stop shops online. However, regarding the information function (local websites), citizens were quite positive in their assessments. About half (55%) of the citizens polled believed the clarity of their local one-stop shop’s website was good or rather good, whereas only one third (33%) considered it to be rather poor or poor. Overall, only 8% said they had had trouble retrieving the information they needed.

When asking citizens about the reasons for their willingness or unwillingness to make use of the online offer, we discovered that a significant number (39%) preferred personal contact, but the majority (61%) were open to online options. Almost half of the citizens polled (49%) said that non-usage was because they would rather have a personal consultation, whereas 25% found online applications too complex (versus 75% do not share this view; see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Reasons for citizens not to use local online services.

Having a closer look at the reasons for use and non-use of local e-services, we found a considerable generational divide. Only 8% of the respondents aged between 18 and 29 considered personal contact with the local administration to be more important than going online. In contrast, almost twice as many from the 30 to 49 age group and a good 34% of the over 50s agreed with this statement (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Reasons against expanding the online offer across all age groups. Values for the ‘very important’ category in the citizen survey.

Linking up our findings from step 3 to steps 1 and 2 of our analysis, the low maturity level and the bad implementation of local e-services (step 1) were the major reasons for the limited use by citizens and their low satisfaction with these services, which corresponds to the employees’ perceptions revealed in step 2 of our impact assessment. As administrative services can only rarely be finalized online and because the number of German municipalities offering an online service fully digitally amounts to only 13% (and mainly for criminal records), it is not surprising that 90% of German citizens use old-style contact formats.

Explanatory factors and hurdles to digital transformation in German local government

To provide some explanations for the very limited success of digital transformation in Germany so far, we drew on the literature on barriers of e-government (Hansen et al., 2018; Scholl & Klischewski, 2007), and related the major arguments to our empirical case.

Governance constraints

From previous research we know that the design and governance structure of institutional reforms plays an important role for their implementation and impact, which of course also applies to digitalization projects in local governments. Therefore, the patterns of governance in the multilevel system, as well as within local governments, must be considered when explaining digitalization processes and outcomes. In Germany, policy-making regarding digitalization is institutionally embedded in a highly decentralized federal structure and characterized by a multitude of sub-national units involved in decision-making who possess a large degree of autonomy (municipalities, counties) or are constitutional states (Länder) with their own legislatures, administrations and judiciaries. In terms of digital transformation, several problems and hurdles arise because there is not one single instance of unilateral decision-making and enforcement, but numerous entities with their own rights and powers. In order to ensure a coherent implementation of digital services across the country, an equal treatment of citizens and a homogeneous processing of cases, these actors in the multilevel system need to agree upon joint measures, uniform standards, and shared solutions. A certain degree of standardization, IT-consolidation, and harmonization across administrative levels and units is indispensable (Nograšek & Vintar, 2014). Otherwise, the necessary change management is impossible. However, this poses enormous challenges within the German multi-layered system. Many veto players are in place and digital reforms therefore require a high degree of vertical and horizontal co-ordination, collaboration, negotiation, and have high transaction costs (Bekkers & Homburg, 2007, p. 20; Ben & Schuppan, 2014). There is also a problem with fragmented and non-transparent responsibilities regarding digitalization policies at the federal level and partly also at the Länder level (Nationaler Normenkontrollrat, 2018). Finally, political support and leadership regarding digitalization projects at the local level can be limited (Coursey & Norris, 2008, p. 530; Meijer, 2015, p. 199; Savoldelli et al., 2014, p. 69; Torres et al., 2005, p. 541). As our case studies revealed, on the political side of the local councils, there is hardly any pressure to act and a general lack of strategic orientation or targets regarding digital transformation. The sporadic e-government initiatives that have come about have been implemented incrementally and powerful advocacy coalitions to push for digitalization are largely lacking. Instead, rather sporadic political preferences and contingent individual decisions determine whether there will be any budget available for digitalization.

Legal constraints

Another fundamental issue lies within administrative procedural law and legal provisions which frequently require personal contact and/or a handwritten form. This implies that, at some point in the administrative operation, authentication will be required, which usually results in media discontinuities. For example, to apply for a German passport, it is necessary to sign in person. In the event of a residence registration, which entails a change of address, the new address must be entered in the passport directly on site. Legal obstacles also include data protection regulations, non-disclosure of personal information and document storage obligations. Furthermore, there are major legal obstacles regarding data exchange between various administrative units in terms of the ‘once-only’ principle where a citizen is requested to enter their data only once and the data exchange with other relevant units is then processed by the respective authorities, for example using inter-connected digital registries, ideally without any intervention by the citizen. This principle has not been implementable so far because German privacy legislation provides that data must only be used for the purposes for which it was originally collected.

Technological and usability constraints

Further barriers to the digital progress in municipalities are technological conditions, specifically regarding the interface with citizens and the inclusion of some basic online components in digital applications, such as the e-payment function, which is a fundamental prerequisite for user-friendliness. So far, most administrative operations at the local level are charged without an immediate payment and integrating these components into digital applications often does not work. In general, e-services were usually not developed from a citizen or demand-oriented perspective, but from a supply- and administration-oriented view, which is also mirrored in the rather legalistic and bureaucratic language frequently used for online communication with citizens. Citizen-centricity in online service provision has been barely perceptible so far. Another example in this regard is the rarely used electronic identity card (eID) in Germany.

Resource-related constraints

Finally, the resource base of local governments, particularly the financing of digital projects, the availability of IT experts and the digital skills of staff members, are important explanatory factors of digital progress and reform impacts (Coursey & Norris, 2008, p. 528; Meijer, 2015, p. 199; Moon, 2002, pp. 292–230; Norris & Moon, 2005, p. 71; Savoldelli et al., 2014, pp. 66–67). Furthermore, the municipal sector cannot compete with the salaries paid to IT professionals in the private sector (Coursey & Norris, 2008, p. 529). Consequently, there is a serious shortage of professionally-qualified staff and know-how for more sophisticated digitalization projects, as well in terms of promoting the e-services that have already been implemented, for example through marketing concepts. Additional bottlenecks are due to weak leadership and management skills regarding reform implementation, change management, and process re-engineering.

Conclusion

In summary, our study shows that local government digital transformation has faced some major hurdles in Germany. Overall, there is a conspicuous gap in the implementation of new technologies resulting in the current state of digital immaturity at the local level of government. This has created several unintended and negative impacts for both public employees and citizens. Although local one-stop shops are key to the digitalization of the local administration, digital transformation is currently limited to the information function of e-government, while online communication between local governments and citizens is much less advanced and the transaction function is virtually non-existent. One consequence of this digital immaturity is that the work relief that should have come along with digitalization did not actually happen from the employees’ point of view. Instead, they often reported increased stress, higher workloads, additional time to process each case, more demanding procedures, and higher burdens due to permanent availability to managers via email as impacts of digitalization approaches.

As far as citizens were concerned, we found a notable generational divide in our survey regarding the desirability of digital government. Nevertheless, the majority of citizens wanted more e-services and to have the same level of digital interaction with public authorities as they were having with commercial providers. However, because the digital offers by local governments are limited, citizens are relying on old-style access channels like personal contact. We found a large mismatch between citizens’ expectations, demands and requests on the one hand and the reality of e-service delivery on the other.

Our analysis provides several explanatory factors for the current state of implementation and the measurable impacts to guide future research and political decision-making regarding digital policies. For example, the decentralized nature of the German administrative system is a particular challenge because digital policies require a certain degree of standardization, IT consolidation, and harmonization across levels and jurisdictions. Otherwise, there are risks of fragmentation, confusion and incompatibility with the digital offer being a patchwork, rather than providing user-friendly services. Future comparative research should therefore study the governance contexts in various countries to find out whether, and under what circumstances, these hamper or promote the advancement of digital transformation. It is possible that policy-makers in fragmented (federal or highly decentralized) multi-level systems face greater challenges when it comes to co-ordinating, managing and implementing digitalization-related policies when compared with unitary and more centralized systems. At the same time, maybe it is easier in decentralized contexts to integrate the expertise and experiences of sub-national actors, municipalities and local practitioners into new functional and user-friendly digital formats. In Germany, this could be of particular relevance since the majority of the 575 services listed in the national plan (around 76%) are under the responsibility of the Länder and municipalities (for example birth certificates, vehicle registration, ID cards, residence permits and cards, building permits, family benefits, and driving licences). However, this has not been the case so far in Germany, which also provides avenues for further research.

In addition, legal and resource-related constraints have been given as explanations for the slow advancement of digital transformation and the usability problems arising in government–citizen interactions. Future research should investigate the nature of these difficulties to advise decision-makers on key changes to move forward.

Finally, comparative research is necessary to explore to what extent various legal constraints, such as written form requirements, physical presence obligations, and data sharing restrictions, inhibit progress in different countries. Are, for instance, legal hurdles more constraining in countries with a pronounced rule-of-law culture and a classic bureaucratic administrative tradition (see Kuhlmann & Wollmann, 2019, pp. 71–74) than in countries with a public interest culture and a less legalistic tradition (such as the UK)? Research should also explore the effectiveness of the regulatory approaches and solutions used in various country contexts for creating user-friendly e-services, for instance with regard to the ‘once-only principle’. More systematic research and learning from other countries is needed to reveal how different countries have reconciled the peculiarities of their legal system and administrative tradition with the new challenges of digital transformation.

Practitioners internationally can see, in the light of this study, that the successful digitalization of administrative processes must bear in mind the impact on employees and not only the advantages for citizens. In this case, work relief that should have come along with digitalization did not actually happen, and this needs to be a main goal for the change process. Digital changes must create better offers and services for citizens—otherwise they will remain useless and therefore unused.

Acknowledgements

This research project was sponsored by the German Hans-Böckler Foundation and carried out by the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Jörg Bogumil, Sascha Gerber) and the University of Potsdam (Sabine Kuhlmann, Christian Schwab) from 2016 to 2019, leading to several publications (Bogumil et al., 2019; Heuberger & Schwab, 2021; Kuhlmann & Bogumil, 2021; Schwab et al., 2019). The authors of this article would like to thank especially Susanna Fazio, Sarah Fenske, Stephanie Herborn, Franziska Oehlert and Tomás Vellani for their support and assistance.

Disclosure statement

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