Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Evolution of Government Strategies from IT to Digitalization: A Comparative Study of Two Time Periods in Swedish Local Governments

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Electronic Government (EGOV 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14130))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 471 Accesses

Abstract

In this paper we explore the evolution of the use of digital technology in the public sector. We do so by analyzing a corpus of IT- and digitalization strategies from Swedish local governments, produced from two time periods, using topic modeling. Our analysis reveals salient topics covered in these two sets of strategies and classifies them into three types: topics that persist across the two periods, topics that are unique to each period, and topics that evolved in content. We suggest that local government strategies became more general and optimistic in terms of the technologies’ new opportunities, specific in terms of management practices, and increasingly blurry in terms of organizational and material boundaries. We also provide evidence of digitalization strategies becoming more homogenous in their covered topics than their IT counterparts. By doing so, we contribute to research devoted to analyzing the discursive landscape of digital government by investigating the official content found in these strategies. Thus, we contribute to research devoted to studying policy in order to historically situate contemporary use of digital technologies and its evolution. We conclude the paper with important implications for practice.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    In this paper, we use e-government to denote the research area, while digital government to denote the phenomenon of digital technologies transforming government.

References

  1. Grönlund, Å., Horan, T.A.: Introducing e-gov: history, definitions, and issues. Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst. 15(1), 39 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Heeks, R., Bailur, S.: Analyzing e-government research: perspectives, philosophies, theories, methods, and practice. Gov. Inf. Q. 24(2), 243–265 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Janowski, T.: Digital government evolution: from transformation to contextualization. Gov. Inf. Q. 32(3), 221–236 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Scholl, H.J.: Digital government: looking back and ahead on a fascinating domain of research and practice. Digit. Gov.: Res. Pract. 1(1), 1–12 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Scholl, H.J.: The digital government reference library (DGRL) and its potential formative impact on digital government research (DGR). Gov. Inf. Q. 38(4), 101613 (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bannister, F., Connolly, R.: Forward to the past: lessons for the future of e-government from the story so far. Inf. Polity 17(3–4), 211–226 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Guenduez, A.A., Mettler, T.: Strategically constructed narratives on artificial intelligence: what stories are told in governmental artificial intelligence policies? Gov. Inf. Q. 40, 101719 (2022)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Sundberg, L.: If digitalization is the solution, what is the problem?. In: Papers Presented at the 19th European Conference on Digital Government ECDG 2019, pp. 136–143 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Lindberg, J., Kvist, E., Lindgren, S.: The ongoing and collective character of digital care for older people: moving beyond techno-determinism in government policy. J. Technol. Hum. Serv. 40(4), 357–378 (2022)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Nyhlén, S., Gidlund, K.L.: In conversation with digitalization: myths, fiction or professional imagining? Inf. Polity 27, 1–11 (2022)

    Google Scholar 

  11. European Commission: European Commission Digital Strategy. The European Commission (2022). https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/EC-Digital-Strategy_en

  12. Kinnunen, J., Androniceanu, A., Georgescu, I.: Digitalization of EU countries: a clusterwise analysis. In: Proceedings of the 13rd International Management Conference: Management Strategies for High Performance, pp. 1–12 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Dolfsma, W., Seo, D.: Government policy and technological innovation—A suggested typology. Technovation 33(6–7), 173–179 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Ilshammar, L., Bjurström, A., Grönlund, Å.: Public e-services in Sweden: old wine in new bottles? Scand. J. Inf. Syst. 17(2), 3 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Melin, U.: The emperor’s new clothes? Analysing the Swedish action plan for e-government. Int. J. Public Inf. Syst. 5(2), 97–122 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Giritli Nygren, K.: The rhetoric of e-government management and the reality of e-government work: the Swedish action plan for e-government considered. Int. J. Public Inf. Syst. 2009(2), 135–146 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Sundberg, L.: From automatic data processing to digitalization: what is past is prologue. In: Lindgren, I., et al. (eds.) EGOV 2019. LNCS, vol. 11685, pp. 31–42. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27325-5_3

    Google Scholar 

  18. Bertot, J.C., Jaeger, P.T.: The E-Government paradox: better customer service doesn’t necessarily cost less. Gov. Inf. Q. 2(25), 149–154 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Toll, D., Lindgren, I., Melin, U., Madsen, C.Ø.: Values, benefits, considerations and risks of AI in government: a study of AI policy documents in Sweden. eJournal eDemocracy Open Gov. 12(1), 40–60 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Persson, J.S., Reinwald, A.K., Skorve, E., Nielsen, P.A.: Value positions in e-government strategies: Something is (not) changing in the state of Denmark. In: 25th European Conference on Information Systems, pp. 904–917. The Association for Information Systems (AIS) (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Heidlund, M., Sundberg, L.: What is the value of digitalization? Strategic narratives in local government. Inf. Polity 1–17 (2023, preprint)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Schou, J., Hjelholt, M.: Digitalizing the welfare state: citizenship discourses in Danish digitalization strategies from 2002 to 2015. Critical Policy Stud. 13(1), 3–22 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Puron-Cid, G., Villaseñor-García, E.A.: Applying neural networks analysis to assess digital government evolution. Gov. Inf. Q. 40, 101811 (2023)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Jeyaraj, A., Zadeh, A.H.: Evolution of information systems research: insights from topic modeling. Inf. Manag. 57(4), 103207 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Müller, O., Junglas, I., Brocke, J.V., Debortoli, S.: Utilizing big data analytics for information systems research: challenges, promises and guidelines. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 25(4), 289–302 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Isoaho, K., Gritsenko, D., Mäkelä, E.: Topic modeling and text analysis for qualitative policy research. Policy Stud. J. 49(1), 300–324 (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Hannigan, T.R., et al.: Topic modeling in management research: rendering new theory from textual data. Acad. Manag. Ann. 13(2), 586–632 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Rizk, A., Elragal, A.: Data science: developing theoretical contributions in information systems via text analytics. J. Big Data 7, 1–26 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  29. The Swedish Government Offices: Från IT-politik för samhället till politik för IT-samhället (2005). https://www.regeringen.se/rattsliga-dokument/proposition/2005/07/prop.-200405175. Accessed 20 Mar 2023

  30. The Swedish Government Offices: Med medborgaren i centrum Regeringens strategi för en digitalt samverkande statsförvaltning. Näringsdepartementet (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  31. The Swedish Government Offices: För ett hållbart digitaliserat Sverige – en digitaliseringsstrategi. The Swedish Government Offices (2017). https://digitaliseringsradet.se/media/1191/digitaliseringsstrategin_slutlig_170518-2.pdf. Accessed 14 Nov 2022

  32. Debortoli, S., Müller, O., Junglas, I., Vom Brocke, J.: Text mining for information systems researchers: an annotated topic modeling tutorial. Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst. (CAIS) 39(1), 7 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  33. Newman, D., Asuncion, A., Smyth, P., Welling, M.: Distributed algorithms for topic models. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 10(8), 1801–1828 (2009)

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  34. Hansteen, K.: Norwegian and Swedish broadband initiatives (1999–2005). Hoykom report, no. 505 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  35. The Swedish Government Offices: Utredningen Bredband 2013. SOU 2008:40: Bredband till hela landet (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  36. The IT Commission: SOU 2003:55: Digitala tjänster - hur då? En IT-politik för resultat och nytta. Näringsdepartementet (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  37. European Commission: Digital Europe Program (2018). https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_18_4043

  38. European Commission: Digital Europe Program (2021). https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_5863

  39. The 24-hour Delegation: SOU 2005:119: e-tjänster för ett enklare och öppnare samhälle. Finansdepartementet (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Löwgren, J., Stolterman, E.: Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology. MIT Press, Cambridge (2004)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Linköping University, 581 83, Linköping, Sweden

    Aya Rizk & Daniel Toll

  2. Mid Sweden University, 851 70, Sundsvall, Sweden

    Leif Sundberg & Marcus Heidlund

Authors
  1. Aya Rizk
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Daniel Toll
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Leif Sundberg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Marcus Heidlund
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aya Rizk .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Ida Lindgren

  2. Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

    Csaba Csáki

  3. University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Evangelos Kalampokis

  4. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Marijn Janssen

  5. University for Continuing Education Krems, Krems an der Donau, Austria

    Gabriela Viale Pereira

  6. Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria

    Shefali Virkar

  7. University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Efthimios Tambouris

  8. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Anneke Zuiderwijk

Appendix: Topic Interpretations and Top Words

A sample of the top words are selected for each topic based primarily on their weight. The words are presented in English (authors’ translation) and Swedish (original). Since the words are stemmed, an asterisk * is added to the English word to indicate possible variations (e.g., the responsib* stems from words such as responsible, responsibility and responsibilities.

Appendix: Topic Interpretations and Top Words

IT strategies

Digitalization strategies

Topic

Top words

Topic

Top words

Broadband infrastructure

internet, infrastructure, urban areas, capacity, broadband

nät, infrastruktur, tätort, kapacitet, bredband

Service Development

Service, fulfill, way of working, method, leadership

tjänst, uppfylla, arbetssätt, metod, ledning

Administration and governance

System, operation, responsib*, system owner, collective

system, drift, ansvar, systemägare, gemensam

Technology use

Technology, technical, system, unit, functions, use*

teknik, teknisk, system, enhet, fungerar, använd

IT security

User, information, responsib*, password, staff

användare, information, ansvar, lösenord, personal

Economy and budget

responsib*, finance, conducted, estimat*, exist*

ansvar, finansiering, genomfört, beräkna, befint

New opportunities

opportunit*, organization*, develop*, goal, new

möjlig, verksam, utveckling, mål, nya

New opportunities

Service, organization*, opportunit*, develop*, condition, new

tjänst, verksamhet, möj, utveckling, förutsättning, nya

Schools

Student*, school, computer, pedagogical, child*

elev, skolan, dator, pedagogisk, barn

Schools

Agenda, student, teacher, company, effort, child*

agenda, elev, lärare, företag, insats, barn

A citizen-centric strategy

Citizen, administration, e-strategy, proposala

medborgare, förvaltning, e-strategi, förslag, tjänstutlåtande

A citizen-centric strategy

National government, digitalization strategy, citizen, municipal board, open*

regering, digitaliseringsstrategi, medborgare, kommunstyrelse, öpp

Organizing for IT

Systematic, before, goal, function, activity

systematisk, inför, målet, funktion, aktivitet

Projects

Digitalization work, project, responsib*, follow-up, support

digitaliseringsarbet, projekt, ansvar, uppföljning, stöd

  

Programs

Service, program, effect, target group, value

service, program, effekt, målgrupp, värd

  

Change management

Concern*, application, change, proposal, activity, focus area

koncern, tillämpning, förändring, förslag, aktivitet, fokusområde

  

National to local

Region, inhabitant, national, government, SALARb, external environment, local, europ*

region, invånare, nationell, regering, skl, omvärld, lokal, europ

  1. aBoth Swedish terms “förslag” and “tjänsteutlåtande” can be translated to the English term “proposal”. The difference is that “förslag” is a general suggestion while “tjänsteutlåtande” is a specific to proposals by public servants, typically preceding a decision.
  2. bThe Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, an interest organization for local and regional governments.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Rizk, A., Toll, D., Sundberg, L., Heidlund, M. (2023). The Evolution of Government Strategies from IT to Digitalization: A Comparative Study of Two Time Periods in Swedish Local Governments. In: Lindgren, I., et al. Electronic Government. EGOV 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14130. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41138-0_27

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41138-0_27

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-41137-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-41138-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Societies and partnerships

Search

Navigation