In an unexpected circumstance, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, public service delivery cannot be suspended, but must be delivered online, relying on the available digital technology. Social media, specifically, have been widely used to reach a broader portion of the population. This article discusses the digital acceleration that governments and organizations are now facing. The focus is on Italian state museums, which have been pushed for years to adopt digital tools to increase participation. This article highlights three main dilemmas in service delivery: user engagement; planning and control; and costs. The three dilemmas show the social and organizational challenges connected to digital transformation, underlining the issues that organizations will have to face in the future and not just in an emergency such as COVID-19. IMPACTHow should public sector institutions use digital technologies for service delivery in unexpected circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic? Starting from the empirical setting of 100 Italian state museums, this article shows how digital technologies, and social media particularly, can be a powerful tool for public service delivery when an onsite service cannot be provided. The authors explain the benefits of online service delivery, for example broader audiences and new ways of interacting with users. They also highlight areas that need discussion and further research, for example whether online services should be provided with a fee or free and the trade-off between carefully planning a digital transformation and reacting promptly to catastrophic events.

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The public sector has embraced a user‐orientation paradigm, which has expanded through the open and democratic medium of social media. Although the potential of this digital technology and its visible outcomes have been analyzed in previous studies, there is virtually nothing on the complexity behind its implementation. This paper uses a case study involving three Italian museums to explore how social media strategy is shaped and enacted through their day‐to‐day business and activity. Museums are an ideal field for this kind of research because of the central role played by cultural participation and social media's critical function in pursuing new audiences. The study reveals a deep change to practice, touching praxes and practitioner skills, and modifying strategies planned around the user's approach, in the duality between authoritative and democratic voices. The findings disclose an emergent heterogeneity that is mapped along social media practices and the various associations linked to the praxes, opening the way for future studies concerned with the link between a user's (traditional) physical experience on social media and the level of democracy in user engagement.

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