Digital Transformation in the Public Administrations: A Guided Tour for Computer Scientists

Abstract

The goal of Digital Transformation of the Public Sector is the achievement of a better quality of life for citizens, via a more responsive and transparent administration and governance. By now it is clear that technological innovation, both in terms of computer architectures and software systems, is a crucial component of it, yet not sufficient. Indeed, a cultural, organizational and legal shift in how public organizations operate and relate to the citizens is also required. Nevertheless, computer scientists can play a key role in such a transformation and, given its impact on Society, it is essential to achieve a broader level of awareness of it and involvement in it of those scientific and professional figures. To this end, a technical map specifically designed for computer scientists, but properly placed in the context of the cultural, organizational and legal changes mentioned above, would be highly beneficial. To date, such a map is missing, to the best of our knowledge. The main contribution of this Tutorial is to provide it, together with a guided tour describing which key technological aspects enable and drive such a transformation. More specifically, based on a careful analysis of the available scholarly literature, that does not seem to include any Computer Science textbook material, a model of such a transformation is proposed, together with carefully selected examples incarnating it to show its validity: the cities of Barcelona and Chicago. Finally, a look at the future of this area is also provided. INDEX TERMSAgile Software Development, Computer systems organization Cloud computing, Computing methodologies Machine Learning, Data Knowledge and Engineering, Design and Engineering of Services for e-citizens, Digital Government, Digital Transformation.

Scrum@PA: Tailoring an Agile Methodology to the Digital Transformation in the Public Sector

“…Although no universally accepted definition is available [1], the mission of Digital Transformation (DT, for short) in the Public Administration (PA, for short) can be summarized as the process of offering novel digital services that enhance the quality of life of citizens, adding the transparency and accountability of the PA. Such a transformation is by no means simple, since it involves regulatory and social issues [2] as well as challenges for many areas of Computer Science [3]. Synthetically, one of its key features is the involvement of the citizens in the DT [4,5] and a very relevant measure of its success is the level of responsiveness it has in addressing the changing needs of citizens [6,7].…”

“…Quite surprisingly, although DT is a widely studied interdisciplinary subject, the public sector is somewhat neglected in the scholarly literature, as pointed out in [8]. Moreover, as evident from the presentation in [3], there is a great deal of ambiguity regarding which and how the techniques proper of Computer Science could be used for the successful realization of any DT in a PA context. In summary, the potential contributions that Computer Science can give are intuitively clear, yet they deserve to be better formalized and understood.…”