Digital transformation of the Government

Transformation of an organization is a specific type of an organizational change which consists of transforming this organization between two points in time, which is supposed to adapt it to more effective operation in the future. This change involves methods of allocating current and future resources related with these areas of the organization that serve to achieve its strategic goals.

In case of public organizations, and especially the public administration units, the concept of transformation plays a particularly important role. Nowadays, both citizens and business expect that these units will provide services at a similar quality level as the one of the private sector, while guaranteeing economical use of public financial means. This refers to expecting the public sector organizations to have an integrated approach to multichannel service provision, both through a traditional method (contact in person, by mail, by fax) and electronic (online, mobile access, digital TV). However, it is required to make substantial changes to the way the whole public sector works. The changes need to be system-wide and take into account a perspective of the whole state, and not of its respective units.

Because of the fact that in the transformation digital technologies play a particularly important role, we are allowed to talk about digital transformation of the government (Digital Transformation). In comparison with another transformational undertakings, its most noticeable features include:

• In transformational activities it takes into account a perspective of the whole public sector, and not of its respective units, which is supposed in the end to provide an effective collaboration between public organizations at a nationwide level.
• It realizes initiatives that are supposed to move to a digital form these public services in which employees of public units perform their duties directly (for example, education and health care).
• It puts focus on a citizen, and not on a customer of the public administration. That is, its intention is to involve citizens as owners and participants of the process of creating digital public services, and not to treat them as passive service takers.

Digital transformation of the government can be defined as a transformation of the way public organizations works, which expresses itself in a thorough integration of digital technologies and business processes of these units leading to creation of a new model of the state’s operation whose core will be integrated IT systems. A final goal of the transformation will be “Digital Government”.
Author: Andrzej Sobczak, PhD, Professor at the Warsaw School of Economics
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