From electronic government to digital government: comprehensive transformation beyond the digitization of services

Abstract

The governments' response to user demands to effective responsiveness in the provision of services has been the introduction of e-government practices. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated and deepened the need to increase the scope, penetration, quality, efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness so as to provide digital public services. However, there are still disparities in the digitization of public services among countries differently located and developed. Governments need to take digital transformation beyond the information and data embedding in the provision of services and performance of formalities separately. This paper analyzes a set of analytical frameworks that could be used to diagnose the maturity of digital government strategies and as a guide to encourage the adoption of new schemes for the design, implementation and improvement of digital policies, as well as to redouble efforts for the inclusion of digital tools in attention to citizens. This would allow the transition from a reactive vision of minimal compliance of the process digitization, with low integration of systems and government areas, to a strategy that is digital by structural design, based on data, user-centered, open and that develops government operations in from of citizens as a platform and not as an additional channel for consulting information and filling out forms.
Basically, a transition from the current e-government paradigm to a digital government paradigm is require.