Study shows: the pandemic acted as a catalyst for digitalisation in public administration

In just a few weeks and months, the restrictions imposed by the pandemic made possible what would have taken much longer under normal circumstances: Public administration has digitalised many services and switched to teleworking processes. Birgit Moser-Plautz examined this transformation using ten Austrian case studies and also drew comparisons with the United States. She recently presented her findings in two publications.

The COVID-19 pandemic, with all its necessary measures such as social restrictions and contact tracing, presented authorities with new challenges overnight. Although there are plenty of indications that public authorities are becoming increasingly digital, little empirical research has been conducted into how the pandemic has affected the digital transformation of public administration.

Birgit Moser-Plautz (Department of Public Management at the University of Klagenfurt) and Lisa Schmidthuber (WU Vienna) have conducted a 10-case study to examine how the digital transformation took place in such a short period of time. They looked at specific tasks and processes, individual attitudes, resources and structures, and organisational culture. The public administration institutions examined included ministries, the AMS (Public Employment Service Austria) and the Court of Auditors.

“We saw a significant boost in digitalisation in administration across all institutions,” says Birgit Moser-Plautz. She continues: “The pandemic has not only led to increased use of technological tools, but has also brought about many changes at the individual and organisational level. Employees’ attitudes towards new technologies have changed, while the organisational culture has become more open to innovation.”

“The sudden shock changed people’s mindsets. The advantages of using digital tools became clearer, while potential risks were no longer perceived as being so significant”, according to Birgit Moser-Plautz. The change was particularly striking in organisations that had no established teleworking culture in 2020 and relied solely on face-to-face services, but nevertheless were severely affected by the pandemic. Institutions whose work was less severely restricted by the pandemic changed to a lesser but still noticeable extent.

In a second study, Birgit Moser-Plautz investigated differences between the US and Austria in this regard. To this end, she conducted fourteen interviews with experts in US authorities and their Austrian counterparts. Both countries faced similar cultural and structural barriers to digitalisation, with differences arising from their different administrative traditions in terms of laws and regulations. “However, in both countries, we observed that a crisis can lead to these barriers being dismantled. We can leverage this insight: if we remove structural barriers in experimental spaces, public administration can unleash more innovative potential even during normal times,” Birgit Moser-Plautz explained.

B. Moser-Plautz (2023). Barriers to digital government and the COVID-19 crisis – A comparative study of federal government entities in the United States and Austria. International Review of Administrative Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852323118356.

B. Moser-Plautz & L. Schmidthuber (2023). Digital government transformation as an organizational response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Government Information Quarterly, 40/3, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2023.101815.