Digital Investment and the Evolution of Government Services

Nicola Caravaggio (), Giuliano Resce () and Agapito Emanuele Santangelo ()

Economics & Statistics Discussion Papers from University of Molise, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper examines whether public investments in digital infrastructure improve citizen-facing government performance. We combine administrative data on the staggered rollout of a large-scale digitalization program with high-frequency social-media data for Italian municipalities, using online communication as a proxy for public service delivery. Exploiting variation in treatment timing, we estimate causal effects across access, usage, and outcomes. Digital investments increase municipalities' online presence and communication activity: treated municipalities are more likely to adopt social media, post more frequently, and generate higher aggregate engagement. However, improvements in effectiveness are limited in the short run. Engagement per post remains unchanged, and gains in communication quality, measured by readability, emerge only gradually. These findings suggest that while digital investments expand activity, translating them into effective communication requires time and complementary capabilities.

Keywords: Digital transformation; Structural change; Public sector digitalization; Technological adoption; Digital divide; Government communication; High-frequency data. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 H75 O33 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49
Date: 2026-04-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://web.unimol.it/progetti/repec/mol/ecsdps/ESDP26104.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mol:ecsdps:esdp26104

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics & Statistics Discussion Papers from University of Molise, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Claudio Lupi ().