Is Digital Government Advancing Sustainable Governance? A Study of OECD/EU Countries

Jaromir Durkiewicz and Tomasz Janowski
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Jaromir Durkiewicz: Department of Informatics in Management, Faculty of Management and Economics, Gdańsk University of Technology, 80-233 Gdańsk, Poland
Tomasz Janowski: Department of Informatics in Management, Faculty of Management and Economics, Gdańsk University of Technology, 80-233 Gdańsk, Poland

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 24, 1-17

Abstract: International bodies and numerous authors advocate a key role for Digital Government (DG) in improving public governance and achieving other policy outcomes. Today, a particularly relevant outcome is advancing Sustainable Governance (SG), i.e., the capacity to steer and coordinate public action towards sustainable development. This article performs an empirical study of the relationship between DG and SG using data about 41 OECD/EU countries from the United Nations’ E-Government Survey and the Bertelsmann’s Sustainable Governance Indicators project, covering the period from 2014 to 2020. We examine if DG progress pairs with SG progress, apply a DEA model to find out which countries are efficient in using DG for better SG, and uncover cases of imbalance where high DG pairs with poor SG and vice versa. The results show that the efficiency in using DG for SG strongly varies, and that some DG leaders persistently fail to advance or even regress their SG. These findings refute the claims about the benign role of DG and points at democracy as the “weak link” in the analyzed relation.

Keywords: digital technology; digital government; sustainable development; sustainable governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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