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

Jaromir Durkiewicz,Tomasz Janowski

doi:10.3390/su132413603

Jaromir Durkiewicz, Tomasz Janowski

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su132413603

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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.

Highlights

As discussed earlier, from a normative standpoint, Digital Government (DG) is expected both to improve the country’s quality of governance and to advance its pursuit of Sustainable Development (SD) among other highvalue public goals
The results show that there are a few persistent cases of DG vs. Sustainable Governance (SG) imbalance consisting of countries that advance on DG but regress on SG
Building upon the intersection of these domains, we proceed by first reviewing the concept of governance and its quality; second, we examine the role of governance in pursuing SD—so-called Sustainable Governance (SG); and third, we explore how DG can advance SG—Digital Sustainable Governance (DSG)

Summary

Introduction

From a normative standpoint, DG is expected both to improve the country’s quality of governance and to advance its pursuit of SD among other highvalue public goals. Building upon the intersection of these domains, we proceed by first reviewing the concept of governance and its quality; second, we examine the role of governance in pursuing SD—so-called Sustainable Governance (SG); and third, we explore how DG can advance SG—Digital Sustainable Governance (DSG). When speaking of public governance, the first challenge is to identify the semantic frames of this concept. Even though the term appears intuitive and understood by the nonspecialist audience, this intuition may be misleading. According to Fukuyama, the term has at least three meanings. A governance-defining exercise undertaken in [37] concludes that “governance is the coordinated, polycentric management of issues purposefully directed towards particular outcomes” [37]

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