Public Value Management in Digital Transformation : Emergent technology's impact on public services

Abstract

This thesis addresses an important knowledge gap by examining the government-as-user role, a perspective that has received limited attention in artificial intelligence and digital governance research. Emergent technology, including artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic systems, is reshaping public sector digital transformation, raising important questions about how public value is framed, created, and enacted. This PhD research investigates how governance strategies and mechanisms shape the implementation of digital transformation initiatives in the public sector, and how emergent technology influences the framing and distribution of public value. The research approach is pluralistic, combining content and discourse analysis with theory-driven evaluation of digital transformation policies and service delivery programs to examine the discursive and practical dimensions of digital transformation across four papers. Papers I and II apply discourse analysis to digital policy and strategy documents, analyzing how public values and power dynamics are articulated, how users and public sector AI applications are positioned, and how these framings allocate benefits and responsibilities among stakeholders in digital governance. Papers III and IV draw on a longitudinal case of Digital Iceland (Stafrænt Ísland). Paper III systematically examines the adoption of a digital shared-services center, focusing on the emergence of a “center of excellence” and the functional components — organizational, technical, and governance-related — that support technology-enabled reforms in government. These components inform the contextual conditions used in developing the evaluative framework in Paper IV. Paper IV employs a theory-driven evaluation approach, adopting and adapting a context–mechanism–outcome (CMO) framework to evaluate Digital Iceland, and examines under what contextual conditions governance strategies and arrangements iv — in particular mechanisms such as flexible policy, accountability, and collaboration — are configured to generate or constrain public value outcomes. The originality of this approach lies in combining content and discourse analysis of digital policies with a theory-driven CMO logic to evaluate digital transformation programs, and in developing a PVM in Digital Transformation framework that evaluates digital governance arrangements. The thesis treats digital strategies and initiatives as analytically distinct yet interconnected domains, linking discursive positioning in national digital and AI strategies to the configuration of governance mechanisms in concrete programs. The framework argues that digital transformation outcomes are not determined by technology itself, but by how emergent technology applications are enacted within specific institutional arrangements and governance mechanisms, which in turn shapes whether public value is created, distributed, or destroyed in practice. It serves both analytical and practical purposes: analytically, by synthesizing the main findings into core concepts for evaluating digital governance; and practically, by considering how administrators translate public value framings into practice, how context-dependent mechanisms enable or constrain their efforts, and how these configurations yield public value outcomes such as improved service delivery, transparency, and responsiveness. The research shows both enabling and constraining effects of dominant discourses and organizational routines, identifies key barriers to agile digital transformation, and underscores the importance of inclusive governance strategies that align diverse stakeholder interests. Overall, this thesis advances evaluative e-government and digital governance research by offering a critical and realistic account of PVM that traces under what conditions governance mechanisms contribute to public value and when they become constrained in public sector digital transformation. In doing so, it bridges the longstanding gap between v policy framing and program outcomes, providing both a theoretically grounded evaluation framework and an empirically substantiated model for assessing how digital governance initiatives generate public value.