Sub-project “Digitalization of the Administration”

In science and in practice, digitalization is seen as a widespread social transformation which is presenting the public administration with a variety of organizational challenges. These include a variety of digitalization projects initiated by political organizations and public administration and in which the interests of various political, economic and public stakeholders have to be involved and balanced. To the same extent, pressure is also being exerted on administrations to digitalize. How can that succeed? What can be learned from the many already started projects and which sociological insights can be used to support a sustainable and functioning digitalization of the administration.

The project will examine the specific challenges and changes that arise from digitalization for ministries and the administration in general. These are to be used systematically for the development of concrete recommendations for action that will be put to test in discourse with practitioners.

Using document analyses, the project will start by mapping the administration’s various digitalization projects. After this, these will be systematized with the help of organizational sociological concepts to identify the typical challenges and solutions. With the addition of further data from qualitative expert interviews and the observations from participants, the initial results will be discussed in group sessions with practitioners. The idea is to continue the systematization that has already been started and examine questions arising from this: What specific challenges are being answered? Which stakeholders are involved? How to deal with resistance? These results will then be discussed with representatives from the administration but also with other involved groups and stakeholders.