A coordination perspective on digital public services in federal states

Scholta, Hendrik; Halsbenning, Sebastian; Niemann, Marco

Abstract

The digitalization of public services is particularly challenging in federal states, in part because a federal structure separates organizations through a division of power and established jurisdictions, and digitalization facilitates interconnection between society and its organizations. The many actors involved in federal states' digital public services require coordination, so the literature suggests centralized coordination so federal states can benefit from the advantages of both unitary and federal states. However, this approach has not been adapted to digitalization and it remains unclear how centralized coordination applies to digital public services. This article determines how public managers in federal states should coordinate activities in digital public services with the help of centralization. Since coordination depends on decision-makers' being willing to give up some of their power, we also investigate the mechanisms that public managers in federal states use to influence decision-makers. Using a conceptual analysis and interviews with 28 public managers from three countries, we derive three types of coordination—shared services, digital identity, and strategic committee—and identify the influencing mechanisms of persuasion, incentive, pressure, and experience. In so doing, this article contributes to the literature in identifying the types of coordination, design principles for their arrangement, and the mechanisms managers typically use to influence decision-makers. The three types of coordination constitute a new theoretical lens through which to investigate the influence of the federal structure on the digitalization of public services, while the influencing mechanisms extend existing work by introducing the passive role of the influencer.