Can e-government solutions enhance the work in municipalities?: empirical evidence from case lupapiste

Abstract

Digitalization and increasing demand of e-government services are not changing only the way the citizens can use public services, but also the nature of work of many municipality employees. At best this kind of digitalization can offer added value in the form of enhancing the work of the municipality personnel. In this paper, we study the effects of adopting an e-government service on work in municipalities. Based on an empirical investigation of five municipalities we propose flow efficiency as a key metric to grasp the added value of digitalization of a public service, as it reveals the most valuable activities as well as the potential bottlenecks. Flow efficiency measurement gives therefore a better indicator to be used in e-government process development than e.g. simple throughput time especially when evaluating the effects of digitalization on knowledge work productivity.