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Sustainability
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Digital Innovation in Public Administration: Cultural and Technological Dimensions
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Digital Innovation in Public Administration: Cultural and Technological Dimensions

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2021) | Viewed by 19324

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Antonio Messeni Petruzzelli

grade E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Politecnico di Bari, Via Edoardo Orabona, 4, 70126 Bari, BA, Italy
Interests: innovation management; alliances and networks; technology strategy; patenting, technology transfer; university-industry collaborations; search and recombination
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Giovanni Schiuma

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Mathematics, Informatics and Economics, University of Basilicata, 85100 Potenza, Italy
Interests: innovation management; arts in business; knowledge management; digital transformation; business performance management and measurement
Dr. Francesco Santarsiero

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of European and Mediterranean Cultures, Environment and Cultural Heritage (DICEM), University of Basilicata, Via Lanera, 75100 Matera, Italy
Interests: innovation management; entrepreneurship; digital transformation; innovation labs; business performance management and measurement
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Digital innovation is transforming public administration, its public services, and how governments respond to citizens’ needs. Digital innovation refers to the employment of digital technology during the process of innovating. Indeed, it opens up new opportunities for making public administrations more open, flexible, resilient, inclusive, and collaborative.

Public Administration that adopts digital public services based on citizen-driven approaches, open data, transparency, cross-sectoral, and collaborative platforms may increase the effectiveness of operations, hence reducing costs, optimizing times, and improving interaction with citizens. Moreover, the adoption of digital innovation in governance strategies may disclose economic and social benefits for society. However, digital innovation in public administration is not only related to technology’s adoption, the cultural dimension being a critical challenge. Indeed, the cultural dimension refers to the development of attitudes and dynamic capabilities that foster change. Moreover, it relates to the adoption of a new mindset affecting internal processes and ways of working, fostering open and collaborative approaches, as well as risk-taking and creativity.

In this regard, administrators are facing a general lack of soft skills, leadership, and digital capabilities in the Public Administration, which become fundamental enablers of change.

Hence, investments in favor of digitization, development of soft and digital skills, adoption of digital governance models, and management of data and cybersecurity are strategic initiatives aimed at creating value and economic development.

Even though digital innovation in Public Administration thus reveals great potentialities, the academic debate on the implications of this transformation is just beginning.

In line with the above debate, we invite original contributions that increase our comprehension of how digital innovation affects Public Administrations. We look for papers, with theoretical insights, empirical data analysis, case studies or other suitable methods to shed new light on a variety of topics, such as:

  • Public Service innovation;
  • Digital government;
  • Digitalization of Public Administration;
  • New types of learning and new approaches to developing dynamic capabilities in Public Administration;
  • Critical factors, barriers, and enablers of digital innovation in Public Administration;
  • Analyzing and mapping the way digital innovation is affecting governance and public service development and provision;
  • New agile development opportunities for innovating Public Administration services;
  • New technologies in Public Administration;
  • Organizational initiatives aimed at innovating Public Administration;
  • Co-creation and open innovation approaches to innovate Public Administration;
  • Analyzing how digital innovation provides new opportunities for engaging citizens, employees, and stakeholders;
  • Analyzing how digital innovation impose developing new alliances and cooperation between Public Administration and SMEs or startups;
  • Impact and evaluation of digital innovation in Public Administration;
  • Policy recommendations for digital innovation adoption.

Prof. Dr. Antonio Messeni Petruzzelli
Prof. Dr. Giovanni Schiuma
Dr. Francesco Santarsiero
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • digital innovation
  • digital government
  • public service innovation
  • public administration
  • Innovation Lab
  • digitization
  • digital capabilities

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 614 KiB  
Article
Digital Innovation in Times of Emergency: Reactions from a School of Management in Italy
by Tommaso Agasisti, Federico Frattini and Mara Soncin
Sustainability 2020, 12(24), 10312; https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410312 - 10 Dec 2020
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 3158
Abstract
The study explores how the COVID-19 outbreak prompted digital innovation in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) by providing evidence on the dimensions leveraged, the initiatives organised and the organisational results achieved. By means of an exploratory single case study based on a School [...] Read more.
The study explores how the COVID-19 outbreak prompted digital innovation in a Higher Education Institution (HEI) by providing evidence on the dimensions leveraged, the initiatives organised and the organisational results achieved. By means of an exploratory single case study based on a School of Management located in Northern Italy, the study proposes a process model to highlight how digital innovation has been fostered during the emergency. Results highlight the relevance of both technological and cultural aspects that supported the digital transformation during the crisis. The dimensions of digital readiness and cultural openness, together with a defined strategic orientation, represented relevant facilitators of the digital innovation process. In turn, digital innovation had important implications for sustainability, which was fostered by increasing the accessibility to quality education and addressed as a topic of many of the digital contents delivered. Thus, the study contributes to the stream of research that investigates how digital innovation in HEIs and other public administrations happens and how such an innovation can support sustainability. Finally, the paper provides practical implications on both technological and cultural aspects of innovation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Innovation in Public Administration: Cultural and Technological Dimensions)
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17 pages, 1039 KiB  
Article
Blockchain and Healthcare: Opportunities and Prospects for the EHR
by Guendalina Capece and Francesco Lorenzi
Sustainability 2020, 12(22), 9693; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12229693 - 20 Nov 2020
Cited by 25 | Viewed by 5648
Abstract
Health protection has always been a primary concern for mankind. Despite its important social role, current systems for managing the health records are slow, complicated, sometimes expensive and exposed to human errors and misunderstandings. In the health sector, the Medicalchain project seems to [...] Read more.
Health protection has always been a primary concern for mankind. Despite its important social role, current systems for managing the health records are slow, complicated, sometimes expensive and exposed to human errors and misunderstandings. In the health sector, the Medicalchain project seems to have the potential to become a new standard for managing health records using blockchain technology as a platform. In this paper, we propose a new model consisting of a permissioned blockchain to manage and store the electronic health records (EHR) of registered patients. This system guarantees transparency and especially immutability, which are essential for secure management and storage, ensuring a system that is efficient both for doctors and patients and, hopefully, bringing about renewed trust in the public health system. Our aim is that our work may contribute to gain momentum on the application of the blockchain technology to EHR and stimulate further discussion with health institutions to fully exploit the potential of the technology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Innovation in Public Administration: Cultural and Technological Dimensions)
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12 pages, 221 KiB  
Article
Blockchain Technology: Redefining Trust for Digital Certificates
by Guendalina Capece, Nathan Levialdi Ghiron and Francesco Pasquale
Sustainability 2020, 12(21), 8952; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12218952 - 28 Oct 2020
Cited by 34 | Viewed by 4806
Abstract
University certificates can have a significant impact on people’s lives: they can help people get the job they want or allow companies to decide whether a candidate for a job has the appropriate skills. Despite their important social role, current systems for certifying [...] Read more.
University certificates can have a significant impact on people’s lives: they can help people get the job they want or allow companies to decide whether a candidate for a job has the appropriate skills. Despite their important social role, current systems for certifying academic achievements are slow, complicated, expensive, and vulnerable to forgery. In the education field, the Blockcerts project, an open source project launched by MIT and Learning Machine in 2016, seems to have the potential to become a new standard for issuing certificates using the Blockchain technology as a platform. It enables students to quickly and easily get a verifiable, tamper-proof version of their diploma. Additionally, the infrastructure provides permanence, convenience, and a level of security appropriate to the importance of the record, guaranteeing the legitimacy of the diploma. The University of Rome “Tor Vergata” started a pilot program in 2018 adopting the Blockcerts framework to issue digital diplomas. In this paper, we describe the whole process from a technical perspective and analyze the impact that a broad adoption of the Blockcerts standard might have, as compared to the current way of issuing diplomas at the University of “Tor Vergata”. Our aim is that our work might contribute to building momentum for the application of the Blockchain technology to digital certificates and stimulate further discussion with other institutions to fully exploit the potential of the technology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Innovation in Public Administration: Cultural and Technological Dimensions)
28 pages, 3759 KiB  
Article
The Priority of Factors of Building Government as a Platform with Analytic Hierarchy Process Analysis
by Hyungjun Seo and Seunghwan Myeong
Sustainability 2020, 12(14), 5615; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145615 - 13 Jul 2020
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 4349
Abstract
Nowadays, the Government as a Platform (GaaP) based on cloud computing and network, has come to be considered a new structure to manage efficiently data-driven administration in the public sector. When the GaaP concept was first introduced, the ICT infrastructures that could underpin [...] Read more.
Nowadays, the Government as a Platform (GaaP) based on cloud computing and network, has come to be considered a new structure to manage efficiently data-driven administration in the public sector. When the GaaP concept was first introduced, the ICT infrastructures that could underpin GaaP were not sufficiently developed. However, the recent digital transformation has transformed the previous electronic government, which was system- and architecture-oriented. As part of the next generation of government models, GaaP may reinvent the government at a lower cost but with better performance, similar to the case of electronic government two decades ago. This study attempted to determine the priority of factors of GaaP by using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methodology. Because of the GaaP characteristics, we drew the main components for building GaaP from previous studies and a group interview with experts. The study results show that experts tend to prefer publicness in terms of building GaaP. Most of the factors that the experts weighed with the highest importance are related to the public sector, which revealed that governments should focus on their primary duty, regardless of the origin and characteristics of the platform in GaaP. However, since GaaP allows governments to be more horizontal and innovative, the platform approach can fundamentally shift the existing processes and culture of the public sector. The enhanced activity of citizens with ICT can also accelerate the introduction of GaaP. Finally, the study showed that a data-driven GaaP is necessary to efficiently handle big data, contract services, and multiple levels of on-line and off-line channels. In this public platform, government, citizens, and private sector organizations can work cooperatively as partners to seamlessly govern the hyper-connected society. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Innovation in Public Administration: Cultural and Technological Dimensions)
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