OUTDATED ABSTRACT: Although local governments have been facing the issue of digitalization for nearly twenty years now, many are still determining their approaches to meet this issue (Manoharan & Ingrams, 2018). Nevertheless, the ever-changing external demands and internal expectations regarding the level of technological, procedural, and organizational transformation present local governments with additional challenges to be addressed (Breaugh et al., 2023; Janowski, 2015). As a consequence, both local decision makers and public administration leaders need to constantly re-adjust their organizations’ visions and goals (Lee, 2023). This may involve formulating strategies and planning for subsequent implementation, including resource allocation and capability development (Andrews et al., 2006). Moreover, this process of strategy formulation often runs in parallel with the implementation of existing reform projects (and these reform project have, vice versa, often a digitization component), adding to the complexity of the task (Weiser et al., 2020). In short, it is of relevance to study strategic management actions in the realm of local governments’ digitalization, where public managers address questions related to organizational structure, technology adoption, and capability building.

In their influential work, Miles and Snow (1978) propose four different types of general organizational strategies: prospectors that aim for (organizational) innovation, defenders that focus on enhancing established practices, analyzers that navigate the intersection of the previous types, and reactors that lack a specific strategy. Each strategy is argued to require a distinct set of resources and capabilities for successful implementation and optimal organizational performance (Lee, 2023). While the literature suggests viewing the typology as a continuum of strategic stances, it is still useful to provide an analytical framework as a starting point to facilitate comparisons of strategies across different cases. Therefore, the objective of this proposed paper is to investigate the extent to which different local governments utilize strategic management practices and adhere to specific strategic types that guide their implementation of digitalization activities.

Furthermore, we are interested in exploring explanatory factors for the varying “choice” (or emergence) of strategic stances. Based on the crucial role of structures for strategy making and the debate if structure follows strategy (Chandler, 1962) or strategy follows structure (Hall & Saias, 1980), we will explore for the influence that existing organisational structures and features had on the observed strategy. Empirically, we focus on local governments in the Continental European federal countries Germany, Austria and Switzerland that have similar administrative cultures and local government systems shaping the corridors for strategic stances (Kuhlmann & Wollmann, 2019; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2017). We therefore pose the following research question: Which elements of strategic types can be observed in local governments’ digital transformation, and how do these elements align?

Our research question will be answered through a comparative study of three local governments cases in Austria, Germany and Switzerland building upon multiple data collection methods. These include expert interviews with 23 interviewees (politicians, public managers, public servants), observation of meetings, informal conversations and document analysis. To analyse the data, we use both within-case and cross-case pattern analysis (Eisenhardt, 1989). With this study, our expected contribution is twofold. First, we apply an established categorization and explain how local governments actions as prospectors, defenders, analyzers or reactors is embedded in their macro-level context. Second, this study offers the groundwork for future research of organizational performance resulting from different strategic stances in the context of digitalization.

The digitalisation of public administration is a long-term project. However, complaining about the slow pace of digitisation in public administration does not bring about any improvement and only creates pressure and a feeling of unease among employees in the public sector, since the responsibility for missing success could potentially be attributed to them. Especially in projects with partners from in-dustry and civil society, it often turns out that these partners are not familiar with the internal proce-dures of public sector organisations. Therefore, it is important that they better understand how the public authorities operate. After all, the success of public sector digitalisation requires coordination and collaboration between the administrations, the business and the societal side. Moreover, a better understanding of the implementation processes of digitalisation initiatives is essential for the success-ful political governance of these projects.

Mapping actor networks both within the public administration and in relationship to the outside world is a first step towards creating more transparency and understanding. Based on empirical data, it is possible to identify structural features of the implementation of digitalisation projects in administra-tive bodies. By pinpointing retarding or hindering factors, decision makers and project managers are able to initiate appropriate steps leading to better organisational and operational choices.

Against this background, it is important for any project management to have answers on the following questions: which actors are central in an implementation network, how do these actors facilitate the development of user acceptance, and how does the diffusion of technological innovations take place within the public administration?

The paper will outline the research design of a network analysis for the implementation of local gov-ernment digitalisation projects. Findings on network boundary specifications and centrality measures within the organisation network analysis will be provided. With reference to the case study of a digital innovation project in Saxony (Germany), collaborative governance processes between public admin-istrations, business enterprises and academic researchers are treated as variables affecting the success of such a project.

Social systems have been transformed by the ICT revolution. This extremely rapid transformation has also brought significant changes to the economy, digitalisation of the administrative procedure can be interpreted as a tool for economic development. Artificial intelligence has become an important part of these reforms. My presentation would like to analyse the regulatory framework of these administrative activities; therefore, I would like to apply mainly the methods of the jurisprudence, but partly I would like to apply the methods of the administrative sciences, especially, the application of the available quantitative data (especially statistics on administrative activities, statistics on government expenditure, and data on the fragmentation of the municipal system in Hungary).

It should be emphasised, that platforms have become very important in economic life since the end of the 20th century and early 21st century. Platforms that are most familiar to the general public are systems connected to the provision of services, including various entertainment platforms and systems. Artificial intelligence algorithms are widely applied by these platforms, as part of the evaluation and the recommendation systems, therefore, the platforms became an important tool for the development of AI solutions. This development and transformation can be observed not only in the business sector, but even in the government sector. As part of the digitalization of the public services and the administrative activities, new, government sector platforms have evolved. Similarly, the urban governance has been strongly impacted by the idea of ‘smart cities’ which are similarly based on platforms. Similar to the business sector solutions, artificial intelligence is applied in the government activities, however these types of application are not as widely applied like in the business sector. It should be emphasised, that the algorithms and the application of AI could be a new form of centralisation: these algorithms could be interpreted as a barrier to the information of the municipal public service provision, therefore, if these algorithms are developed and managed by the central government, they could significantly influence even the municipal decision-making procedures. Therefore, 'platofrm centralisation' tendencies are evolving during the last years in Europe.

The development of digital technology has the potential to fundamentally reshape the workings of public administrations. In this, local governments hold a particularly significant role, as they are the level of government closest to the citizen and responsible for a large fraction of public service delivery. However, even though there is a growing body of literature on the subject, the antecedents of an higher level of digital transformation are not yet properly understood. Existing literature on the subject consists either of case studies or is otherwise limited in size, with a profound lack of large-scale analyses that can provide more widely applicable results. This paper seeks to remedy this by providing a large quantitative analysis of the causes of the digital transformation based on a dataset on a large number of local administrations in 46 European countries. This data is raised in a survey among the heads of local administrations and an automated analysis of local government websites using a webcrawler part of the Digital Transformation at the Local Tier of Government in Europe (DIGILOG) research project. The paper looks at the digital transformation from the perspective of innovation diffusion theory, defining digitalization measures as a specific case of technological process innovations and the digital transformation as the sum of these measures and their wider impacts. Based upon this theory, the paper aims to find the most important predictors of the level of digital transformation in local governments, with a particular focus on economic and organizational variables. This is achieved using a multi-step quantitative analysis, which uses a multiple linear regression approach in parallel with LASSO (Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator) models. LASSO is a factor selection technique that is relatively new to the social sciences but has been shown to outperform linear regression in a range of metrics. The paper will thus be able to show which factors determine the level of the digital transformation of local governments, providing valuable knowledge to practitioners and filing an important gap in the literature. Additionally, the paper can be seen as a test of how modern statistical techniques such as LASSO can be applied in the social sciences.