Digitale Transformation

Current research projects include:

  1. Social media in the public sector
    This project focuses on the use of non-traditional social technologies in government and the reuse of external information to inform government decision making. Especially during emergency situations, such as man-made or natural disaster first-first responders (citizens or volunteers) are the first on the scene and can inform government actors through their interactions and information sharing about the extent of the impact. 
    Project homepage: Social Technologies in Emergency Management
  2. Open innovation in the public sector:
    Government organizations are more and more relying on external knowledge providers, such as non-professional problem solvers, to help the organization solve complex and 'unsolvable' problems for which neither the organization itself nor hired contractors have developed a solution yet. This project focuses on different pathways government organizations are pursuing to implement open innovation approaches, as well as the innovation outcomes of open innovation processes.
  3. Digital transformation and agile government
    Many advanced governments are facing a so-called "refresh" problem: Large-scale legacy IT systems built during the last few decades are in need of upgrades and the organization needs to keep spending the lion share of its IT budget on maintaining outdated systems. At the same time, government organizations are trying to innovate to update their digital systems to the current standards. Several governments, such as the UK, US, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and others have started to work on digital transformation projects, hiring private sector IT talent to upgrade government to the 21st century. This project explores several different research questions, including the organizational design of so-called digital services teams, motivational aspects and the design of HR policies to attract external IT talent, implementation and outcomes of digital service projects, as well prioritization and internal accountability. 
  4. Network Governance:
    Under the umbrella term Network Governance I summarize my research output that focuses on social networks among public managers. I publish articles that use social network analysis combined with qualitative methods to understand how especially informal social networking ties support organizational knowledge sharing, the diffusion of ideas and innovations, as well as organizational practices.