The Evolution of Government Strategies from IT to Digitalization: A Comparative Study of Two Time Periods in Swedish Local Governments

Abstract

In this paper we explore the evolution of the use of digital technology in the public sector. We do so by analyzing a corpus of IT- and digitalization strategies from Swedish local governments, produced from two time periods, using topic modeling. Our analysis reveals salient topics covered in these two sets of strategies and classifies them into three types: topics that persist across the two periods, topics that are unique to each period, and topics that evolved in content. We suggest that local government strategies became more general and optimistic in terms of the technologies’ new opportunities, specific in terms of management practices, and increasingly blurry in terms of organizational and material boundaries. We also provide evidence of digitalization strategies becoming more homogenous in their covered topics than their IT counterparts. By doing so, we contribute to research devoted to analyzing the discursive landscape of digital government by investigating the official content found in these strategies. Thus, we contribute to research devoted to studying policy in order to historically situate contemporary use of digital technologies and its evolution. We conclude the paper with important implications for practice.