The Impact of Digital Government on the Competitiveness of Brazilian States: An Econometric Study

Abstract

Digital Government has been considered an element that contributes to competitiveness for its ability to improve the provision of services to citizens, so nations have been striving to achieve better positions in the Indices related to Digital Government. However, such Indices rarely analyze the subnational context of Digital Government. This work aims to measure the impact of the two indicators of Digital Government on the results of the Brazilian States Competitiveness Ranking - RCE. The main instrument of this research was an econometric analysis of RCE data to identify the weight of indicators related to Digital Government. To specify how the score obtained by each Brazilian State in these indicators contributed to improving or worsening the general result of the State in the RCE. The results showed a change of position in 6 of the 27 Brazilian states in the RCE, with 19 variations of positions in the Infrastructure Pillar and 15 variations in Public Machine Efficiency Pillar. Unequivocally, the results of this research provide elements for an in-depth discussion on the impact of Digital Transformation on Subnational Governments by exploring indicators that contribute positively or negatively to the competitiveness of countries.