A presentation by Sarah Giest (Leiden University). This event is part of the Digital Governance Research Colloquium hosted by the Centre for Digital Governance.
Sarah will talk about her recently published collaborative paper on Administrative burden in digital public service delivery: The social infrastructure of library programs for e-inclusion as well as sketch future research plans on local, social infrastructures and their role in enabling (digital) access and inclusion.
The overarching question of this research line focuses on how citizens and governments interact in offline and online settings and what this implies for facilitating inclusive digital public services and public trust. A key dimension to this research is that e-inclusion is conceptualized in a broad sense, including social infrastructures. Infrastructural support puts into focus provisions by government and civil society that enable participation through, for example, availability of internet access technologies or courses teaching digital skills. The paper highlights that although libraries as primary sites for helping with digital government services may pose the disadvantage of being more difficult to reach for low-literate citizens, advantages are their organizational structure at the local level as well as their currently changing role to include a growing range of services, including (digital) skills courses
Looking ahead, while there is proof that government is leaving behind certain groups in society by being increasingly digital, the larger, underlying question is whether it also changes the relationship of citizens with government and ultimately alienates citizens. This is anchored in research on agency and experiences of citizens. In this ‘bureaucracy at a distance’, social infrastructure is as an element that potentially compensates for the lack of density of or access to public, community and business networks or services by strengthening multi-stakeholder collaboration. It also bridges the gap between offline interactions that citizens have in their daily life with online interactions they have or want to have.
Sarah Giest is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Public Administration (Leiden University) in the Netherlands. She is interested in how technological innovation shapes policymaking and public service delivery and how this is governed at local and national level. This line of research has facilitated several research projects and courses with other disciplines and governmental partners on different policy domains. The project in this presentation specifically looks at how local, social infrastructures facilitate digital inclusion and public participation in diverse neighborhoods and is done in collaboration with colleagues from Anthropology, Communications, Sociology and partners at Dutch libraries and governmental departments.
Registration is required for this event. Registered participants will receive the link to this online event on the day of the event.
