Aug 2026· Risk Governance and Control Financial Markets & Institutions· Vol 16, pp. 66· 0 citations· 25 references
TL;DR
An ecological model of risk governance is developed that integrates ISO 31000, Behavioural public administration (BPA), and agency theory into a multi-layered framework for analysing digital public sector projects and offers practical recommendations for improving accountability, risk disclosure, user adoption, and institutional coordination in digital transformation projects.
Abstract
Risk governance has become a central concern in public administration as governments implement complex digital transformation projects aimed at improving service delivery, efficiency, and transparency. Although International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 31000 provides a structured framework for identifying, assessing, treating, monitoring, and communicating risks, its procedural orientation may be insufficient in public sector environments shaped by cognitive biases, institutional inertia, information asymmetry, and misaligned incentives (Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2017; ISO, 2018). This study develops an ecological model of risk governance that integrates ISO 31000, Behavioural public administration (BPA), and agency theory into a multi-layered framework for analysing digital public sector projects. Using Kazakhstan’s electronic human resource management (e-HRM) platform as a qualitative single-case study, the research draws on document analysis, 20 semi-structured interviews, observation of inter-agency discussions, and descriptive project-level evidence. The findings show that formal risk registers and technical safeguards were necessary but insufficient: optimism bias, status quo bias, inter-agency coordination problems, and vendor-government incentive misalignment generated emergent risks during implementation. The study contributes to public administration theory by conceptualising risk governance as an adaptive system and offers practical recommendations for improving accountability, risk disclosure, user adoption, and institutional coordination in digital transformation projects.
Sustainable infrastructure transformation demands the integration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles into public sector business strategies. The Ministry of Public Works has issued a number of centrally designed policy instruments the Building Management Information System (SIMBG), the Green Building Mandate (BGH), the Domestic Component Level (TKDN) obligations, and State Property grants to local governments but their implementation at the regional level remains uneven. This research questions how governance asymmetry between the central and regional governments affects the adoption of sustainable infrastructure standards, through what mechanisms policy instruments are distorted into administrative compliance, and what kind of governance models can position ministries as strategic orchestrators. The study uses a qualitative plural case study design based on document analysis on secondary sources available to the public, for the period 2021–2025, with four purposively selected policy cases. The evidence relies mainly on regulations, official evaluation results, and the findings of state audit bodies; data are coded deductively using the Technology Organization Environment (TOE) framework and inducively for emerging mechanisms, followed by cross case synthesis. One diagnostic pattern anchored the analysis: The 2024 National SPBE Index reached 3.12 on a scale of 5 and exceeded the medium term target, while only 48 of the 615 agencies evaluated achieved the highest predicate, an aggregate achievement that conceals a highly uneven distribution. In all four cases, the instrument establishes compliance thresholds that can be administratively verifiable but independent of substantive outputs. The resulting pattern is interpreted as means ends decoupling, with a self reinforcing form called a compliance trap, understood not as a new concept, but as a domain specific manifestation of isomorphic mimicry in ESG policy. The article proposes a tiered governance model equipped with tiering indicators, the role of actors, two way transition mechanisms, resource needs, and enforcement limits. Because the evidence base is documentary, the findings are presented as propositions that can be generalized analytically and are open to testing, rather than as a causal claim that has been validated.
Ayu Purnamasari Asih, Mohamad Rizan, Muhammad Awaluddin· Journal of Digital Business...· 0 citations
The Indonesian government has invested heavily in digital transformation to address persistent challenges in public service delivery, financial accountability, and bureaucratic efficiency. Despite growing adoption of technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and e-government platforms, a systemic synthesis of how these digital tools collectively reshape governance and accountability mechanisms remains lacking. This systematic literature review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines. A structured search was conducted in the Scopus database for peer-reviewed, open-access, English-language journal articles published between 2016 and 2026, focusing explicitly on the Indonesian public sector. Out of 217 initially screened records, 10 studies met the eligibility criteria after title-abstract and full-text screening. Data were extracted using a standardized form, assessed for risk of bias, and synthesized thematically across the included studies. The synthesis identifies three interconnected mechanisms through which digitalization influences Indonesian public governance. First, digital technologies such as computer-assisted audit techniques, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence enhance financial fraud detection and oversight effectiveness, yet their full potential is constrained by incomplete regulatory frameworks for electronic evidence and insufficient auditor competence. Second, digital service innovations improve operational efficiency and public service quality, but these benefits are contingent upon adequate digital leadership, information technology governance, and a culture supportive of organizational change. Third, institutional reforms driven by integrated information systems strengthen transparency and accountability, while being significantly hindered by governance fragmentation, weak enforcement of interoperability standards, and persistent digital divides across regions. Successful digital transformation of the Indonesian public sector depends less on the mere acquisition of technology and more on synergistic institutional reforms, continuous human capacity building, and legal harmonization. These findings provide evidence-based guidance for policymakers and practitioners to align digital initiatives with the broader objectives of accountable, transparent, and responsive governance in developing economy contexts.
The study advances an integrative framework bridging three governance theories within public sector digital transformation discourse that provides emerging economy governments, particularly Kenya a contextually grounded framework for designing national digital governance policies under institutional complexity.
Doreen Muriu· American Journal Of Strategi...· 0 citations
Digital government initiatives are increasingly mobilized to address complex, cross-boundary policy challenges, yet their contribution to public value creation remains highly contingent on organizational and institutional conditions. This paper examines how organizational capacity and interorganizational coordination shape the adoption and use of digital government initiatives in circular economy governance. Building on public value theory and governance network perspectives, the study adopts a qualitative comparative institutional design, analyzing the Federal District (Brazil) as the primary empirical case and drawing analytical insights from New York State (United States). Empirical evidence is based on semi-structured interviews with public managers and technical staff, complemented by document analysis and institutional observation conducted during a visiting PhD period at a U.S. public policy school. The findings show that digital technologies contribute to transparency and information integration, but their capacity to generate public value—such as policy coherence, effectiveness, and sustainability—is fundamentally mediated by organizational capacity, coordination mechanisms, and institutional stability. By explicitly linking circular economy governance to organizational and networked perspectives on public value creation, the study advances digital government research and offers implications for governments in both developing and developed contexts. This is not a comparison between the global North and South, but rather a qualitative study seeking to improve concepts of digital government in both Brazil and the United States.
Júlio Cezar Costa Ramos, Eduardo Augusto Terra Rossi DE Barros, Luiz Henrique Melo Pires· Observatorio de la Economía...· 0 citations
Public procurement is widely recognized as a sensitive and high-risk area for corruption and inefficiency, often affected by opacity and weak accountability. In Nepal, the introduction of the electronic government procurement (e-GP) system signifies a major digital governance reform aimed at enhancing transparency and procedural integrity. This study examines the impact of e GP on transparency in public procurement, focusing on information accessibility, process visibility, fair competition, and stakeholder trust. The analysis is based on survey data from 84 stakeholders, including government officials, bidders, and oversight personnel. Quantitative techniques, including Friedman Chi-square tests and ANOVA, were employed to assess perceived transparency outcomes. The findings indicate that e-GP has improved access to procurement information and strengthened procedural openness; however, challenges persist in traceability and stakeholder engagement, particularly during bidding and contract award stages. The study highlights that technological reforms alone are insufficient without complementary institutional strengthening.
Digital governance research often identifies what digital systems do but less frequently explains how institutions make those systems governable under legal, organizational, political, and public scrutiny. This methodological problem is especially consequential in election administration, where digital records and platforms affect voting rights, political eligibility, logistics, public information, and the credibility of results. Existing technical audits, adoption studies, maturity assessments, usability evaluations, and trust surveys provide important evidence, but they rarely make the institutional route from records and actor accounts to mechanism-based explanation fully inspectable. This article develops a critical realist qualitative methods protocol for transparent institutional mechanism tracing in high-stakes digital governance. The protocol is not a general framework for all qualitative data analysis; it is specifically designed to reconstruct how organizational capacities are translated into validation, correction, coordination, escalation, auditability, explanation, accountability, and institutional learning. An electoral management body is treated as the main case, while voter data, party and candidate verification, logistics, and results publication constitute embedded analytical arenas. The operational workflow integrates purposive and functionally stratified sampling, process-oriented interviews, document mapping, abductive and mechanism-oriented coding, cross-arena matrices, evidence-strength decisions, rival-explanation assessment, negative-case analysis, audit trails, expert validation, positionality documentation, and tiered transparency. A bounded pilot vignette using publicly available documents from Indonesia's 2024 electoral administration demonstrates how regulatory evidence and institutional explanations can be transformed into action codes, matrix entries, and an evidence-graded candidate mechanism. The protocol contributes an operationally explicit, reviewable, and ethically safeguarded route from qualitative evidence to institutional explanation.
N. Marutha, G. Braga, De Freitas et al.· Frontiers in Research Metric...· 0 citations
