Organizational capacity is required to explain what it takes for local governments to succeed in their digital transformation. However, the current literature largely ignores how local governments are adapting their organizational dynamics in order to change. This paper aims to contribute to better understanding how local governments enhance their organizational capacity to achieve digital transformation. We conduct a comparative case study that includes three cases of digital transformation through smart city initiatives in Milan, Barcelona, and Munich. Our findings show that these cities made decisions to enhance specific attributes of their organizational capacity mainly related to the dimensions of management (having a strategy, leadership, and a dedicated unit) and collaboration (public-private partnerships, collaboration with citizens, collaboration with other levels of government).

This article examines the outcomes of open innovation (OI) and their contribution to public value by analysing 19 subnational civic hackathons across the US. Our analysis identifies three outcomes (digital prototypes, public engagement and relationship building, and government awareness of open data and OI) and lends support to the predominance of public engagement and relationship building over digital prototypes. Further, our study shows that OI initiatives may contribute to public value by enhancing substantive outcomes, democratic accountability, and procedural legitimacy. However, such contribution is constrained by the early stage of adoption of these initiatives and by the limited participation of external actors.

This article aims to study and analyze, from a multidisciplinary point of view, the organizational and institutional transformations that public administration is experiencing due to a country’s transition to the information and knowledge society. Three specific goals are pursued: (a) studying the use of new technologies in the public administration, (b) studying the impact brought about by the use of new technologies by the public administration, and (c) studying the institutional changes caused by the use of these technologies. To achieve these goals, three guiding lines are considered: first, the term governance; that is, the collection of institutions and rules that set the limits and the incentives needed for the constitution and functioning of interdependent networks of actors (government, private sector and civil society actors); second, the new institutionalism perspective; and finally, the relationship between technology and organizational and institutional change.

Literature and policy reports suggest that open data can be used as a tool to enhance transparency. However, several researchers have challenged the idea that the release of government data will result in increased transparency and the idea that transparency automatically leads to more trust in the government. Moreover, transparency may have undesired effects. Limited research has been conducted on these sometimes conflicting findings and challenges, and on how open data policies should deal with this. It is not clear what encompasses an effective open data policy and how this influences transparency. The papers in this special issue contribute to this area. In the introduction of this special issue we present the state-of-the-art with regard to definitions, developments, research, challenges and barriers related to open data transparency and open data policies. Finally, a summary of the papers included in this special issue is provided

Local governments around the world are exploring different strategies to become smarter: more efficient, sustainable, and highly interconnected. However, many actors outside government need to be involved too. For instance, public libraries have the potential to play a very important role in the development of smart and connected communities, due to their strong legitimacy in the eyes of citizens and the types of services and programs they are already providing, which in many cases go well beyond what could be considered traditional library services. This paper analyzes innovative practices in public libraries and argue that they already show the potential of public libraries to become catalysts for smart and connected communities. Together, these innovations represent an opportunity for governments and communities to engage and a new way to think about public libraries as very important actors in smart community initiatives.