The public sector is facing significant challenges regarding public services provision, including declination of users’ trust and limited resources. An alternative approach to traditional public service provision with the potential to address these challenges is the co-creation of public services. Co-creation promises to foster innovative solutions to provide high-quality services that respond to users’ needs. Considering this background, we aim at critically exploring public service co-creation via a scoping review, employing the PRISMA-ScR method. Our review focuses on 25 empirical studies out of 75 analyzed articles that examine the implementation of co-creation of (digital) public services and investigates how the empirical literature portrays the concept of public service co-creation. Our findings primarily suggest that co-creation can be implemented in a wide range of sectors and settings, to improve public services and to foster innovation, throughout the whole public service cycle, using a variety of digital, analog and hybrid co-creation tools and strategies. Yet, our review has also shown that there is still an implementation gap that needs to be bridged between knowing and doing in the context of public services co-creation in a digital setting.

Time is now mature for researching AI implementation in the public sector, creating knowledge from real-life settings. The current paper goes in this direction, aiming to explore the challenges public organizations face in implementing AI. The research has been conducted through eight in-depth case studies of AI solutions. As a theoretical background, we relied on a framework proposed by Wirtz et al. [36] that identified four classes of challenges: AI Society, AI Ethics, AI Law and Regulations, and AI Technology Implementation. Our results first confirm the importance of the four classes of challenges. Second, they highlight the need to add a fifth class of challenges, i.e., AI Organizational change. In fact, public organizations are facing important challenges in settling AI solutions in daily operations, practices, tasks, etc. Finally, the five classes have been discussed, including more detailed insights extracted from the coding of the cases.

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly being integrated into public sector decision‐making processes, with public managers relying on them to enhance their capabilities. As AI adoption becomes more widespread, discussions about its advantages and drawbacks intensify, alongside growing external expectations and pressures. However, the extent to which these pressures influence AI adoption remains unclear. Drawing on institutional theory, we conducted a randomised between‐subjects survey among 497 public managers in Belgian municipalities to examine how coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures influence their willingness to adopt AI in decision‐making. Results indicate that all three types of institutional pressures increase public managers' willingness to adopt AI, albeit to varying degrees. Moreover, the effects of coercive and normative pressures diminish when managers have more positive perceptions of AI. By linking institutional theory with individual‐level observations, the study contributes to understanding how institutional contexts shape AI adoption and the broader digital transformation of public administration.

Purpose: This study aims to systematically explore the anticipated realisation of public values through blockchain technology (BCT) within the European public sector. Its purpose is to offer a comprehensive analysis of BCT implementations, focusing on the various expected public values and understanding how these expectations shape the adoption of BCT in public administration across Europe.Design/methodology/approach: This research involves a qualitative analysis of 165 BCT use cases across European governments at the national, regional and local levels. The study employs a public values lens, categorising the expected public values into three clusters: internal, external and relational.Findings: The results indicate that most cases focus on external transformation, aiming to improve public service provision and enhance citizen satisfaction and engagement by increasing public trust, efficiency, accountability and transparency. For the internal dimension, the results emphasise security, efficiency and cooperativeness as expected public values in adopting BCT. Finally, fewer cases highlight expectations related to relational public values, such as citizen involvement and democratic participation.Originality/value: This research offers new insights into BCT in the public sector through a public values lens within the European context. It examines the expected public values arising from BCT adoption, providing insights for policymakers and practitioners considering BCT integration in daily operations. This study emphasises the need for further empirical research to explore BCT’s potential in realising these expected public values and to evaluate the trade-offs and disruptive impacts on public administrations.

Public service providers increasingly encourage users to actively coproduce as a means to enhance public service provision. But what drives users to coproduce? Using a unique combination of survey and actual behavior log‐data of 9992 smart public service users who reported service‐related issues, we examine the extent to which users' self‐centered and community‐centered motivations are associated with their actual reporting behavior as well as the effort intensity of such behavior. Our findings suggest that users' self‐centered motivations are positively related to their actual reporting behavior and effort intensity, while community‐centered motivations do not show a significant association. Our study highlights the importance of self‐centered motivations in (digital) coproduction and co‐assessment. It also showcases the potential of using log data from public services to measure actual coproduction behavior instead of relying solely on self‐reported behavior.