The profound digitization of public administration over recent decades has not eliminated information exchange via paper or electronic documents and certificates. We argue that a paradigm shift from document-centric to data-centric public service provision is needed and is feasible today with the exploitation of emerging technologies. We explore frameworks, architectures, benefits, and challenges in transforming document-centric administration processes into integrated, granular data exchange. A conceptual architecture for public service provision is proposed to extract preconditions from legislation, map the needed evidence to the service requirements, standardize evidence types, and integrate authoritative data sources. While promoting efficiency, privacy, and innovation, this shift faces technical and organizational challenges as the analysis of the “National Registry of Administrative Public Services” in Greece reveals. Further research on aligning policies, upholding trust, and coordinating institutional processes is warranted.

This study offers the first systematic exploration of the Greek e-Government team, a public sector innovation unit that operated within the Office of the Prime Minister of Greece from 2009 to 2012—the sole example of such a unit in the country. It illustrates how strategically positioned innovation units can function as change agents within government bureaucracies. The purpose of this work was to analyze how this distinctive unit functioned by bridging policy formulation, legislative drafting, and technological implementation at the highest government levels. The research involved thematic analysis of original interviews conducted with most core members of the team. The findings highlight successes, notably the Diavgeia transparency platform, which markedly improved administrative transparency, accountability, and citizen access to government decisions. Important challenges were also identified, particularly regarding the sustainability of the unit, issues of institutionalization, and meaningful citizen engagement. The experience of the Greek e-Government team suggests that public sector innovation (PSI) units are most effective when they combine high-level political access with multidisciplinary expertise and operational flexibility. The analysis also reveals inherent tensions between the need for centralized coordination and the benefits of decentralized implementation, as well as challenges in maintaining citizen participation throughout the policy development process.

Public-sector innovation is frequently portrayed as the domain of dedicated innovation labs and experimental units, obscuring how innovation capacity can emerge within core bureaucratic institutions. This article explores how Norway’s Brønnøysund Register Centre (BRC), mainly a registry authority traditionally associated with administrative stability, has evolved into a central innovation intermediary within the country’s digital government ecosystem. Drawing on Meijer’s public innovation capacity framework, the study examines how innovation is mobilized, coordinated, tested, stabilized, and legitimized in practice. The findings show that the BRC performs key innovation functions by mobilizing and coordinating heterogeneous actors across a decentralized governance system, enabling experimentation through managed proofs-of-concept, and institutionalizing successful practices via authoritative registries, shared identifiers, and platform infrastructures. These arrangements support interoperability, data-centric service delivery, and the operationalization of once-only and life event-based service models. Trust emerges as an enabling condition that facilitates voluntary coordination, data sharing, and tolerance for experimentation, without substituting for formal governance or legal frameworks. The analysis further highlights how public-value considerations—such as data protection, identity management, accessibility, and accountability—are addressed alongside efficiency and innovation objectives. The article contributes to public-sector innovation research by demonstrating that transferability lies in functional adaptation—strengthening coordination, experimentation, and institutional foundations—rather than organizational replication.