The Effect of Digital Leadership Training on Digital Transformation in Government: Field Experimental Evidence from Brazil

Digital transformation of government - understood as government digitalization to improve service delivery, organizational efficiency and civic engagement - is a core objective for governments. Government IT spending is forecast to total US$590bn globally in 2023 and studies find that effective digital transformation is a key predictor of greater government effectiveness, firm productivity and citizen satisfaction with government.

Yet, despite heavy investments in digital transformation - from online citizen access to services such as tax filing to automating back-office tasks such as record keeping - scholarly and practitioner reviews suggest that outcomes of digital transformation efforts are often poor. This puts a premium on understanding how governments can effectively further digital transformation.

Despite hundreds of studies on digital transformation, however, causally-identified research on this question remains close to non-existent. Governments thus frequently lack a robust evidence base for digital transformation choices.

This holds in particular for one key component of digital transformation efforts: digital leadership skills. Both academic studies and practitioner assessments underscore the centrality of digital leadership skills for successful digital transformation of government, and the frequent lack of digital leadership skills by public managers. Governments have responded to this skills shortage through large-scale training.

The UK government is committed to upskilling over 90% of senior civil servants in digital government, for instance. Yet, while digital leadership training is central to governmental digital transformation efforts around the world, there is no causal evidence on its effectiveness. Are digital leadership trainings effective at furthering digital transformation in government?

Our ESRC-FAPESP project will partner with the Government of Brazil in a field experiment to shed light on this question. Brazil is one of the world's leading governments in digital transformation, ranking 7th out of 198 countries in the World Bank's public sector digitalization (GovTech) index. In collaboration with the Brazilian Government's National School of Public Administration, our field experiment delivers a state-of-the-art term-long, small-group training to 1,000 Brazilian public managers in digital leadership.

The training would build on the most widely taught digital leadership module in public service, "Teaching Public Service in a Digital Age." Participants would be randomly split into a treatment and wait-listed control group. After the treatment group training, the project would assess effects on digital transformation through (1) a panel survey of participants, measuring their digital competencies, attitudes towards digital transformation, digital leadership practices and digital transformation achievements; and (2) in collaboration with Brazil's Secretary for Digital Government, participant submissions to the Secretary's competition to receive technical support for digital transformation ideas.

The project will add much needed causal evidence to debates about the drivers of effective digital transformation in government in general and digital leadership training in particular. As a further scholarly benefit, the project will generate the largest individual-level panel survey dataset on digital transformation to-date, enabling a stream of longitudinal research on digital leadership competencies, attitudes and practices, and digital transformation.