Analyzing a Frugal Digital Transformation of a Widely Used Simple Public Service in Greece

The digital transformation of public services has been traditionally one of the main targets of digital government research and practice; however, it has focused mainly on the digital transformation of complex public services, based on the development of highly sophisticated and costly information systems (IS) for this purpose. Nevertheless, considerable public value can be generated through the digital transformation of widely used simpler public services as well, as it can result in huge savings of both public servants’ and citizens’ time, as well as improvements in the quality of these services. Furthermore, due to the financial resource constraints that governments of most countries face, it is important that this is implemented at a low cost, adopting a ‘frugal innovation’ approach. In this direction this paper: a) describes the ‘frugal’ low-cost digital transformation of a widely used simple public service in Greece, the ‘certification of authenticity of signature’, which is applied in two special forms, the ‘formal declaration’ and the ‘authorization’; b) evaluates these novel e-services, based on an extension of ‘Diffusion of Innovation’ theory with an additional trust-related dimension, using both qualitative and quantitative techniques, and finally drawing interesting conclusions of wider interest and applicability.