Digital Leadership Competencies for Digital Government: Insights and Implications from New Zealand Government Agencies

In launching whole-of-government approaches such as the New Zealand Strategy for a Digital Public Service (SDPS) or agency's digital strategies, a critical success factor in digital strategy execution is ensuring that strategies and accountabilities across government agencies align with these key government initiatives. Alignment also needs to flow into job design, job role accountabilities, job descriptions and work activities. It is in this aligning strategy with job roles, accountabilities, and the required digital leadership (DLS) competencies where the technical ability to achieve the desired outcomes lies. Using a qualitative document analysis methodology and Schippmann's people and work pyramid models of Strategic Job Modelling, we conducted a descriptive study on the strategic alignment of an agency's digital strategy (reflected in their Statement of Intent), the SDPS with DLS job role accountabilities and the competencies required for senior digital leaders in the New Zealand public sector. Analysing data from three government agencies we discover systemic misalignment and, in this process, provide an enhanced digital leadership competency set for the public sector, comparing this with how the required and espoused digital competencies of digital leaders align with their job/role accountabilities. Finally, we discussed the implications for digital strategy execution providing five actionable insights.