Using digital platforms to promote a service-oriented logic in public sector organizations: A case study

A growing number of scholars and practitioners have recognized that value is defined and cocreated by citizens and that citizens must be involved in the service delivery process to improve the quality and efficacy of public services. Central to this service-dominant logic is that public sector organizations cannot manufacture value for citizens; they can only make a value proposition that the citizen might choose to use. Hence, value must be cocreated. However, this cocreation entails accommodating cocreation practices with millions of users. Currently, cocreation is often limited to involving a carefully selected set of users in crafting requirements early and/or measuring user satisfaction upon service launch. There is an empirical blindspot in the current literature in terms of how to shape service delivery in a way that is capable of effectively capturing emergent and process-oriented value cocreation across large user groups. Through a longitudinal case study of the IT department at the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV), which provides services to millions of users, this paper explores how digital platforms are used to transform value cocreation into a process of continuous improvement. We find that adopting a process-oriented approach for cocreation within public sector organizations requires structural changes, including sourcing strategy and governance structure. We also show the importance of digital platforms in increasing the efficiency of cocreation. We discuss how these structural changes were made and the role played by digital platforms in achieving these changes.