Promising areas for the application of digital technologies in municipal management (case study of the city of Nizhny Novgorod)

The article is devoted to the identification and analysis of promising areas of application of digital technologies in the municipal administration of the city of Nizhny Novgorod, assessment of the quality of the applied IT technologies, as well as determination of potential advantages associated with digital transformation for the state, municipality and society. Digital transformation in Nizhny Novgorod is an extremely dynamic process: research centers and IT campuses are actively developing in the city, IT companies are successfully operating, and digital developments that are being widely implemented, including in municipal administration, are making changes to the processes of interaction between the state and society. At the same time, despite the benefits of using digital technologies for both citizens and government officials, in the context of digitalization, issues of ensuring state security and the ethics of using a number of IT developments are acute. The methodological basis of the study is a systems approach (D. Easton), a descriptive approach with case study elements, a diagnostic approach (E. I. Dobrolyubova), methods of structural description, comparative analysis and a typological method. The novelty of the study is represented by the following positions: digital technologies implemented in the municipal administration of the city of Nizhny Novgorod in the period 2018-2025 have been systematized and typologized; the main directions and stages of digital transformation in the municipality have been identified. The study presented a retrospective of Nizhny Novgorod digitalization, analyzed pilot digital projects, and identified factors that affect the quality of advanced IT technologies. The characteristic problems and limitations of the implementation of end-to-end technologies at the municipal level were identified, including issues of information security, digital literacy of personnel, and ethical regulation of the use of artificial intelligence. Scientifically based recommendations for the development of digital technologies in municipal administration are formulated based on a comparative analysis of the Nizhny Novgorod experience with practices in other Russian regions.