Nurturing Digital Government Reform: Nuggets of Wisdom From a Global Frontrunner

Government reform initiatives increasingly incorporate significant digital elements. This article builds on successful, long‐term Danish experiences with digital government reform and offers “nuggets of wisdom” to policymakers, organisations, and countries wishing to advance such reform. In international surveys, Denmark is consistently ranked as a global frontrunner in digital government. This article builds on a longitudinal case study of digital development paths in two digitally mature Danish policy domains: Civil registry administration and illness benefit reimbursement administration. Across the cases, we find that the development is characterised by multiple actors, as well as complex, non‐linear and partly unpredictable paths. In both cases, technology arrangements are characterised by a long lifespan, producing a pattern of “cumulative complexity” where business processes, data, and technology become increasingly intertwined. This severely complicates effective strategic planning by policymakers. Taking these “real‐life” experiences into consideration, we formulate six policy‐making implications elaborated in several practitioner guidelines that represent best‐practice recommendations for policymakers wishing to nurture possible roads to digitally mature government.