Digital transformation has become a central public-sector reform agenda, yet high digital governance performance remains uneven across subnational governments. Although digital governance is expected to strengthen administrative capacity and service delivery, less is known about the policy pathways through which such performance is achieved. Drawing on the Technology–Organization–Environment framework, this study examines six implementation conditions: technological management capability, digital infrastructure development level, organizational strategy, attention to digital governance, public demand, and intergovernmental competitive pressure. Applying fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to 31 provincial-level cases in China, the study finds that organizational strategy is necessary but insufficient, and that no single condition alone explains high performance. Four sufficient policy pathways are identified and summarized into three implementation mechanisms: technology–organization synergy, competition-pressure reinforcement, and demand compensation. The findings show that high public-sector digital governance performance is shaped by aligned implementation conditions rather than isolated technological investment.
Wu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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