Collaborative platforms in digital government: structural and cultural barriers to coordination

Collaborative platforms are increasingly used to coordinate digital public services across organizational boundaries, yet how they function in practice remains poorly understood. This study examines the coordination challenges such platforms face, drawing on Norway’s “life event” initiatives—programs designed to deliver integrated, user-centered digital services across government sectors. Based on document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 22 government actors and platform coordinators, the study finds that while collaborative platforms are designed to enable cross-sectoral interaction and co-creation, their effectiveness is constrained by structural barriers—including limited resources, unclear roles, and unsupportive regulatory frameworks—and by cultural tensions over norms, expectations, and interpretations of responsibility. These findings clarify the concept of collaborative platforms in public management research, showing how coordination challenges shape their operation and outcomes. The study contributes to digital governance scholarship by identifying the difficulties public managers face in steering and sustaining scalable collaborative arrangements for digital transformation and public service delivery.