How digital platforms support public values through government-citizen collaboration?

Digital platforms are becoming a popular means of multi-sided interactions between public institutions and their constituents. By enabling information sharing, consultation, and other forms of government-citizen collaboration, they facilitate co-decision-making and co-creation. Although digital platforms are not, the mechanism through which they can create public value, although important for government institutions and citizens alike, has not been systematically studied yet. This research aims at establishing a link between digital platform-based government-citizen engagement and how such engagement can generate public value. To this end, it employs the mixed method approach consisting of the systematic literature review and the analysis of 15 case studies of representative digital government platforms. The research delivers two main observations. First, digital government platforms produce three common public values: openness, government-citizen dialogue, and productivity gains. Second, unleashing the digital platforms' public value creation potential requires infrastructural foundations, inducements for governments to engage, and mutual benefits for citizens, businesses and the government itself.