Digitalization of public sector organizations over time: The applicability of quantitative text analysis

Abstract

In recent decades, public organizations have undergone significant changes related to digitalization. These changes are the result of multiple, varying influences, such as external institutional feedback. The issue of digitalization feedback development in public organizations opens the discussion on how to study digitalization over time. In this article, we consider whether the method of quantitative text analysis can be used to observe the same administrative trends in digitalization as found using other methods and data sources in existing research. After conducting a co-occurrence analysis of documents from the Norwegian Customs Agency (NCA) over a period of 20 years, we found that the NCA's digitalization-related language changed in this period and that user feedback was the most frequently emphasized kind of external feedback. These observations are consistent with the literature, which shows that the use of co-occurrence methodology to study public administration has a positive role in future research. Quantitative text analysis is an effective method to observe administrative trends. Findings of the study corroborate with previous research showing that current administrative trends emphasize collaboration between public organizations and citizen participation as central development features of digitalization of public organizations. The co-occurrence analysis has some limitations and needs to be further improved to develop theory and identify new areas of public administration digitalization.