Exploring the impact of digital transformation on public governance - Prevailing (public) governance models throughout Europe

The overall purpose of public governance is to deliver public value benefits that promote the prosperity, well-being and flourishing of all people and all parts of society. This work concentrates on (liberal) democratic systems, with their country, regional and local variations and the EU as the overarching level of governance. As types of public governance models and paradigms change in character and increase in variety over time, this report provides a state of the art overview of prevailing public governance models throughout Europe, also including practical examples. It presents five generations of public governance models, alongside the industrial revolutions and the different generations of the World Wide Web. Among other, the report concludes that public governance paradigms accumulate layer upon layer resulting in a form of sedimentation over time. Each of the paradigms identified continue to have relevance today, although the novel and emerging paradigms tend now to be more dominant. The report also finds that we are still in an era of understanding the best ways of using digital data and technologies for the public good. The next step, building on this work is to outline potential future scenarios for new governance models supporting policy-making and the provision of innovative, people-centric and inclusive public services, and to recommend future research questions to the JRC.