DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF PUBLIC SECTOR

Abstract

In recent years, society has had to adapt to the different socio-economic environment caused by the Covid-19 crisis. This situation has highlighted the need for comprehensive measures to overcome obstacles at all levels created by social distance. The transition to the most remote and electronic way of functioning of different systems has emerged as a way to ensure the continuity of many processes. The purpose of the report is to identify international good practices regarding the digital transition of administrative services and to identify those aspects of them that could be adapted to the Bulgarian public sector. The used methodology is content analysis of documents and scientific publications, induction, deduction, GAP analysis, synthesis and comparison. The research process will outline as results external and internal environmental factors, some of which have a favorable and others hinder the development of the digitalization process. In conclusion, the digital transition in general is not only important, but also necessary in order for businesses and public institutions to meet the dynamic development of technology and the accompanying requirements of modern society. The relevance of digital transformation has intensified, both in the business sector and in the public sector. While at the European Union`s level, the next steps are being prepared for the transition to the providing of cross-border electronic public services, in Bulgaria the internal processes for digitalization of administrative services are lagging behind. The recommendations based on the research are connecting with the fact that digital transformation of public sector requires not only the application of certain tools, but a deeper rethinking, changing the behavior of society and reorganizing public systems in order to achieve effective supply and use of electronic services. The advantages of this type of transition are indisputable and are mainly in the easier and faster interaction between the various entities and public institutions and the significant reduction of costs. It is because of the awareness of these advantages that Bulgaria declares in its national policy intentions to accelerate the pace of development of the public sector in this direction, which is currently slow and the results are not effective enough. However, it should be noted that there is a difference between e-government and e-government services. E-government is a more complex concept and covers four main areas of relationships: administration-citizens, administration-business, administration-administration and administration-employees. This report examines the part aimed at providing services to citizens, which only concerns part of e-government.