Legal and Institutional Barriers to Digital Innovation in Local Government
Abstract
Digital transformation is widely promoted as a pathway to more efficient, integrated, and accountable public service delivery. Yet in many local governments, digital reform produces visible administrative change without fundamentally altering how services are organized and delivered. This article examines why digital service innovation remains shallow at the subnational level despite strong national reform pressures. Drawing on a qualitative multiple-case study of selected local governments in West Java, Indonesia, the study investigates how digital reform is translated into everyday bureaucratic practice. Document analysis covered local regulations, service SOPs, SPBE evaluation reports, digital transformation plans, internal monitoring documents, meeting records, and innovation-related materials. Fieldwork was conducted from May to October 2025, generating 22 interviews and reviewing 32 documents across the three cases. The findings show that shallow digital transformation is produced by the interaction of institutional inertia, bureaucratic resistance, fragmented coordination, parallel manual-digital practices, and leadership discontinuity. Rather than generating substantive service redesign, these conditions encourage local governments to prioritize administratively visible forms of compliance, including applications, dashboards, and reports. The article introduces compliance theatre, explaining how digital reform prioritizes administrative legitimacy over substantive change. The article contributes to highlighting organizational barriers and the need to evaluate actual use, integration, and service experience.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26532/jh.v42i4.53178
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| Faculty of Law, Unissula | Copyright of Jurnal Hukum | |
| Jalan Kaligawe Raya KM.4, Terboyo Kulon, Genuk, | ISSN 1412-2723 ( Print )e-ISSN 2723-6668 ( Online ) | |
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