ABSTRACT

Identifying and developing core competencies are critical for building digital governance capacity since capacity-building requires a clear articulation of what capacity is needed. Competencies provide the specifics on the knowledge and skills needed for building the needed capacity. For digital governance, these competencies include both technical and management iterations. For instance, computer and network literacy is a technical competency while cross-boundary collaboration is management-related. Moreover, competencies are relatively universal across a variety of organizational contexts because of the focus on individual capabilities and attributes. Work competencies have several unique features. One is the competencies’ link to job performance (McClelland 1973), and another is their emphasis on virtue and morality (Bowman, West, and Beck 2015). The core competencies of digital governance need to address contem-

porary issues as well as seize opportunities to advance public values. In the area of e-government and digital governance, a growing need exists for integrated and personalized digital services that require managers to effectively manage across organizational boundaries to integrate information and systems. In addition, the emphasis on engaging citizens via online platforms and means continues to grow (Goldsmith and Crawford 2014; Mergel 2013). Such engagement can be in the form of providing personalized information/service to citizens or opportunities for citizens to co-produce digital services with government. Technical knowledge is a crucial dimension of digital governance core

competencies (Ni and Chen 2016). Information technology (IT) literacy allows digital governance managers to understand the basic innerworkings and functionalities of technologies in order to leverage and manage them effectively. The constantly changing technology landscape makes it exciting, though challenging, to keep up with the newest developments. Social media have matured into some of the most prevalent tools for people and government to communicate (i.e. Facebook and Twitter in the United States). The growth in artificial intelligence, the internet of

things, and big data analytics (among others) requires that core competencies continue to evolve with technologies. Another critical task is to describe and assess efforts made to develop

those core competencies. The question to answer is how we are preparing effective digital governancemanagers to fully realize the potential of digital technologies while mitigating the risks involved. A further important question to ask interrogates the extent to which we are developing these core competencies and the opportunities to further improve. It is important to look at public administration and public policy programs that train public and non-profit managers. In addition, the on-going education provided by governments and professional associations needs to be assessed to gain a fuller understanding of developing core competencies. In response, this chapter will first describe the core competencies of

digital governance as gleaned from the literature and practice. These core competencies will include individual values and attributes as well as technical andmanagerial knowledge and skills. Next, the chapter describes and reviews the efforts to develop core competencies by public administration and public policy programs. The goals are to provide the reader with a variety of options for developing these core competencies and to identify improvement opportunities. The discussion then examines the efforts made by governments and professional associations to provide on-going development of these core competencies. This chapter will conclude with key lessons and opportunities to meet the challenges of building digital governance capacity.