Universal and contextualized public services: Digital public service innovation framework

• To address social and economic inequalities, public service delivery should be universal and contextualized.
• Universality and contextualization can be simultaneously achieved through continuing innovation in digital public services.
• Innovation in digital public services is non-linear and its boundaries are and will probably remain undefined.
• Delivering innovative digital public services requires building technical, organizational and policy capabilities within government organizations.

In view of the rising social and economic inequalities, public service delivery should be both universal, i.e. independent of the recipients' social or economic status, and contextualized, i.e. able to compensate for different local needs and conditions. Reconciling both properties requires various forms of innovations, chief among them innovations in digital public services. Building upon the four-stage model underpinning the United Nations e-Government Survey, the paper puts forward a framework for developing such innovations, and populates it with transparent, participatory, anticipatory, personalized, co-created, context-aware and context-smart services (including real-life examples) as initial set of innovations. The paper also outlines new technical, organizational and policy-related government capabilities required to engage in digital public service innovations.