A Contextualized Digital Government Model for Decentralized Governance: Evidence from Local Digital Transformation in Indonesia

Abstract

Why do some local governments achieve more effective digital transformation than others despite operating under the same national regulatory framework? Existing digital government scholarship, particularly Digital Era Governance (DEG), has advanced important insights into reintegration, holistic service delivery, and digitalization. However, it remains less explicit in explaining how national digital reform agendas are translated into effective local governance outcomes within decentralized systems. Addressing this gap, this article develops a Contextualized Digital Government (CDG) model to explain variation in local digital government effectiveness. Drawing on a qualitative case study of Banyuwangi Regency, Indonesia, the study analyzes policy documents, national digital government evaluation records, and 11 semi-structured interviews with central and local government actors using NVivo-assisted thematic analysis. The findings show that digital government effectiveness is not produced by regulatory compliance alone, but through the interaction of four contextualization mechanisms: policy alignment, organizational configuration, resource mobilization, and societal engagement. Banyuwangi’s effectiveness lies in its ability to translate national digital mandates into locally meaningful development priorities, institutionalize cross-sectoral coordination, sustain fiscal, technological, and human resource commitments, and strengthen the perceived social legitimacy of digital reform. The article contributes to digital government studies by extending DEG through a contextualized perspective that explains how national reform frameworks are locally interpreted, organizationally coordinated, materially sustained, and socially legitimized in decentralized governance systems.