Strategic Public Management and Covid-19: How does digitalization support local public administration resilience?

This paper aims to understand how technology enables the resilience of local governments and supports the continuation of public services during moments of crisis or exogenous shocks, specifically focusing on the Covid-19 pandemic. We adopt strategic public management literature and follow a contingency approach to frame how local administrations responded to the Covid-19 crisis. Through survey responses from local administrations in Wallonia, Belgium, we consider how varied contexts led to different strategic pathways. We highlight the role of digital solutions that supported resilience across the different pathways, paying attention to solutions affecting public services going beyond the Covid-19 crisis.