Digital forvaltning i det borgernære bureaukrati

Based on an ethnographic study of frontline work at a municipal citizen service centre in Denmark, this paper examines how digitization reforms reorganize frontline workers’ bureaucratic practices and thus identifies how relations, professionalism and management become redistributed in the digital era. The analysis draws on empirical material generated through observations, field notes, interviews and documents, ultimately showing that e-government reforms have instituted temporary practices that aid the individual’s transformation to digital citizenship, and that these practices change citizen services both relationally and institutionally. The analysis further shows how managing and empowering citizens is the core task of frontline work, and how public administration is displaced into the citizen’s private sphere for the purpose of creating an efficient, digitized society.