Rethinking Public Sector Accountability in Digital Transformation: A Critical Integrative Review
TL;DR
It is argued that digital accountability is not merely a technical outcome of adopting new tools, but a socio-technical process shaped by institutional design, human capacity, ethical safeguards, data practices, and inclusive governance.
Abstract
Digital transformation is reshaping public sector accountability by expanding the availability, visibility, and circulation of governmental data while reconfiguring relationships among public institutions, citizens, private actors, and digital technologies.This article presents a critical integrative review of literature on digital transformation and public sector accountability. It synthesizes foundational accountability scholarship, prior structured reviews, and recent studies published mainly between 2021 and 2025 to examine how digitalization affects accountability mechanisms in public administration. The review identifies six major themes: transparency and open data, citizen participation and social media, performance measurement and analytics, digital financial management and auditing, AI and algorithmic accountability, and social equity in digital governance. The synthesis shows that digital tools such as open data platforms, social media, performance dashboards, integrated financial systems, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics can enhance transparency, citizen engagement, performance monitoring, and financial oversight. However, these technologies also generate significant accountability challenges, including information overload, uneven digital capacity, fragmented responsibility in multi-actor ecosystems, algorithmic opacity, data interpretation risks, surveillance concerns, and exclusion arising from digital divides. The article argues that digital accountability is not merely a technical outcome of adopting new tools, but a socio-technical process shaped by institutional design, human capacity, ethical safeguards, data practices, and inclusive governance. It contributes by developing an integrative lens organized around accountability actors, forums, mechanisms, and risks. The review proposes a future research agenda focused on dialogic and horizontal accountability, AI and data intermediary governance, inclusive digital participation, accountability for unintended consequences, and frameworks that align digital innovation with democratic values, public trust, equity, and public value.