Digital instrumentation and public action

All European countries have implemented reforms aimed at ‘dematerializing’ public administrations and services. However, this reshaping of the public action model, based on increased use of various digital means and processes, has its problems. There is an abundant English-language literature on the subject, and this Introduction presents what we consider to be some of its major recent findings. This partial review enables us to link the contributions in this issue to some of the most well-established topics in this research field.