Municipal Digital Transformation in the Fast Lane? Changes in German Municipalities due to Covid-19

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 changed life as we know it in many ways. Many organizations, including municipalities, were forced to implement the government’s new pandemic regulations and digitally map municipal processes in a short period of time. We conducted a case study over a 16-month period (subdivided into three phases) to examine the changes in municipalities. In doing so, we compared and evaluated the changes in the municipal fields of action with the digital transformation plans (pre-Covid). The findings show that changes have taken place in many fields of action, most of them in Administration, Education, People and Health. It is remarkable that some changes only started at a certain phase, like building competences, and others showed a continuous change, like IT-equipment. Finally, completely new measures have appeared in addition to a more intensive design of the digital transformation measures that were actually planned