GREEN COMPETITIVENESS AND DIGITIZATION IN LATVIA MUNICIPALITIES

Abstract

In 2019, the Green Cities submitted the first proposal for the Green Norm. The Green Norm is a set of practical recommendations mainly for politicians, officials and urban development officials. Green cities introduce this norm as a critical strategy for competitiveness. More and more people are moving to big cities, so we must consider climate-neutral solutions as the municipalities set an example. The number of green and climate-neutral towns in Europe and Latvia has constantly been increasing over the last decade, and their competitiveness is also growing. Liepaja is one of the 112 Pioneer cities in the EU which has joined the challenge of climate-neutral cities. One way to be more climate-neutral is to reduce the consumption of pollution and resources in the municipality. Digitization of internal and external municipal services opens the way in this direction. In this study, the authors focus on digitizing the municipality's internal processes and employees' motivation to change their habits and assessing resourcesaving opportunities. The study aims to assess the readiness of municipal employees and detect weak points for the transition to complete internal process digitization to reduce the environmental impact and resource consumption. The study uses surveys and data statistical processing methods with SPSS. As a result of the study, proposals have been developed to improve employees' digital skills to increase municipal green competitiveness.