The Impact of Public Administration Digitalization on the Decarbonization of the Economy

Abstract

According to wikinomics, the decarbonization of the economy it is not possible without the involvement of people’s creativity and ingenuity under the form of prosumption channeled into the public administration. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to transform the existing websites of municipal offices into participation platforms that would become the local growth poles concentrating the economic forces operating in a given area. As Adam Smith, the father of economics, noted, synchronization between the economic goals of people and the preferences of local authorities are the main factors of development and the lack of them can create the highest degree of chaos in the economy. Consequently, the research began with defining prosumption and determining the degree of cooperation between society and the public administration sector in the digital sphere. Correspondence analysis was used to analyze the data collected from a survey. The issue of the quality of websites of municipal public administration offices, which in the digital economy function as growth poles and development axes, was also discussed. It was observed that society is prepared to perform the role of prosumers in the public administration sector; however, the low quality of websites constrains full disclosure of society’s prosumer potential. Under these conditions, the best ways to decarbonize the local economy are: (1) acceleration of the digitization of municipal public administration; and (2) use of the already existing infrastructural growth poles and development axes. The first postulate is related to the improvement of the existing, and the construction of new, computer networks. The second point mainly concerns the achievements of molinology, which studies the existing and partially functional infrastructure of former watermills and the location of former windmills. It is a valuable clue that facilitates the location and construction of modern renewable energy sources. The subject of the research is the Warmia and Mazury Province, which includes 116 municipalities and is the fourth largest province in Poland.