Digital Twins in Public Services and Stakeholder Engagement for Systemic Innovation

Abstract

Public sector organizations face the dual challenges of constrained budgets and increasing citizen demand for accessible, high-quality public services. The Digital Twin (DT) approach offers significant potential for optimizing processes and enhancing decision-making. However, current implementations predominantly focus on technical aspects, often neglecting the human dimension. The contribution investigates how Service Design (SD) can address these challenges by incorporating Human-Centered Design and Systemic Thinking into DT development for the Public Sector. The focus is on optimizing DT implementations through stakeholder engagement, ensuring these systems are efficient and collaboratively designed to meet diverse user and organizational needs. While SD has been introduced in DT projects, its application has often been limited to economic frameworks, such as value creation through service-dominant logic. Additionally, Interaction Design—a discipline within SD— primarily focuses on interface development in DT projects rather than broader systemic applications. These gaps highlight the need for a conceptual model emphasizing SD’s capacity to align DT implementations with user and stakeholder priorities. Through a literature review, this study develops a conceptual model for integrating SD into DT projects for the Public Sector, emphasizing stakeholder engagement. The model was applied in a case study of a Public Building with DTs for resource optimization, where SD methods were employed to engage key stakeholders, focusing on their interactions with the DT system. Findings show how SD-driven stakeholder engagement aligns DT projects with organizational goals, enhances workflows, and addresses human-centered priorities, while research challenges remain in variability across public sector contexts.

Presenters

Mariia Ershova
Research Fellow and PhD Student, Planning, Design and Technology of Architecture, Sapienza University of Rome, Roma, Italy

Lorenzo Imbesi
Professor, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

Viktor Malakuczi
Assistant Professor, Department PDTA, Sapienza University of Rome, Roma, Italy

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Design in Society

KEYWORDS

Human-Centered Design, Systemic Thinking, Digital Transformation, Public Sector