Fredric Skargren

About Fredric Skargren

I began my PhD studies in 2018 at the Department of Informatics at Örebro University School of Business. In September 2025 I successfully defended my thesis. My PhD has been conducted as an industry-employed doctoral student, first working as a business developer (2015–2021) at the Swedish Transport Agency, and since 2021 as an analyst at the Swedish Agency for Digital Government. I have worked in the public sector since 2011 and hold an MSc in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics and a BA in History from Malmö University. My research interests concern digital government in theory and practice, including topics such as open data, digital participation, benchmarking, and the use of artificial intelligence in public administration. I very much appreciate working in the intersection of research and practice, exploring how to assess and analyse the relationship between digital technologies and public administration in modern government agencies. I also have a big interest in the historical development of the use of different types of technologies for enabling and carrying out of public administration.

My PhD-thesis addresses the question: How can a Digital Index Framework (DIF) provide an assessment of digitalisation of core processes in government agencies? It aims to understand how digitalisation can be assessed in the context of public administration and core processes. The research is grounded in the multi-disciplinary field of digital government and applies mixed methods: literature review, design science and case studies. The thesis finds that benchmarking digital government faces recurring criticism regarding how assessments are conducted and what they measure. By examining the design of a DIF, the thesis proposes
design principles for assessing digitalisation, focusing on how digital technologies support administrative processes. This includes a process view highlighting interaction with society, internal case handling and data exchange. Examining digitalisation through a DIF highlights core processes and contributes to scholarly discussions on linking public administration with digitalisation. Focusing on core processes, the thesis presents a classification of eight types, which can support both assessing digitalisation and studying phenomena such as artificial
intelligence and digital services. The thesis also contains results concerning the influences from the practical implementation of the DIF among practitioners in government agencies. The engagement with the DIF fostered skill development, deeper reflections on cross-government processes and led to policy learning and change.