Making space for digital statecraft

Models for “digital transformation” are the current idiom for guiding digitalisation practice within key Norwegian state agencies, including the police. In this article, we follow how a team of state auditors encounter these models as they seek to evaluate the digitalisation work of the Norwegian Police Service. As we show in this paper, these models offer a clear direction for managers struggling with achieving digital change. Yet while proposing distinct steps to follow and criteria to fulfil to enable the complex organizational and technological development processes that allow them to reach “digital maturity”, the models stop short of giving a specific recipe for how to get there. Through a detailed empirical study, we explore how such models, developed and promoted by management consultants, enter the public sector by means of books, meetings, and PowerPoint presentations. We show how the auditors and police officials engage with these models in different ways: For the auditors, they are tried out as a methodological aid in the process of evaluating the object of police digitalisation. For the police officials being audited, their chosen model helps them carve out a space for digitalisation, thereby becoming a useful aid in their internal political struggles. We argue that for the police, the model’s authority comes from their being solid and opaque at the same time. This paradox turns out to be highly productive and enables the model to act as a placeholder delineating a space for action for the police officials struggling to digitalise their sector.