The annual IRSPM conference was held from April 3-5 at Corvinius University, Budapest. This was the first in-person conference since the Covid-19 pandemic and the second time Corvinius University hosted.                                                                                                                                                                              

Justine Marienfeldt, Liz Wehmeier and Sabine Kuhlmann presented the paper "Digital transformation as incremental institutional change: An empirical analysis of the German enforcement administration". In this paper, the authors compare digitilization processes in the tax administration and the vehicle registration authorities, thereby identifying two different modes of institutional change triggered by digitilization. In the tax administration, there is a top-down mode in which analog processes are replaced by digital ones (displacement). In vehicle registration authorities, the bottom-up mode is found, in which analog processes remain the standard and are only partially supplemented by digital ones (layering). These two modes of digitization in turn have an impact on the institutional organization and performance of the respective administrative units.

In addition, Justine Marienfeldt and Sabine Kuhlmann were involved in the first joint paper of the Digilog project entitled "Digital Transformation of Local Government Services in Europe. A Structured Literature Review", which Jakob Kühler from the Chair of Public Management at the University of Potsdam presented together with Tobias Polzer from WU Vienna. The analysis of the literature made clear that different influencing factors are usually examined on the micro level and others on the macro level. Furthermore, it became clear that the focus of research so far has been primarily on output factors and less on outcomes or impacts of digitization.