Administrative digital twins for AI-supported performance management in regional government

Abstract

Regional governments play a critical role in the implementation of public policies and the delivery of services to citizens and businesses. However, their administrative operations often rely on complex procedural structures involving multiple organizational units, hierarchical approvals and fragmented information flows. Despite advances in e-government, many public administrations still lack mechanisms to systematically monitor the execution of administrative procedures and evaluate organizational performance in relation to strategic objectives. This gap limits the ability of organizations to identify inefficiencies, coordinate organizational structure and improve service delivery. In this context, it is vital to adopt a strategic approach to enhance the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of internal operations through exploiting technological advancements and organizational transformation and innovation tools. This ongoing research explores the concept of Administrative Digital Twins (ADTs) as a mechanism for supporting strategic performance management in regional administration in Greece, and especially at the Region of Western Macedonia. An ADT is defined as a dynamic digital representation of administrative processes that integrates organizational competencies, goals, procedures, workflow models, task execution data and analytical tools in order to simulate, monitor, analyze, and optimize workflows through procedural simplification, and the overall organizational performance. This systematic, data-driven approach links the above-mentioned variables within a unified digital environment, enabling real-time visibility of administrative processes and the application of AI-supported analysis to detect bottlenecks, overlapping responsibilities and opportunities for procedural simplification. The paper adopts a design science and explanatory case study approach, presenting the pilot implementation of the AriadneAI platform in the Region of Western Macedonia. The study contributes to research on digital government and advances the digital transformation of the public sector by proposing a framework that connects strategic management, administrative process modelling and AI-assisted decision support. It provides preliminary evidence of how ADTs may support data-driven governance and continuous performance improvement in regional authorities.