Balancing the Digital Portfolio: Empirical evidence of an ambidextrous bias in digital government.

The public sector is currently undergoing significant transformation in striving for digital government. With digital government involving a dilemma between continuous improvements and radical innovation, this places new demands on the manner through which digital initiatives are prioritized and managed. Previous research has called for both increased agility and adaptability in the governing of digital, yet there is to date a dearth of studies into public sector portfolio management. In this study, we address the issue of how digital initiatives are prioritized and managed in organizations, i.e., the practice of portfolio management. Through a clinical inquiry of three public sector organizations (one agency, one healthcare region, and one municipality), we analyze and compare existing portfolio management practices and portfolio compositions using previous findings from the field of organizational ambidexterity. Based on this, we identify pathologies in the current practice, elaborate on the role of balancing in portfolio management, and offer concrete recommendations to practice.