Research

Infrastructuring In Digital Transformation : An Action Case Study Of District Heating

Read the article

Abstract

Digital transformation is reshaping the public sector’s provision of the physical, information, and human infrastructures that make a society function. Therefore, we need to understand and help support the infrastructuring that different stakeholders do in a digital transformation to make digital infrastructure work. Against this backdrop, we report a two-year action case study of the digitalization of district-heating infrastructure in a Danish municipality. From our engagement in the development and diffusion of smart metering and a personal energy assistant for 39.830 households, we analyze three defining types of infrastructuring in this digital transformation: 1) Digitalizing heat supply metering, 2) Digitalizing consumers’ heating practices, and 3) Digitalizing through partnering. We explain how digital transformation has two-way relationships to the stakeholders’ infrastructuring work and breakdowns that make digital infrastructure visible. Finally, drawing upon the extant research, we discuss how our study contributes to the research on digital transformation in the public sector.