Public organizations face increasing pressure to modernize the state and advance digital transformation. These ambitions require employees with digital competences who can help redesign services, processes, and organizational structures.

However, an ongoing research project analyzing thousands of public sector job advertisements shows a surprising pattern: digital competences are not systematically requested across organizations, hierarchy levels, and areas of responsibility.

This raises an important question: if digital transformation is politically and strategically prioritized, why are digital competences not more consistently reflected in public sector recruitment practices?

Within this context, the master’s thesis focuses on the mechanisms behind public sector job advertisements. The thesis investigates how HR decision-makers and related organizational actors define job requirements, decide which competences to include, and translate organizational needs into formal job ads. Particular attention is given to the pathways through which digital talent enters (or fails to enter) public organizations.

Methodologically, the thesis will use semi-structured interviews with HR decision-makers and potentially other relevant actors from public sector organizations. The exact sampling strategy will be discussed with the supervisors. Based on these interviews, the thesis aims to explain why digital competences are often weakly represented in recruitment documents despite broader modernization and digital transformation ambitions.

The thesis contributes to a better understanding of why digital transformation in public organizations remains difficult to advance. It links recruitment practices, competence demands, and digital talent management to the broader issue of stalled public sector transformation. If the collaboration between the candidate and the supervisors works well, the option of developing the thesis into a joint academic publication can be discussed afterwards.