Concept and Sectoral Archetypes of Digital Public-Private Partnerships: Comparative Insights from Health, Mobility, Energy, and Identity Systems

Digital technologies are changing not only business models, but also the institutional logic of public service delivery. While traditional public-private partnerships primarily pool infrastructure and capital, digital public-private partnerships (DPPPs) shift the focus to the shared use of digital resources such as data, algorithms and computing power. This paper develops an initial consistent definition proposal and shows how DPPPs can be understood as an independent cooperation format that goes beyond the mere transfer of resources and enables new interaction logics between the public and private sectors. Using the sectors of health, urban mobility, energy, and digital identity and trust infrastructures as examples, four archetypes are identified that illustrate the potential of these hybrid arrangements. In all cases, digital resources prove to be strategic factors of production whose joint institutionalisation opens up new forms of legitimacy, innovative strength, and social value creation. The comparative analysis reveals differences in regulatory density, innovation logic and governance models, but also points to cross-sectoral patterns. DPPPs thus appear to be a building block of a new institutional architecture that not only supports digital transformation, but can also actively shape it.