Rethinking public-sector digital transformation: insights from Indonesian civil registration services

Public-sector digital transformation (DT) is often portrayed as technological modernization, yet initiatives in developing economies often fail to deliver citizen outcomes. Although failures are attributed to socio-technical misalignment, little research shows how misalignments become visible in everyday operations. We conduct a revelatory longitudinal case study of Surabaya City Office for Population Administration and Civil Registration (COPACR), examining two e-government systems: KLAMPID and its redesigned successor, KLAMPID New Generation (KNG). Using process mining with a socio-technical systems (STS) lens, we analyze 76,520 birth-certificate cases with interviews, workshops, and validation sessions between 2021 and 2023. The analysis reveals phenomena overlooked by conventional reporting, including selective task processing, workload concentration, compliance deviations, coordination breakdowns, and unintended consequences of system redesign. The study contributes by showing how misalignments evolve across DT cycles, demonstrating how process mining operationalizes STS analysis through trace-level evidence, and offering practical lessons for managing DT in constrained public-sector environments.