Authors : Hammed Yusuf Akinteye; Adisa Muhammed; Azeez Abiola Azeez; Mabinty Success Kamara

Volume/Issue : Volume 11 - 2026, Issue 5 - May

Google Scholar : https://tinyurl.com/y3vmu6nk

Scribd : https://tinyurl.com/y424fmhj

DOI : https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/26May955

Note : A published paper may take 4-5 working days from the publication date to appear in PlumX Metrics, Semantic Scholar, and ResearchGate.

Abstract : The procedural, paper-bound character of public administration is steadily giving way to a data centred mode of governance, and civil servants now occupy a working life in which knowledge work, rather than file-handling, predominates. Acquiring, curating, interpreting, and ethically deploying public-sector data assets has shifted from being a specialist concern to a routine expectation, and these obligations sit awkwardly alongside the competency profile that conventional bureaucratic training instils. The existing literature has tended to address this transition at the level of macro reform drivers or aggregate measures of digital-government maturity, leaving the day-to-day workplace experience of public employees who actually wield these tools comparatively under-examined. This paper turns the analytic lens toward that experiential dimension by proposing a construct we label the data stewardship competency gap (DSCG): an aversive cognitive-affective condition that arises when an employee perceives their bureaucratic skill repertoire to be inadequate for the datastewardship demands embedded in their digitalised role. Drawing on expectation-disconfirmation theory and competency theory, we theorise DSCG as a product of two disconfirmation pathways one rooted in digital tools and the other in data governance. The paper then examines, empirically, how DSCG shapes whether public employees commit themselves more fully to a data-steward identity or retreat from digital reform. Theoretically, the contribution lies in framing DSCG as a workplace-induced negative state that competency-model evolution must explicitly accommodate. Practically, the paper argues that public organisations need to manage DSCG when they redesign competency frameworks for the digital age.

Keywords : Data Stewardship; Public Administration; Competency Models; Digital Government; Expectation-Disconfirmation Theory; Switching Intention; Public Service Motivation.

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