Back to the Future: Does the use of information and communication technology enhance the performance of public historical archives?

The diffusion of digital information and communication technologies (ICT) in public services is generally assumed to improve their performance. However, the impact of ICT on the efficiency of public services is rarely verified. This study focuses on public historical archives (PHAs), which are a widely diffuse—yet little explored—public service. It provides an assessment of the impact of a specific ICT on PHAs’ efficiency, namely the introduction of websites. The analysis adopts a two-stage approach involving the estimation of the frontier using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Window DEA. Results show that the diffusion of ICT is efficiency improving: Italian PHAs having a website are generally more efficient than others. These empirical findings are robust to the use of alternative estimators and empirical strategies in both first and second stage assessment. Finally, we suggest some directions for further research in the field.