Abstract
Digitalization is increasingly becoming an important strategy in reforming urban spatial planning permits, alongside efforts to modernize public administration and governance. However, existing studies generally still assess digital licensing primarily from the perspective of administrative efficiency and legal certainty, thus paying insufficient attention to its institutional implications for governance practices. This research examines digital licensing from an institutional perspective, emphasizing how digital systems and devices are changing governance practices in urban spatial planning. This study employs a qualitative methodology, focusing on institutional analysis of publicly accessible policy documents, institutional records, and digital licensing workflows. The research findings indicate that digital licensing serves as an institutional reconfiguration mechanism that influences the exercise of authority, interagency coordination patterns, and governance capacity through system-based workflows. These changes primarily occurred at the operational and institutional levels, although they were not always accompanied by explicit formal regulatory changes. This research contributes to the digital governance and urban governance literature by moving beyond approaches that solely emphasize legal certainty and positioning digital systems as active institutional structures that mediate administrative practices and decision-making processes. The proposed analytical framework is also relevant for other contexts that are implementing digital-based spatial planning licensing reforms in contemporary governance practices.
Keywords: Decision-Making, Digital Governance, Digital Licensing, Institutional Change, Urban Planning.