State Creative Procurement in the Digital Age: Challenges of Transparency and Public Trust

The study analyzes the ArtSport digital platform serving the state creative procurement mechanism in culture and sports in Kazakhstan as a tool for creating public value in the context of digital transformation of public administration. The subject focuses on the contradiction between technological acceleration of public service delivery and insufficient institutional development of procedures, leading to failures in trust and managerial sustainability. The research examines the problem of mismatch between formal expansion of access to cultural services through a digital platform and the absence of sustainable mechanisms ensuring transparency, fair resource distribution, and accountability of management decisions. The study addresses a situation typical for developing jurisdictions, where digitalization reproduces previous dysfunctions in a new technological interface, creating risks for the legitimacy of public institutions and increasing system sensitivity to opportunistic behavior of participants. Qualitative case study with documentary analysis of regulatory acts, comparative analysis with OECD/UNESCO international standards, and operationalization of public value theory through the "strategic triangle" framework. The scientific novelty lies in the applied operationalization of public value theory for analyzing digital services in the cultural sphere with establishing a direct link between technical solutions and social outcomes. For the first time in the Kazakhstani context, a systematic diagnosis of an e-government service has been conducted through the lens of three public value components: substantive value of results, procedural legitimacy, and operational feasibility. Three critical risk nodes have been identified: identification and integration with state registries, independent verification of service delivery, and managed transparency with regulated response mechanisms. It has been proven that sustainable public impact of digital cultural platforms is achieved only through institutional embedding and technical implementation of all three components. A replicable methodology for diagnosing and redesigning digital services has been developed for cultural policy regulators, platform operators, and public oversight bodies, including an assessment matrix and data flow diagram.

State creative procurement, cultural digitalization, cultural policy, institutional trust, epistemological opacity, cultural democracy, algorithmic governance, creative communities, Cultural regulation, Kazakhstan