The COVID-19 pandemic put governments under pressure to make radical and urgent decisions, and to implement new digital solutions to steer society and deliver public services. The study analyzes social media discourse to understand the co-production of a digital public service in an emergency situation. Empirically, the paper draws on Twitter netnography and discourse analysis to examine citizens’ perceptions of the contact tracing app introduced by the UK government to tackle the pandemic. The research contributes to research on public sector accountability for digital transformations by advancing scholarly understanding of how societal concerns and public perceptions impact the co-production of digital services.

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