This study focuses on the digital transformation of government governance, as a main approach to public administration reforming in the digital age. In particular, it discusses the innovative application of digital governance models to public services as well as estimates the government digital governance level and the efficiency of public services. To estimate the efficiency of public services and the government digital governance level, the entropy weight method and three-stage super-efficiency SBM DEA method are used. Further, the mechanism of the influence of the digital transformation of government governance on the efficiency of public services was investigated using the PSM-DID analysis. Finally, this study established an integrated framework promoting the development of intelligent public services. The results revealed that the overall level of digital governance of the government in China remained relatively stable, while there was still great disparity among provinces and cities from 2014 to 2023. In terms of the efficiency of public services during this period, there was a slight trend towards a decline. As the factors constraining comprehensive technical efficiency, scale efficiency played the dominant role. Meanwhile, the improvement of comprehensive technical efficiency became the key driver of total factor productivity changes. The results revealed that the external environment affected the assessment of the efficiency of public services. Additionally, the digital transformation of government governance had positive effects on the efficiency of public services. On the basis of the aforementioned findings, a framework for developing intelligent public services was proposed.
