Trend: Digital transformation of public administration and services

A trend indicates a direction of change in values and needs which is driven by forces and manifests itself already in various ways within certain groups in society.

Technology is bringing innovative opportunities into the public sector, and has the potential to improve interactions between governments and citizens through the simplification of procedures, as well as contributing to open government. The digital transformation of government means the further modernisation of public administration, seamless cross-border mobility and enhanced digital interactions. An increasing number of governments around the world are using increasing numbers of digital tools. How open, transparent, accountable and participatory will the governments be in the future? How much can digital tools sustain or disrupt this?

There is growing interest to direct the digital transformation so that it respects fundamental rights and democratic values, and provides benefits for society at large. It is now common to speak of a European approach to digitalization - in which data and technologies are supposed to be used for the greater good of the economy and society.  
 

This Trend is part of the Megatrend Increasing influence of new governing systems

Manifestations

Developments happening in certain groups in society that indicate examples of change related to the trend.

Once-only Gov for service delivery

Services will be increasingly tailored to anticipate life events and administrative needs – for e.g. the hospital data of a birth would trigger a birth certificate, Social Security card and a health-care record for the child, and family allowance payments to its qualifying parents. With a ‘once-only government’, citizens and businesses need to provide their data only once, before it is shared across departments with appropriate privacy protections.

Signals of change: European Commission, E-government

Blockchain to increase trust in government

There is an increased focus on the potential application of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies in the public sector to establish trust and increase transparency. Blockchain is a system of recording information in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to manipulate, and distributed ledger technology is a system for recording the transaction details of assets in multiple places at the same time, with no central data store or administration functionality. These might be used as a new information infrastructure that could support and ensure the safe exchange of information between public administrations, citizens and businesses.

Signals of change: IBM, Blockchaintest

Implementation of digital solutions 

Local governments in Europe are pioneering new policies and services to enhance data use for the public interest, alternative data governance models and human-centred digital services. Many governments are implementing digital solutions as well, such as data analytics and cognitive automation (cognitive technologies, such as machine learning, computer vision, machine translation, and speech recognition, used to replicate human actions).

Policymaking supported by machine learning can simulate and identify what approaches produce the best results and improve policies through self-correction. It can also maintain digital platforms for crowdsourced and distributed policymaking, in which citizens contribute with their expertise and experience.  

Signals of change: Digital Luxembourg, Gartner, Deloitte

More democratic data governance for the public interest

There is an increased interest in alternative approaches for the management, control and use of data (especially personal data and digital footprints). Here the focus is on the analysis of emerging alternative models of data governance, which are more democratic (i.e. allowing more actors to control the data and decide how it is used) and that use the data for the public interest (e.g. better public services, addressing social causes, empowering users). 

Signals of change: Intereconomics, Big Data & Society

Interesting questions

What might this trend imply, what should we be aware of, what could we study in more depth? Some ideas:

• How much will public services be user driven in the future? 

• How much digital and data skills will be needed for the public sector? 

• What if digital technologies increased agility and efficiency of services, but disempowered citizens through constant tracking and surveillance, treating them as data providers (for their own purposes) rather than citizens?