Digital Age Governance

The role of digital tools and technology on elections was more than obvious in the recent public elections of one of the most powerful nations of the world. From “official” roles such as compiling voter lists, drawing electoral boundaries, managing staff, printing ballots, conducting voter education campaigns, recording votes, counting and consolidating vote results and publicising election results to “unofficial roles” such as political campaigning, social networking and technology-aided predictions, the 2016 U.S. presidential election was the most technologically advanced election in history.

The role of technology does not end with electing the leader. Technology's role as a catalyst in defining and delivering core government functions such as education, healthcare, business and the delivery of government itself is being more and more recognized in all nations of the world. The integration of technology into governance is not new; in as early as 1976, France launched the Telematique initiative to put forth a vision of integration of technology with governance and a related report titled The Computerization of Society surveyed and proposed a unified national policy to deal with the impending changes in technology and integrate into governance.

With the extensive proliferation of the Internet in the mid-1990s, there has been an increasing need to use the web to provide information and services to citizens and businesses, as well as efforts to bridge the digital divide. Accenture’s digital government research evaluated the implementation and citizen engagement in digital services in public administration in ten countries and found that Singapore was the leader in e-governance, followed by Norway and UAE. The US and UK were in the middle pack along with Saudi Arabia and South Koria, while India, Germany and Brazil were on the lower rung of digital governance.

Naturally, there have been many research programs all over the world, to expand the use of technology and Internet in the government. In America, such programs have been funded by the Digital Government (DG) Research Program of the US National Science Foundation (NSF). A directive called "Building a 21st Century Digital Government", launched in USA in 2012, was aimed at delivering better digital services to the American people and builds on several initiatives, including streamlining service delivery, improving customer service, and delivering an efficient, effective, and accountable Government. Accordingly, U.S. Government agencies have aligned their services to provide better digital services to the American people.

Similarly, European research and development of e-Governance are organized under thematic “Framework Programs” to address the goals related to the economic and social development of a unified Europe. As a result of these efforts, e-governance, defined as “government’s use of technology, particularly web-based Internet applications to enhance the access to and delivery of government information and service to citizens, business partners, employees, other agencies, and government entities” is a recognized and widely practiced concept now. Some specific public benefits from digitization of governance in the US have been:

• Creation of a window for people access the government online with the Digital Analytics Dashboard.
• Digitization of veteran health care.
• Modernization of the immigration system.
• Modernization of Department of Defense travel system.
• Enabling the Precision Medicine Initiative to gain new insights for the development of individualized care.
• Strengthening of information security at the Department of Defense.

The role of social media, in particular in government activities, is now being slowly recognized for its power of being able to reach citizens directly. According to a report by J.D. Power, 14% of Americans use social media to find information about a federal agency, while 30% use social either to ask the government a direct question or to resolve an offline issue. Buy beyond being merely a source of information, many governments around the world have resorted to using social media to interact directly with citizens. For example, the town government in Jun, Spain, like many other governmental organizations, replaced its traditional approach to municipal customer service and with Twitter interactions.

America’s Digital Government Strategy, released in 2012, was built on the principles of information centering, shared platform, customer centering and security, and addressed ways in which the federal government can use social media for information sharing, situational awareness and support of agency operations. Some government departments in USA that have proven the use of social media tools in their daily functioning are US-Dept of State, the NASA, Transportation Security administration (TSA), and US Fish and Wildlife services. The State Department’s YouTube Channel features daily videos, including remarks from Secretary of State, press briefings, interviews with US diplomats and special collections on foreign policy issues. The TSA’s Instagram account engages more than 510K followers (at the time this article is written) with latest and interesting information with respect to travel in and out of the country. NASA was one of the earliest users of social networking to inform the public about scientific discoveries and advancements in space exploration.

The area of diplomacy and cross-country relationships, being communication-centric, have also embraced the digital age. The Facebook account of the US Embassy in Jakarta has over 600,000 likes and European embassies in Beijing use the Chinese microblog Sina Weibo to communicate with its population out of their physical reach.

This journey towards e-governance and digital public service provision is still in the beginning stages all over the world and is driven by citizen demand for greater speed and more transparency in governance and the need within the government itself to deliver services in innovative ways. Digital technology-aided governance can potentially enable governments to meet the increasingly complex challenges of a digitally connected world. But administration is not a stand alone activity and requires active participation by administrators, citizens and businesses in the digital world.

Writing credit: Co-authored by Lakshmi, a Mobicip blogger researching the convergence of technology and everyday life.

Mobicip is the creator of the most powerful and extensive internet safety software for tablets, smartphones and computers in households today.

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