By Movine Omondi

Digitalisation is reshaping public policy worldwide, and especially in the emerging economies, as highlighted by the McKinsey & Company Report on Transforming Government through digitisation. The shift towards online governance promises enhanced services and cost savings. However, it necessitates robust legal frameworks to mitigate potential inequalities and privacy breaches. Surveillance technologies raise concerns about civil liberties, requiring balanced regulation. Additionally, safeguarding personal data from exploitation is paramount. As we navigate the Fourth Industrial Revolution, proactive governance is essential to harness the benefits of digitalisation while mitigating risks. Public participation is crucial to ensure regulations align with societal values and priorities.

Introduction

The world is a global village. This is true both in private as well as the public sphere. Mckinsey & Company report on Transforming government through digitisation notes that through digitising processes and making organisational changes, governments can enhance services, save money, and improve citizens’ quality of life. Key areas in which digitisation of governance should be applied in government include; services, processes, decisions, and strategy. It is now normal to have citizens apply for passports, file tax reports, and attain business licences among other services from the comfort of their living rooms. The age of brick-and-mortar office-based modus of operation is a thing of the past. Shahid Hussein Raja emphasises that even in the less developed and developing countries, digitisation is necessary and achievable. The determining factor is rather a combination of a political leadership’s will and a dedicated civil service keen to actualise the demands that digitisation bears.

Regulating Digitalisation

An important demand that digitisation places on the government is the need for a clear legal and legislative framework. Raja’s work posits that it is necessary to ensure proper channels of legislative requirements are fulfilled before implementing a digitisation agenda. Whereas the executive leadership bears the  vision for implementing digitisation of public services, this vision should be backed and approved by a competent legislative body under the respective law. The legal basis for the implementation of such programmes must also be adhered to. Regulation of digitisation in any country is key. The invasive nature of modern information and communication technology (ICT) on which digitisation rests is a double-edged sword, it can either be an enabler of growth and development or a source of inequality. 

For instance,  for the educated-high income earners in the urban areas digitisation is God sent. This group of privileged citizens are likely to benefit from the convenience of making payments for registration of new companies or obtaining drivers licences or passports on government portals. Meanwhile, the rural poor and communities living in far-flung areas with low or nonexistent internet connectivity, where high illiteracy levels abound, may not necessarily enjoy such opportunities. Access to technological devices, let alone the know-how of such service portals may be problematic. Therefore, any form of digitisation agenda must put in place robust regulations to ensure that those sections of society already facing relative exclusion from access to the economy are not thrown out completely.

Digitalisation has permeated the public security sector. Companies and States can now monitor the activities of private citizens 24 hours round the clock. It is puzzling that countries such as China have even taken steps to legalise the use of CCTV cameras to not only monitor but also control their citizens. The Chinese Government awards point to citizens based on their actions and behaviours captured by such cameras. In effect, one’s ability to access government services may be potentially affected by any ‘negative coverage’ recorded on the CCTV cameras. China is not alone in this new state enabled monitoring of private citizens. Even some liberal democracies like the United Kingdom and the United States have been accused by activist groups of using barbaric methods such as the use of CCTV cameras, misuse of personal data and other ways to spy on their citizens and foreigners.  While the national security of the state must be pursued by all means including the application of emerging technologies for intelligence gathering, the use of such technologies to violate citizen’s rights to privacy and freedom of expression must not be permitted to go unregulated. Regulations should be put in place to safeguard the public against trends of digitalisation that fly against basic tenets of human rights.

Another critical area of digitisation that must be regulated is the protection of personal data held by governmental and private institutions. Digitalisation has created mammoth private firms and public institutions with immense access to and storage of citizen’s data. The risk of such personal data being abused, either for commercial or political interest, is only beginning to emerge. The use of personal data entrusted to Big Tech Companies including  Facebook, Google, Amazon  and Twitter have been controversial. The risks even double when such data is acquired by hackers. The American presidential elections of 2016 was a testament that the management of personal data must be critically evaluated when formulating regulations for digitalization.  Leaked data can be used to interfere with political processes, as was the case in the 2016 US presidential elections. Such  data can also be used to enable economic crimes such as extortion, money laundering and corruption.

Fourth Industrial Revolution

The World is undergoing the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), with advances in technology in key areas that ensure that the connection of the physical, digital and biological worlds is actualized. Key milestones under the 4IR include; robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, quantum computing, the internet of things, 3D printing, Block chain, virtual reality and augmented reality, and many other technologies. While these emerging fronts of industry promise better lives for most people, pertinent issues must be addressed. For instance, robots may soon take over many roles previously held by human beings, hence there is an urgent need to regulate just how many roles robots will be permitted to assume. Artificial intelligence is also an emerging technology with the ability to ‘’think and act’ like humans. While the benefits of AI in solving day to day problems abound, the challenges of letting computers take control of our destinies are far riskier than imagined. Block chain technology can be a great tool to promote accountability and traceability of business transactions, however, left unregulated it can also be used for illicit transactions.Therefore, governments should endeavour to legislate for these new industries. 

Conclusion

The involvement of the public in determining their destiny must never be left unattended. Digitalisation offers opportunities for human progress on all fronts. Cashless payments for goods and services, mobile money transactions, government services portals, and 4IR technologies have all come in handy in elevating millions, if not billions out of poverty. These new-age technologies continue to hold the potential to lift even more people out of poverty. The challenges on human security and existential threat posed by unregulated digitalisation cannot be overemphasised. Regulatory interventions, with the public interest at their core, must be established to check the damages that may arise from wanton and unregulated digitalisation. Public participation in developing such policies and  regulations is as important as the intended regulations.