What is it about?
I explore potential futures for digital governance in Estonia by using scenario planning approach. Future is uncertain. Hence, a wide range of scenarios carries greater relevance than relying on one vision. The expert-led workshops led to the identification of three key drivers for future trajectories of digital governance. These drivers are the nature of budget constraint, the degree of centralization of decision-making and agility in public sector decision-making processes. These combination of these key drivers led to five different scenarios. These scenarios are “Ad Hoc Governance” and “Night-watchman State” and “Entrepreneurial State”, “Caretaker State” and “Networked Governance”. The scenario planning approach allowed to widen alternative options for digital governance and question the trend towards greater centralization in Estonia.
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Why is it important?
Outlining a range of possible future trajectories instead of highlighting one trend has both conceptual and practical implications. This is particularly so because literature and evolution of digital governance in Estonia would suggest the primacy of decentralized digital governance. Estonia is particularly crucial case as its developments in digitalization have received considerable attention around the world. Policy-makers and experts from other countries can learn from Estonian experience and debate.
Perspectives
The paper was written in 2018. Then experts involved in scenario planning workshops came to conclusion that "Ad Hoc Governance" described best the current state digital governance in Estonia. This scenario is characterized by centralization, tight budget constraint and agile decision-making. Recently, I have revisited scenarios and came to conclusion that the trend in Estonia is towards "Entrepreneurial State". This scenario implies still centralization and agile decision-making but a looser budget constraint. The latter has been enhanced by the Covid pandemic measures and implications of the war in Ukraine. More recently, I have expanded on this paper in my book The Political Economy of Digital Ecosystems which is was published as hardcover by Routledge in 2021 and as paperback in 2023. The link for book is following https://www.routledge.com/The-Political-Economy-of-Digital-Ecosystems-Scenario-Planning-for-Alternative/Kitsing/p/book/9780367653989#
Meelis Kitsing
Estonian Business School
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Alternative Futures for Digital Governance, June 2019, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3325112.3325238.
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