Telefónica recently presented its Digital Public Policy Playbook, a simplified and visual document that addresses the main debates that will define the digital future.
The Director of Public Policy, Competition and Regulation at Telefónica S.A., Juan Montero Rodil, explained in an article in our blog how ‘the emergence of new technologies, which are shaping a new digital paradigm, makes it particularly relevant to reflect on how to promote innovation while protecting the rights and welfare of citizens. From a public policy perspective, the challenge will be to balance the drive for innovation with appropriate regulation, while promoting international cooperation to ensure governance that facilitates technological development on the basis of harmonised principles’.
Which brings us closer to the subject of this post: what is digital governance?
Digital governance: what it is
Digital governance can be defined as the way in which governments, organisations and civil society as a whole make decisions in the digital world, which is increasingly important in an increasingly connected society.
Security and privacy are relevant aspects of this digital governance, where promoting and facilitating digital tools for society as a whole serves to maximise the benefits of using emerging technologies.
Main characteristics of digital governance
Digital governance is based on a number of characteristic features. Let us see what they are:
- Institutional coordination at various levels: both administrations of the same rank and between institutions in different spheres. It also generates an articulation that goes beyond public administrations and reaches out to the private sector or civil society.
- Greater transparency by increasing the accessibility of public information and providing citizens with ways to access and monitor government activities.
- Promoting citizen participation through consultation or participation channels to contribute, contribute or give their opinion on digital issues.
- The promotion of cybersecurity is necessary to advance digital governance, through secure practices, measures that include both detection and protection against threats and the promotion of security in all institutions.
- Enhancement of digital skills to increase citizens’ capacities and access to digital tools and thus move towards closing the digital divide.
- Monitoring to assess the impact of those implementations activated in order to see how it evolves and to detect possible areas for improvement.
Difference between digital governance and e-government
Just as governance and governance are not the same thing, the concepts of e-government and digital governance are similar, but they are not synonymous.
E-government or e-government is the government’s use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to improve the functioning of the public sector.
Digital governance, in addition to integrating ICTs in public administrations, also includes the promotion of issues such as citizen participation, efficiency and transparency, issues that actively involve citizens.
Therefore, we can say that the difference between these two issues lies in the fact that e-government is unidirectional (from government to citizens) while digital governance is bidirectional (since information travels in both directions: from the administration to citizens and vice versa).
Thus, for the development of e-government it is enough to have tools or methodologies linked to ICTs, while to advance in digital governance it is necessary to have a digitally trained citizenry so that they are aware of the possibilities, capabilities and implications of the use of ICTs.
