Digital Governance

Economic and political crises and also technological advancements in the last quarter of the 20th century led to the emergence of new administrative paradigms.

New Public Management is an approach that sees downsizing the government and emphasizing business principles in public administration as an appropriate approach.

Information and communication technologies have started to make significant progress and development since the beginning of the 2000s.

By the 2010s, the government and administrative structure gained a digital dimension with new technologies such as social media, cloud computing systems, open data, and big data.

Digitalization is converting information or data into a digital format or using digital technologies to automate or simplify processes.

Digitalization usually aims to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and improve competitiveness.

Although these paradigms have a common foundation, they are different.

New Public Management is an administrative approach emphasizing market-based principles and techniques in the public sector. The main aim of NPM is to make state institutions more efficient and effective by applying management practices similar to those in business, such as performance based budgeting and using performance criteria to measure success.

Governance refers to creating and implementing rules and decisions for a group or organization.

While the NPM focuses on using business-like practices to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of public sector organizations, governance is concerned with the general decisionmaking and problem-solving process within an organization or group. Another fundamental difference between the two concepts is that NPM typically includes privatization and uses external resources to reduce costs and increase efficiency. At the same time, governance typically involves creation of policies and procedures to ensure effective operation within an organization. In addition, while NPM emphasizes performance-based measurement, governance focuses on accountability and transparency in decision-making.

The World Bank defined governance with four aspects in the 1992 governance report: 1) public sector management; 2) accountability; 3) legal framework for development; and 4) transparency and information.

The European Commission has defined good governance as a style of governance that involves the use of political powers at the European level, particularly the principles of participation, accountability, transparency, consistency, and effectiveness, integrated with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality.

The fundamental principles of good governance are participation, transparency, accountability, effective and efficiency, supremacy of law, strategic planning, sustainability and participation as shown in Figure 5.1 on page 92.

Participation dimensions also reveal three different dimensions of governance: Global Governance, National Governance, and Local Governance.

Global governance refers to how countries and international organizations work together to address global issues such as international trade agreements, environmental regulations, and security arrangements.

Local governance also offers the possibility of developing local democracy. A governance mechanism that both increases the powers of actors, facilitates joint governance, and enables the correct direction of resource use has a greater opportunity to be implemented locally.

Information and communication technologies, which began to develop in the 1970s and have continued to evolve since then, have created an environment with more and faster information flow, where different ideas are raised, and demands change.

Web 1.0 was a one-way (monologue) bridge for communication between computers.

With the development of web 2.0, a new era on the Internet began, and technologies and applications such as XML, API, AJAX, RSS, blog, etc., were developed due to needs such as e-mail, phone applications, and messaging.

Web 3.0 is the Semantic Web technology, allowing us to access Web information more easily and quickly. Therefore, it can be considered as a personalized web.

Starting in 2020, Web 4.0 technology, which has been accepted, has put artificial intelligence and augmented reality technology at the forefront.

Web 5.0 presents the Web as a tool controlled by humans that uses algorithms to personalize, improve, and act on behalf of an individual.

1G is based on analog transmission techniques, while 2G is the birth of digital technology. 3G is the introduction of systems such as voice, photo, and interactive games into our lives. 4G is a network currently used worldwide, with faster data transfer and capacity than previous ones. 5G provides mobile services with higher speed, higher reliability, and energy efficiency.

5G technologies are generally dealt with public administration in issues such as disasters or emergency monitoring and security. For example, using drones and robots in disaster areas; using artificial intelligence to prevent the spread of epidemics such as COVID-19, ensure safety, and manage emergencies correctly; monitoring radioactively contaminated areas in the oceans; detecting temperature, wind speed, and wind direction to monitor forest fires; and ensuring security in closed areas such as stadiums or concerts are some examples of the use of 5G technologies in the public sector.

The development and transformation of technology make it possible to improve services and implement citizen-oriented management.

With digitalization, the existing rules and structures have changed, and the environment has evolved with the needs and demands of society, resulting in a new administrative process.

The concept of e-government, which is short for electronic government, refers, in a narrow sense, to the use of information and communication technologies in the state’s functioning, service delivery, and formulation of policy processes.

In a broader sense, e-government involves:

• Modernization of government processes and affairs.
• Access by citizens to information and communication technology-based public services without
  time and location constraints.
• Enabling citizens, public officials, and businesses to participate in the production and consumption of services.
• Making service delivery and government management more efficient, effective, and economical.
• Increasing both citizen participation and interaction with citizens.

The development process of e-government can be traced back to the 1980s. In these years, the widespread adoption of the effective, efficient, and economic state motto in the administrative field, combined with technological developments, began to transform the traditional state process.

E-government applications vary among countries due to different factors such as human resources capacity, technical capacity, and social inclination.

Digital Government refers to the use of digital technologies and data to provide information and services to citizens.

The digital government is constantly affected by changing social, economic, and political environments and advancing technology.

The digital government represents a more citizen-centered, sustainable, innovative, and collaborative decisionmaking process.

The digital government environment is constantly changing to reflect how governments are trying to find innovative digital solutions to social, economic, political, and other pressures.

The incredible speed of development of information and communication technologies has made it necessary for public administration to enter a process of reform and even to update this process continuously. Digitalization requires new approaches to governance. Governance mechanisms designed for analog realities are insufficient in the digital platform. In fact, here, the human centered and negotiated mode of governance is faced with the automated digital governance mode. Therefore, there is a need to develop new governance approaches that consider digitalization, particularly governance mechanisms based on artificial intelligence, algorithms, and automated decision-making.

Digital governance is a system that includes faster access to the Web, mobile service delivery, tele-conferencing, and multi-channel information technology to achieve higher levels of mutual communication?

In general, digital governance is a concept that goes beyond the electronic delivery of public services, including processes and relationships among citizens, government, public and private sectors, and is accepted as comprehensive in determining policy agends.

Digital governance: Refers to the digital execution of the governance process to provide digital services.

The development of digital governance is based on two major waves. One is the waves of change in information and communication technologies that emerged in the late 1990s, and the other is the NPM paradigm also developed in the same period.

The concept of ‘Digital Era Governance’ was first used by Dunleavy et al. (2006) as a new paradigm developed in parallel with the failure of the NPM approach and the development of information and communication technologies.

There are four different ways of shaping digital governance:

• Digital in government: The application of digital technologies in government functions.
• Digital government services: Services provided by the government to citizens through information and government websites and portals.
• Digital participation in governance: Areas designed to enable citizen participation, interactive areas for tracking progress, holding those in power accountable, and actively participating.
• Governance in the Digital World: Shaping the lives of citizens and the private sector without governance mechanisms such as monopolies, regulation, taxation, or accountability.

The first period of the digital age governance approach has fundamental features, including a needs-based holistic approach and digitalization and these features overlap with e-government applications. The second period is more related to e-participation and e-governance concepts.

E-governance, which constitutes the electronic dimension of governance, refers to the use of information and communication technologies for the participation of different actor groups in creating, implementing, and monitoring public policies.

E-participation refers to using electronic and digital technologies to support and increase citizen participation in decision-making processes. This can involve various activities, such as online voting, using social media for public participation, and developing online platforms to support collaboration and dialogue between citizens and decision-makers.

Social networks, smart devices, the Internet of Things, blockchain, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, cloud computing and other digital technologies are among the key features shaping the digital age governance approach.