Digitalization and Public Sector Transformations

Jannick Schou, Morten Hjelholt

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319762906
• eBook ISBN: 9783319762913
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a study of governmental digitalization, an increasingly important area of policymaking within advanced capitalist states. It dives into a case study of digitalization efforts in Denmark, fusing a national policy study with local institutional analysis. Denmark is often framed as an international forerunner in terms of digitalizing its public sector and thus provides a particularly instructive setting for understanding this new political instrument.

Advancing a cultural political economic approach, Schou and Hjelholt argue that digitalization is far from a quick technological fix. Instead, this area must be located against wider transformations within the political economy of capitalist states. Doing so, the book excavates the political roots of digitalization and reveals its institutional consequences. It shows how new relations are being formed between the state and its citizens.

Digitalization and Public Sector Transformations pushes for a renewed approach to governmental digitalization and will be of interest to scholars working in the intersections of critical political economy, state theory and policy studies.

© The Author(s) 2018

Jannick Schou and Morten HjelholtDigitalization and Public Sector Transformationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76291-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Jannick Schou¹ and Morten Hjelholt¹

(1)

IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract

This introductory chapter sets up this book’s research questions, outlines its academic contributions, and lays out the main methodological and theoretical coordinates engaged with in this study. The chapter starts out by arguing for research that goes beyond the current narratives of digitalization promoted by policymakers and economic elites. Instead there is a need for critical interventions that are capable of unpacking governmental digitalization with a focus on both culture and political economy. The chapter situates such an approach, drawing particularly on recent advances within heterodox political economy, against the current academic landscape, arguing that all too often the political dimensions of digitalization have been neglected by research. It then proceeds to introduce the main empirical and methodological concerns of this book before outlining the plan for the rest of the study.

Keywords

DigitalizationCultural political economyCritical sociologyPolicy studyGovernance

End Abstract

January 2017, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released a white paper named Unlocking Digital Value to Society: A new framework for growth (2017). Produced in collaboration with the global consultancy firm Accenture , with input from the Danish Ministry of Business and Growth, the document formed a part of the Digital Transformation Initiative promoted by the WEF since 2015. Advancing a self-described “unique economic framework” that would serve to “maximize the value that digitalization could deliver” (p. 3), the white paper set the scene with the following opening passage:

Remarkable advances in technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, autonomous vehicles and cloud computing are transforming our world. Digital transformation is redefining industries, making new business models possible and providing businesses with unparalleled opportunities for value capture. Its impact, however, will not be limited to business; it is already dramatically changing how we live, work and relate to one another. Digitalization has the potential to deliver immense benefits for consumers, society and the environment, and to unleash unintended consequences that may have a profound effect on society. (World Economic Forum 2017, p. 3)

For those following the steady stream of reports, strategies and white papers produced by both the WEF and Accenture , these tales of great transformations and societal advances were hardly surprising. At this point in time, both of these actors had been disseminating similar ideas for a number of years, highlighting the immense economic potentials inherent in digital transformations. A somewhat arbitrary, if largely exemplary, illustration of this new discursive landscape of digitalization can be found in the report Digital Transformation: Re-imagine from the outside-in released by Accenture as part of their Accenture Interactive: Point of View Series in 2014. Here, we find an opening passage that seems to walk the very same terrain as those conjured up some years later by the WEF:

Digital is re-imagining the human experience. It is remaking how people live, work, play and connect. Everything is being rethought, simplified and improved – even things people have taken for granted throughout their lives. Most companies recognize that they cannot turn a blind eye to such a powerful force shaping human behavior. What worked yesterday to attract, engage and retain customers may be fast becoming obsolete. So how can companies develop a customer-relevant digital business when change is the only constant and best practices are being redefined at warp speed? (Accenture 2014, p. 2)

These stories of societal rebirths and large-scale changes have not been limited to either big consultancy firms like Accenture or transnational networks like the WEF. Indeed, across the Western world, similar discourses are currently being transmitted at a rapid pace. Named as the Going Digital-project, the OECD has been actively promoting digital transformation as a new means of creating economic growth, restructuring public sectors and delivering new forms of governance for a number of years. In a similar fashion, the European Union has since the early 1990s pushed towards the construction of a European information society . This is today being branded as the creation of a Digital Single Market.

As often goes, these discourses have also made their way into the language promoted by national policymakers in advanced capitalist states. Especially, though certainly not exclusively, policymakers within the Northern part of Europe have been actively pursuing the “digital dream” for decades at this point. Investing large amounts of resources in implementing digital technologies across public sectors, digitalization has been articulated as a way of heightening service delivery, cutting costs and modernizing existing institutions. Denmark , a small Scandinavian country, has for example promoted a highly proactive agenda towards digitalization since the early 1990s. This has, amongst other things, meant that large sums of economic and political capital have been spent on implementing digital technologies across the Danish public sector. The result has been that Denmark is often labelled as a ‘forerunner’, ‘leader’ or ‘example’ to be followed (Igari 2014), scoring some of the highest marks within European indexes intended to compare, rank and measure the “most” digital nations across the continent.

If we turn to this country’s newest national strategy, forged in the upper echelons of its bureaucratic field under the oversight of the Ministry of Finance , we find this opening salvo:

Denmark and the world are facing fundamental changes. Rapid ongoing digital developments are already changing the way in which we live, the way we run our businesses and the way our public services and welfare services are delivered. Technological developments have always played a role in altering the way in which we live, and new technologies have given us opportunities that not many of us would want to do without. The invention of the automobile gave us far more mobility and flexibility. Automation of processing and packaging processes within the food industry improved opportunities within supply and flexible consumption. Old job functions have become defunct and new ones have appeared in their place. We have seen it all before. However, the rate and evolutionary power of technological developments will accelerate in the years to come. Digital development will be so fast, profound and unpredictable that it will challenge and change society in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. (The Government, Local Government Denmark & Danish Regions 2016, p. 4, emphasis added)

What we find in these three small snapshots, then, seems to be very much the same basic narrative. It is a story of remarkable advances, new opportunities for value creation and fundamental changes all caused by the accelerating advance of digital technologies. According to this story, digitalization is quite literary reimagining the human experience, remaking existing landscapes of labor and leisure, and creating nothing less than a brand new society in its wake. These are unpredictable developments that are deep, profound and unparalleled. In their invocation of societal changes taking place at warp speed, there is something quite captivating about these scenes. It is as if they provide a testimony to a novel political grammar or language that is currently being rolled-out: a new policy world that seems to be gathering around the idea of digitalization.

Towards a Cultural Political Economy of Digitalization

This book seeks to go beneath the surface of these glossy new descriptions of digitalization. It seeks to unpack and understand the policies, politics and practices of these new technological developments. And it attempts to do so by advocating for a cultural political economic approach to the study and critique of digitalization. As this short book will demonstrate, such an approach requires us to not just view digitalization as a set of fairly lofty ideas about the reinvention of society from within. Instead, we will have to investigate these ideas as a both political and regulatory set of practices that are being promoted and produced in equal parts by tech-consultancies, policymakers and big corporations around the world. Doing so, we might begin to understand the very real societal impact that digitalization is currently having. As Hall (2008, p. 42) has suggested, “labels such as ‘pure rhetorics’, ‘hypocrisy’ or ‘symbolic politics’ which may be put on ICT policy are too functional or (implicitly) rational, and fail to grasp the significance of discourses to concrete policies.”

This book focuses specifically on how digitalization has become an important means of statecraft (Jessop 2002; Peck 2010). We are, in other words, particularly concerned with digitalization as a means of governing, regulating and partially restructuring existing public sector institutions. Digitalization efforts have certainly not been limited to state policymakers or governmental institutions. Indeed, as indicated by the snapshots provided above, this new imaginary has found a resonance in a much wider base, cutting across different sectors, territories and geographies. That being the case, national policy efforts does constitute one of the particular areas where digitalization has become increasingly significant and intensified. This book seeks to advance our current understanding of how advanced capitalist states have used digitalization to restructure, reconstruct and transform public sector institutions from within.

The book contributes to this project by arguing for a theoretical reorientation within the study of governmental digitalization. With this book, we want to suggest that cultural political economy (CPE) may provide a powerful theoretical toolbox for understanding these processes. Broadly construed, CPE is a post-disciplinary research agen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. Thinking State Transformations Through Cultural Political Economy
• Part II. Landscapes of Digitalization
• Part III. Towards a Cultural Political Economy of Digitalization
• Back Matter