Digitalization and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
The United Nations Agenda 2030 emphasized the potential of digitalization to improve economic performance by considering also social and environmental issues, assuming that digitalization can enable company’s convergence toward the Sustainable Development Goals. The European society has set several scenarios on how European society could develop until 2030 by using advanced digital tools and modelling techniques and integrating digital tools into governance and policy making processes. Since 2016, the United Nations has been working on agenda for sustainable development by investing in digital transformation as a driver to achieve goals by 2030. In addition, the European Commission highly considered the role of Digital Transformation, within their European growth strategy, aiming to create a society with zero environmental impact by 2050. In brief, the opportunities provided by potential digital tools for governance and policy making for citizens, businesses and governments are enormous, but they could only be taken if applicable governance models are developed. Thus, it is expected that digital tools will encourage change in all types of institutions, private and public sector. In this connection, considering underlying risks and opportunities, there are policy challenges that must be tackled if the benefits of digital solutions are to be fully comprehended. In addition, government regulators should strengthen data privacy and security.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 2015 and contains of an action plan with 17 sustainable development goals (SDG). These 17 sustainable development goals (SDG) consist of 169 targets clusters in three main pillars; Economic, Social and Environmental. Concerning the economic pillar, digitalization allows companies to innovate their products, services and internal processes, enabling increased efficiency. In regard to the environmental pillar, digital solutions offer variety of types of ecosystem methods to reduce emissions and lower the effect of climate change in several economic industries. Digital technologies support renewable and energy efficiency, both of them highly crucial for pollution reduction. In addition, the social pillar can benefit from digitalization due to wide access of online services, including public and private services through circular economy system. The discussion about benefits and risks of digitalization in sustainability remain relatively fragmented. Different academic studies suggest that digitalization might not necessarily positively impact sustainable development. Especially, trade-offs related to two main pillars of sustainable development goals, social and environmental are discussed roughly as especially for these two pillars, controversies exist.
Indexes related to digitalization include different types of indicators. In order to assess digitalization level in Governments in EU there are instruments created by United Nation’s such as E-Government Development Index and E-Participation Index. E-Government Development Index focuses on digital infrastructure of the public sector while E- Participation Index measures interaction between government and citizens through digital means. The sharing of information can result in better goof governance principles including accountability and transparency, it enables better sharing of information which is crucial for public policy and service delivery. Nonetheless, assessing the digitalization level in Governments only based on these two indexes is limited and it has been a subject of many critics due to the lack of more appropriate indicators related to digital skills and institutional mechanism to reinforce national ICT strategy. Therefore, there is room for further research into the complexity of relationship between digitalization and digital skills capacity at the Government level. The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) tracks the progress of EU countries in regard to digitalization of economy and society. It summarizes indicators on digital progress and it covers areas such as human capital, connectivity, use of internet, integration of digital technologies used by enterprises and digital public services. In addition, there is the International DESI (I- DESI), that is different in several indicators in comparison to European one. Nevertheless, DESI tracks the progress in digitalization without considering macroeconomic factors. Thus, the index tracks the progress among years but does not consider other macroeconomic factors in specific countries that makes changes in DESI among years.
Digitalization offers ways to enrich the quality of good governance in terms of accountability and responsiveness. Good governance contributes positively to three pillars of sustainable development, including economic development. In addition, digitalization initiatives of government have important implications for sustainable future. Digital Transformation can offer public administration new diversified channels to deliver quality public services. The relationship between digitalization and quality of good governance is assessed by many studies in the literature review and findings are controversial. In general, digitalization has shown to have positive impact in effective e-governance. However, there are discussions about privacy issues and increased fraud. In addition to privacy and fraud, digitalization damages employment specifically unskilled people, old people and digital literacy people. However, factors such as cyber-crime, unemployment and inequality weaken government performance. Therefore, to my best knowledge, the measurement frameworks are limited as do not include moderating variables in order to fully assess the relationship, capturing also country-specific factors.
