IB Digital Society 4.6B Governing Bodies Notes

4.6B Governing Bodies

1. Scope: how digital systems reshape governing bodies, meaning governments at every level plus NGOs and international organisations.
2. The organising concept is power. Digital tools give a governing body reach, speed, and knowledge. A government can use that reach to serve people better, and it can also use it for tighter watching and control. The systems concept treats governing as a loop (policy, service delivery, data, decision, accountability), where a change at one point moves the rest.
3. Keep the two halves apart: impacts (already here, e.g. an online service or automated decision) versus implications (wider consequences: bias, surveillance, lost accountability).
4. Content topics meeting here: data and AI drive decisions, networks connect citizens to the state, and values and ethics run throughout.

Levels of Governance, Joined Up

1. Governing bodies run from local council to national government to global organisations, and digital systems increasingly link those levels.
2. Digital public infrastructure (national digital ID, payment rails, shared data exchanges) lets services and information flow between agencies rather than sitting in silos.
   1. Large examples: Estonia's data exchange and India's digital ID and payment stack.
3. Concepts: through space a citizen deals with the state from anywhere; through systems joining data up brings efficiency but concentrates risk (a single point of failure and of surveillance).
4. Impact: faster, more joined-up services. Implication: dependence on shared infrastructure, concentration of sensitive data, and exclusion of anyone without digital access.

Government by Algorithm