Digitalization in the public service: a solution to which problems?

Information technologies are not automatically a solution for the public service, but they could be a part of it, if we were looking at the right problems.

Digital as a solution

In general, we think of a supposed opposition between face-to-face and slow services vs. digitalized and fast services. The imaginary is that there are services provided in buildings that are not very welcoming, with waiting lines and the need to attend several times apparently for no reason; in contrast, in our ideal, we could solve something in a few taps on the screen or button, wherever we were, and without any indisposition.

Any problem that a person has with a public service will be answered, by someone enthusiastic about information technology, that “it is the fault of the bureaucracy of the public administration, if it were digital this situation would not happen”. This thinking is called “digital optimism”. The problem is that sometimes it is digital, or a lot is invested to make it digital, and these situations keep happening.

Today’s post works with these hypotheses, in which technology does not automatically solve the problems of services provided by the government. From the top of my idiosyncratic thoughts, I can think of some examples here: digital signatures do not avoid bureaucracies and difficulties in authenticating and validating documents, electronic voter titles do not prevent voters from having to travel to justify the vote, computerized judicial filing do not make the judicial more responsive.

That may be the solution, but for different issues

This is not to say that information technology cannot solve problems. Far from it. The available information technologies are powerful tools, which can serve to arrive at solutions unimaginable in the analogic world. But these measures, without policies guided by the democratic potential of all these tools, are like any other inconsequential use of technology: they can have undesirable side effects. And instead of just having projections, potentials and theories about these effects, we are living them day by day.

Just look at the digital attacks on government services experienced in recent days, which, due to the lack of adequate information security, are vulnerable. This may impair the service provided, which is paralyzed or may suffer barriers due to improper access to the configurations of electronic systems. When talking about a public service suffering attacks at the heart of its functioning, the consequences are collectively suffered, as many of these involve essential services, fundamental rights.

Another potential consequence of poorly implemented information security practices in government is also the exposure of citizens to their personal data and information. The public authorities collect and process, in order to provide services and guarantee rights, countless personal information. Whenever a system with databases is weakened, this information can leak, which can be very valuable and a source of vulnerabilities – whether due to discrimination or the possibility of harassment and loss of self-determination that it allows.

This without going deeper into the challenge of providing public services through the digital medium in a country where more than a fifth of the population does not have access to the internet at home. Many of these services are mandatory for the exercise of citizenship, which makes it impossible to think of the government’s digitalization agenda apart from digital inclusion.

All of these setbacks have reasons for being, and one of them may be that we are looking at the wrong problems. And it is very difficult to find the right solution without knowing exactly what we are trying to solve.

Technologies are not just time catalysts

This all makes us think about how much computerization is seen only as a way of giving vent to everything that is going on in the public sector. In other words, steps would be automated and this would make it possible to meet the demands of the population more efficiently, because the time for a response would take less.

This occurs in the adoption of digital management systems in government offices. For example, on a large scale, the Brazilian judiciary invests in the computerization of cases. However, a very relevant factor of this migration is left out: its potential in the production of information. Although much is collected for reports such as Justice in Numbers, it is symptomatic that the reported problems remain unchanged year after year. There is a dimension of the problem of slowness and accumulation of processes, but not a panoramic view that allows us to understand the reasons for this and how it is reflected in society.

Information technology in government has, in reality, an immense potential for organizing and producing knowledge: about ourselves, about how our society deals with public issues – and about the extent to which better solutions can be designed. But just digitizing what already exists in the face-to-face/analog format, without realizing that the advantage of this change would be the ease of knowing and evaluating processes and policies, is not the best way to take advantage of this potential. Quite the contrary: with a narrow view focused only on instantaneity, in addition to the problems and their consequences persisting, new deficits are created to be solved – such as data protection, systems security, digital literacy.

The computerization of public services makes us think of an idea of agility and practicality. In reality, the abstraction of its potential as technology gives rise to new challenges. If you want to read more about other reflexes of digital optimism, go to this post.