Within the recently published UK White Paper on International Development, harnessing digital transformation is highlighted as a core area in international development.
The white paper points to the following priorities and focus areas:
- Digital inclusion and responsible digital transformation, ensuring that no-one is left behind, through sustainable digital access, skills, and locally relevant digital content and services.
- Security, safety and resilience in the cyberspace landscape, building the capabilities and awareness of governments, citizens, businesses and users to be resilient and protected, including against technology-facilitated gender-based violence.
- Acknowledging the opportunities and risks of AI in low-and middle-income country contexts, calling for the need for inclusive international multistakeholder approaches and partnerships for responsible innovation with and in AI.
- Harnessing digital data, in a trustworthy and inclusive way, for evidence-based decision-making relevant to country contexts.
- Supporting digital democracy that enables and promotes the protection of human rights and freedoms.
The White paper has effectively identified the key global priorities around AI, data leverage, and cyber resilience in international development. It is also good to see a hoped change in the approach of the UK as a key convenor in international development, towards respecting and adopting locally-led approaches that prioritise the needs and voices of local country actors and contexts. However, what should this really look like in digital transformation in international development with powerful influences on policy making – dominated by market influences of surveillance capitalism, coupled with digital authoritarianism?
A key characteristic of digital transformation is datafication, which relates to the collection of huge amounts of data, which could be manipulated to support decision -making, but at the same time influence human behaviour to the benefit markets or authoritarian governments. Surveillance capitalism continues to build the power of big technology companies to manipulate markets through human behaviour and eventually behavioural lockdown, where citizens become oblivious to the implications of using technology that infringes on their data human rights.
At the same time, digital authoritarianism is significantly on the rise, with African governments investing hugely on surveillance technology to monitor citizens, in violation of countries’ constitutions, international human rights law, and domestic laws.
What is most important?
In order for digital transformation to have relevant impact in international development, we need to acknowledge the value of enabling governments and citizens/users in LMICs, to build capacity and human capital in shaping how digital technology can work within their contexts. The use of technology to enable digital democracy to protect human rights, should also be coupled with governance mechanisms that protect data human rights.
The agenda in the white paper, points to the need to nurture and enable inclusive and locally-led approaches on what works, and does not work to shape policy. This requires opening spaces for deliberation, in the design and governance of digital technology – which the white paper correctly alludes to by supporting multi-stakeholders spaces at international level.
However, more needs to be done to create and facilitate spaces where the intervention directly impacts citizens and government – leave no-one behind. For example, in health, decisions around the collection of sensitive public health data, and what that actually means, requires the participation of local citizens, health workers, civil society and local government in deciding what is most important or matters in their context around sensitive data.
Decisions around the governance of data needs to occur at local and household level. In this case, spaces of deliberation should not be dominated by market technocrats (whether international or country based) or bureaucrats at national level that determine how technology should be designed and implemented. Excluding the participation of citizens based on the lack of skill or understanding of complex technology terminology to engage on, needs to be addressed so that inclusion in deliberation does not only include by ‘representation’, but also by cohesive and empowered engagement.
Responsible transformation
In enacting responsible digital transformation, approaches are needed at macro, organisational, and local level to understand what spaces currently exist for deliberative engagement, which spaces are closed or non-existent (yet essential), who are the representatives across business, government and citizens to enable deliberative engagement, what are the governance standards or regulations across knowledge systems that should be considered/applied, and what tasks/activities/artefacts can enable cross-referential deliberative engagement in the design and governance of digital transformation.
