Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
11. 3
Mobility and Digital inclusion
The notion of digital inclusion stems from the interrelated concepts of the digital
divide on the one hand and digital citizenship on the other hand (Mossberger, Tolbert,
& McNeal, 2008). The essence of digital citizenship is that online access is necessary
but insufficient, as it must also be accompanied by the skills and capacities to develop
both individually and collectively within socioeconomic, cultural, and civic and
political processes that increasingly comprise a virtual dimension. By contrast, digital
divides denote an absence of inclusion with online cleavages across both access and
usage tied to factors such as education, income, culture, and geography (Jaeger, 2012).
For the public sector, moreover, digital and mobile reforms and performance and
legitimacy are increasingly intertwined. The World Economic Forum (2011), for
instance, in their 2011 report on “The Future of Government,” links a technology-
enabled public sector to the creation of public value as defined in the following four
manners: (a) quality public services are delivered; (b) socially desirable outcomes are
achieved; (c) citizens are satisfied with the services and outcomes; and (d) trust in
government is created and/or increased. Accordingly, fostering digital inclusion is
one important source of public value creation because it is not only socially desir-
able but also an important determinant of public trust in government.
With respect to the nexus between the first two points—the delivery of quality
services and socially desirable outcomes—mobility is viewed by many governments
as an important inflection point. The U.K. Digital by Default strategy, for instance,
explicitly targets mobile as a significant source of unrealized savings to be exploited
over the next several years (Kernaghan, 2013; Roy, 2014b). The strategy goes on to
underscore that in addition to cost savings for governments (savings that can facili-
tate a redeployment of resources and/or in place of reduced overall expenditures),
a move toward digital self-service can also represent an important basis for indi-
vidual development and a lessened risk of outright social and economic exclusion.
The British report also acknowledges that the “Assisted Digital” approach cannot
be a government endeavor alone but instead denotes a complex policy and service
agenda entailing partnerships with both industry and civil society.
Beyond service delivery, current efforts to foster more open government face simi-
lar questions and debates. Open government and open data strategies are based upon
the notion that public sector information is a resource, the release of which will maxi-
mize its social and economic value as citizens use it individually and collectively. In this
regard, for example, the OECD rightly underscores open data and open government as
a driver of greater self-empowerment social participation (Ubaldi, 2013). Such efforts,
however, have also sparked fresh concerns about the digital divide and accentuating
new forms of “data divides” (Halonen, 2012). As societies become more mobile in
manners that reflect both preexisting digital and socioeconomic divides and more con-
temporary forms of unevenness in terms of abilities and interests, governments will, at
the very least, need to orchestrate more coordinated efforts to better align strategies for
service delivery, infrastructure development, and open and participatory government.
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