Digital States: How It All Began

    Illustration: Jean Granville PD
    Consulting company Deloitte at the end of 2017 released a report on technologies in the international public sector. The main trend for 2018 is what researchers call symphonic enterprise. This concept implies the achievement of a cumulative effect from the introduction by the state and business of such technologies as, for example, blockchain and artificial intelligence systems. The goal is to increase the efficiency of the entire “digital state” - from the interaction of citizens, government agencies and businesses to the implementation of basic tasks for electronic document management.

    Today we will tell you how the concept of a “digital state” (TG) came about, talk about the first examples of individual systems and the possibilities for their integration.

    The cultural background of the digital state


    The theme of the state, in which technology is put forward, occupies a special position in the literature. The flying island of Laputa from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift is one of the first theoretical models of the state of the future, in which technology plays a major role. By the way, in the work itself it didn’t lead to anything good - the inhabitants of the island could not cope with life, despite all the successes in the scientific field, and the power was concentrated in the hands of one ruler.

    Elements of a digital state can be found in almost all classical dystopias: “Oh Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley, “We” by Eugene Zamyatin, “1984” by George Orwell. Basically, writers dwelled on means of tracking citizens and exaggerated their negative impact on freedom in all its manifestations.

    The novel "A House in a Thousand Floors" by Jan Weiss was released in 1929. Like other anti-utopias, he considered current problems at the time of writing through the prism of a possible future. The single center from which a huge skyscraper-house is managed can be compared to a platform or a command center for managing services in a modern digital state, for example, in Singapore .

    Utopias have always been adjacent to anti-utopias - books about the beautiful technological world of the future. With the advent of the first computers, more and more authors began to appear, seeing in computerization and robotization, if not good for humanity, then at least the norm. Such writers include dozens of classics of the science fiction genre - for example, Isaac Asimov (and his first law of robotics).

    The popularity of fiction books and the work of theoretical philosophers helped society begin to actively comprehend the various opportunities that new technologies provide and the risks associated with them. In parallel with them, a theoretical base and practical work began to appear that solved specific problems and could not yet take into account and embody the full scale of the concept of a “digital state”.

    From concepts to real systems


    It cannot be said that the theoretical basis of the concept of a digital state developed and was conceived purposefully as a single direction. On the contrary, it acquires such characteristics only now, absorbing the knowledge and experience of a number of separate theories and disciplines. They appeared not a couple of years ago and have come a long way before it was decided to use them for digitalization of states.

    For example, cybernetics, known to us today in the form that was proposed by Norbert Wiener in 1948, was previously implied as the discipline responsible for managing the state - this vision of the term in the 1830s was introduced by Andre-Marie Ampere , a French physicist, mathematician and naturalist. The development of cybernetics went along with the understanding of what “information society ”- this concept was born in the 1940s. It is associated with such scientists as Claude Shannon, John von Neumann, Alan Turing and other eminent representatives of the beginning of the era of informatization.

    One of the possible prototypes of a digital state in the USSR was the concept of the first Unified State Network of Computer Centers. Its author is Anatoly Kitov. In 1956, his book Electronic Digital Machines was published, which was then translated and published in many countries, including the United States. In 1959, Kitov proposed creating a unified automated control system for the country's armed forces and national economy, but the authorities did not support the idea.


    / Flickr / Seattle Munici-pal Archives / CC

    In the 1960s, the first scientific papers on electronic paperwork and projects on the introduction of computer systems in the work of government agencies began to appear in the United States. The article by an employee of one of the departments of the US Department of the Treasury, Howard Gammon (W. Howard Gammon) “ Automating workflow at an enterprise ” from 1954 is considered to be one of the first works that can conditionally be attributed to the direction of digitalization of public services.

    In the early 1970s, one of the first large research groups on the introduction of automated control systems in municipal and state institutions was formed at the University of California at Irvine (California, USA). It was called URBIS (Urban Information Systems), and the scientists who belonged to this group ( KL Kraemer, G. Howe, and others) are considered among the first theorists in the field of the digital state.

    At this time (early 70s), the first European research groups appeared. Here Germany and Austria took the lead - other leading European countries joined them only in the 80s. For more information on the history of scientific work on the topic, see “Information Technology and Government Research: A Brief History” in this article .

    With the development of network technologies, new thematic areas began to appear that were associated with the solution of individual digitalization problems. For example, with filing tax returns. This is called efile or electronic filing. His storyIt began with an experiment in 1986. Five filing experts from Cincinnati (a city in southwestern Ohio, USA), Raleigh (the capital of North Carolina), and Phoenix (the capital and largest city of Arizona) participated.

    During the experiment, they managed to process 25,000 declarations, as well as save time and resources for sending documents in print - and in the next 1987, the number of specialists participating in the project grew to 66 people. In 1990, efile processed 4.2 million tax returns. In 2013, more than 122 million.

    In the USSR, the introduction of electronic document management systems (EDMS) and office automation beganin the 1980s in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The first systems had very modest capabilities - the secretary could enter registration-control cards, search them and keep a register of documents. Only 8-10 years after this, the first EDMS at enterprises began to appear, and a full-fledged EDMS market in Russia began in the 90s. Subsequently, electronic document management encompassed the sphere of knowledge and business process management and became a significant component of the digital state, which began to take shape at the intersection of different areas.

    We conclude with a minute of terminology


    Today, to discuss the topic of universal digitalization, several concepts that are close in meaning are used at once, for example, “digital state” (TG) and “electronic government” (EP). In fact, TG and EP are not synonymous. This is a more general and particular concept. The first (TG) implies the inclusion of the second (EP), but not vice versa.

    The question of what exactly is part of e-government raises debate even among the scientific community. For example, a number of participants in a thematic forum on the Research Gate platform put forward a hypothesis that 4 areas are included in e-government:

    • administration - ICT in processes related to state. management;
    • the provision of public services - services for citizens in electronic form;
    • involvement of citizens in the process of making managerial decisions;
    • Algorithmization of interaction between government agencies, business and citizens.

    One of the most important tasks of e-government is to create completely new methods and approaches that could be used by citizens and entrepreneurs for effective interaction with government agencies. Such innovations should be based on the principles of openness and have a beneficial effect on the economic situation and the state of public relations in the country. This often requires a complete review of the interaction processes at all levels, the principles of selection of specialists and the development of technological solutions.

    For example, the Austrian government has formed the Digital Austria platform . She coordinates the work of the government, regional authorities and municipalities in the format of a special commission responsible for 4 areas:

    • informational - providing general access to information from government agencies;
    • communication - ensuring the exchange of information with the state;
    • transactional - the implementation of public services and electronic document management;
    • direction for personalization - targeting content according to the tasks of citizens.

    The digital state (TG) is a more general concept. Many will remember Estonia and be right. Estonia is one of the examples of a TF undergoing formation and construction. In the following parts of our “series” about the CG, we will return to the terminology and consider the CG through the prism of digital platforms, which are one of the foundations for the development of public services and the digital state as a whole.

    A few fresh materials from 1cloud's corporate blog:


    Also popular now: