Smart societies and industry 5.0 are policies promoted by the European Union as an economic and societal step changes relying on collection of countless real-time data generated by a digitalized environment known as the Internet of Things. These policies should make foundation for the Green policy goals in particular green energy generation, shift to green transport and overall net zero CO2 emission of future fully digitalised societies.

The implementation of Smart and Green polices is dependent on the Digital policy, primarily suitable fixed and mobile communications networks for high capacity and instant transfer of data i.e. enabling use cases like smart factories, telemedicine or driverless vehicles supported all by machine learning software mostly known under the notion of artificial intelligence.

One of the enduring issues in Digital policy is who will bear the cost associated with the deployment of very high capacity networks (VHCN) in EU member states. Traditionally, telecom operators deploy infrastructure and networks, but this time EU funds and state aid are needed since Digital policy has a very ambitious agenda. The initial idea of liberalisation was to open telecom services from former monopolies to competition in order to achieve greater innovation and value for money to consumers. The arrival of competitors has in some cases diminished the incomes of incumbent operators slowing their investments in VHCN networks. Competitors have built their own networks or used incumbents’ networks based on wholesale offers.

Along, new digital markets have emerged in the internet ecosystem, content and application providers search engines, social networking, video-sharing services (CAP) at the same time online platform gatekeepers, are feeding large contents that end users demand, and the telecoms as internet service providers (ISP) connect end users to the internet from their homes, offices or mobile devices. Large ISP argue that growing internet traffic creates a cost burden on ISP, which is unsustainable since CAP are benefiting from the network without investing in network infrastructure. Accordingly, ISP call for policy makers to mandate that CAP pay ISP network usage fees that would be based on the amount of traffic delivered to end users. Meanwhile, EU wishes to scale up the number of its one start-ups in information technology, build its future on artificial intelligence, blockchain technologies and supercomputers and thus catch up with competitors from China, Japan or the United States.

The paper will attempt to present challenges faced by the EU and by Member States’ market regulators in a bid to harmonise digital policy goals with competition policy goals. In other words, boosting efficient investments by telecoms in VHCN networks should not be to the detriment of competitive telecom markets taking them back to mono/oligopolistic structures. The paper will also attempt to look at the readiness of market regulators to deal with regulatory challenges stemming out from regulating digital markets and online platform gatekeepers and generally the use of artificial intelligence by firms on the market.

Note: This paper was inspired by my teaching of a MPP-level Digital Governance course that I created. We discuss the policy implications of blockchain, AI, algorithmic governance, and so on. However, in our last topic of the semester (quantum computing), I found no articles specific to the implications of quantum for public policymakers and administrators. Where articles mentioned "policy" they were often ill-reflective of our disciplinary literatures -- both public policy and public administration and instead, were often written by engineers, IT scholars, telecommunications scholars, and/or physicists. This is an opportunity for our discipline.

Abstract: Quantum information sciences, a discipline which includes quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing, and quantum cryptography, is producing outputs with significant potential to re-write public policy and relations among the public sector, the private sector, and citizens.

Unlike current and prior policy and public administration scholarship on e-government, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic governance, the quantum revolution is not just another new idea. Each of the prior literatures have a similar hardware foundation: the modern computer. Quantum computing and its topical off-shoots replace that hardware foundation. The implications are enormous. One of the first is that prior information – whether held my individuals, governments, or private actors – which had previously been assumed to be secure (via anti-virus programs, organization-specific cybersecurity, and so on) is no longer automatically secure.

By its vary nature, quantum computing re-writes what had been presumed secure. This includes government databases, health records information, financial and economic models and their related Ministries, environmental information, and so on. It is includes the algorithms behind blockchain and AI. The most notorious of the real fears by multiple governments is that currently secure intelligence, defense, and foreign policy information suddenly becomes accessible. This moment of accessibility, colloquially understood as “Q Day” in government technology circles, is close at hand.

With a QDay expected to arrive within the decade, how can our public policy and public administration discipline respond? This paper starts to answer this question. The paper starts by briefly providing a ‘common man’ description (aka eliminating its math and physics heaviness for a public administration audience) of our quantum future and sharing its potential applications in fields as diverse as health, education, and environment to space, e-governance, communications, and chemistry.

This is followed by the ‘heart’ of the paper. That is, re-configuring the “big questions” of public administration, public policy, and e-governance for the quantum era. This will include reflections on ethics, privacy (personal, government), on diversity/equity/inclusion, and on how public policy is created and administered in a quantum era.

For more information, see: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2023/01/19/quantum-tech-needed-to-secure-critical-data-from-quantum-decryption/?sh=7126a9691fba

Context, object, research problem and goal: This work is configured as a case study analysis about a public policy innovation promoted by the Federal Government of Brazil: the tool called “PIX”, online, in real-time, to transfer payments of all nature from persons and enterprises, credit card and private and public documents, increasing the competitiveness, created in November, 2020 (Brazil, 2022). Brazil corresponds to the second bigger economy in America Continent, has the most market customer size and has the most attraction of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Latin America (USA, 2021). The research problem includes the use of that tool in the society and the goal is to analyze the economic and social impact of it in the years 2020 and 2021.

Assumption: the potential amplitude of the PIX inside the populational extracts of the more vulnerable social nature is of hight / medium effect, which is characterized as an informal task force and micro-entrepreneur; within the less vulnerable, the effect is small.

Research methodology and data: empirical nature; qualitative and quantitative; documental, case study; official documents of the Central Bank of Brazil.

Results: According to The Central Bank of Brazil: 1. the tool represents a public policy for all the Brazilians; 2. in the primer year of the dissemination of PIX in the Brazilian society, there was: 2.1. the financial inclusion of 45,6 million of persons and the filter of universal inclusion was of 52% during march to October 2021, and selecting the vulnerable public, in the same time, of 131%; 3.inside the people registered in the public data of the very poor persons, called “Cadastro Unico”, the use was of 35%, and within the in the social program “Bolsa Família”, which focuses the prevention of extreme poor situation, the use was of 25% of the users (Brazil, 2021).

Discussion:  the tool created has the potential to take “power” of the bigger banks in Brazil, analyzing the expensive tax on money transfers and the bureaucracy needed to open a bank account, and to democratize the flux of payments in this country, improving the Brazilian economy and the Latin America Gross domestic product (GDP). The proportional utilization of the tool is bigger among the more poor people, which demonstrate that, among the more riche groups, the use of traditional ways of payments, paying taxes to banks, is higher.

 Author  profile: she is a Policy Maker in Brazil and finishing her PhD;  was a former Consultant of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Brasília, Professor at the University of Costa Rica (UCR) and Trade Supervisor Global Operation (TSGO) Brazil Sub Region Manager in an international enterprise placed in the Free Zone / Industrial Park in Costa Rica. She is a researcher of the competitiveness of National States and at subnational level, Foreign Direct Investments (FDI),  policy cycle, public administration  and of civil society.

Digital transformation has become a buzzword in the public sector. Digital transformation in the public sector entails integration of digital technologies in every aspect of the public sector. While extensive literature has been written on digital transformation, limited attention has been paid to factors impeding inclusive digital transformation and the potential of digital transformation to foster inclusive development, particularly in emerging economies. Yet, it has been observed that inclusive digital transformation may play a significant role in the realisation of sustainable development goals. Employing the United Nations’ conceptualisation of inclusive digital transformation, this article examines the challenges and prospects of digital transformation. Drawing from case studies and extensive literature the article highlights that digital transformation may exacerbate inequalities if it does not foster digital inclusion. The digital divide, digital literacy, privacy and security are some of the teething challenges to be confronted by the public sector in its quest for digital transformation. Moreover, digital transformation may facilitate digital authoritarianism and threaten democratisation in some instances. However, inclusive digital transformation may accelerate the efficiency and effectives of the public sector, increase agility and enrich citizen experience through digitalizing citizen participation and co-creation. Given the challenges and potential which digital transformation has, it is important for Governments, particularly in emerging economies to invest in digital infrastructure to facilitate digital inclusion and digital literacy for inclusive digital infrastructure to realise its full potential and overcome the teething challenges highlighted in this article.

Digital transformation changes the nature of public sector occupations, eliminating many tasks and some occupations. What is the likely magnitude and distribution of such disruptions? The answer to this question is key to planning civil service responses to large-scale digitally oriented institutional reforms, which are increasing throughout the world. Existing methodologies designed to measure the automation potential of occupations are ill-equipped for such an estimation, as they tend to be outdated concerning recent technological developments, based on experts’ opinions with unverifiable knowledge of the occupations assessed and/or not designed specifically for public sector contexts. Our measurement, the Automation Potential Index (API), attempts to address these shortcomings. We designed a survey-based tool based on a series of expert consultations, cognitive interviews, and in-depth semi-structured interviews that are up to date regarding technological progress, tailored to the context of the civil service, and gathers granular information on occupations directly from incumbents. Over 14,000 Chilean public servants answered the survey. We show that the survey-based API effectively reflects an occupation’s automation potential through comparisons with estimates from alternative methods, other characteristics of occupations measured in the survey, and other estimates previously documented in the automation literature. Implications for further research are discussed.