Alternative Futures for Digital Governance

Most academic literature on digital governance focuses on longer or short-term historical developments. This research will explore potential future developments in Estonia by using the scenario planning approach. As the future is uncertain, then development of wide range of scenarios carries greater relevance than relying on one vision or forecast. Estonia is particularly crucial case as its developments in digital governance have received considerable attention in scholarly and policy circles around the world. The paper starts by reviewing academic literature on both public sector governance as well on digital governance in order to reveal potential key drivers for the scenario planning exercise. Expert-based workshops consisting scholars and experts in the areas of public sector governance as well as computer science developed five alternative scenarios of digital governance in the spring of 2018. The key drivers of scenarios are the nature of budget constraint, the degree of centralization of decision-making and emphasis on either on calculative and analytical or the expedited decision-making processes. The evaluation of current executive branch public sector reform agenda as well as the draft bill of special parliamentary committee for state reform suggest that the current approach to digital governance matches best with scenario "Ad Hoc Governance" and partially with scenarios of "Night-watchman State" and "Entrepreneurial State". However, there is almost no overlap with scenarios "Caretaker State" and "Networked Governance". This reveals that the trend is towards centralization of digital governance in Estonia while academic literature and evolution of digital governance in Estonia would suggest the primacy of more decentralized networked governance.