My focus when teaching digital regulation and digital transformation is always on trust and consumer-centric design. I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with the class at Nirma University on October 22 & 23, 2024.
I encourage students to appreciate that initiatives like digital public infrastructure can democratise access to digitally enabled services. However, achieving the full transformational potential of digital technologies hinges on three key factors: availability, affordability, and adoption. The latter necessitates trust. Universal adoption requires that the consumer/ citizen trusts digital technologies and services. As a key player, the state not only plays a crucial role in ensuring universal access but also bears the responsibility of creating the right conditions, incentives, and disincentives to make online experiences safe, even for the most vulnerable users.
When citizens/consumers interact with the world through digital media, they must be assured that their constitutional and human rights are safeguarded. The importance of these ‘digital rights’ cannot be overstated. To protect these rights, guardrails in terms of privacy and data protection, content regulation, and human agency (in the context of artificial intelligence) must be embedded in the design of digital products and services.
Private entities involved in the design and deployment of technology are expected to be driven by profit but will respond to regulation. However, the relationship between the citizen/consumer of digital public services and the state is more complicated. Trust requires that the state protect the digital rights of citizens/consumers even from itself. This is a complex issue and necessitates the democratisation of discourse and separation of power between policymakers who may be expected to have a relatively short-term view related to election cycles and regulators who must be allowed to perform independently, protect digital rights, and prioritise trust above all. Regulators must also be charged with restraining public-private nexus detrimental to consumer protection.
The state must be willing to recognise the potential of digital technologies to facilitate a dangerous concentration of power vis-a-vis the citizen and resist the lure of short-term gains that may imperil the realisation of lasting progress. Institutionalising regulatory capabilities and independence and promoting a culture of openness to feedback from civil society is critical to maintaining the balance of power between powerful forces that govern digital technologies and the citizen/consumer. The latter may succumb in the short run but could ultimately reject or rebel against technology, thereby nipping the dream of enduring digital transformation.
This thinking is reinforced by the 2024 Nobel Prize to institutional economists Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson who have postulated that, "Countries that developed "inclusive institutions" – which uphold the rule of law and property rights – have over time become prosperous, while those that developed "extractive institutions" – which, in the laureates' words, "squeeze" resources from the wider population to benefit the elites – have experienced persistently low economic growth."
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