The COVID-19 pandemic – the worst public health crisis in a generation – has been dubbed the ‘great accelerator’ of digital transformation. For countries around the world, technology has been at the forefront of their response to the crisis. Governments have employed digital technology to provide a health emergency response to their constituents, and businesses have seen an unprecedented rate of digital adoption across their supply chains. From using artificial intelligence (AI) and data modelling to map the spread of infection, to helping tackle and contain it through contact-tracing apps and data analytics, to enabling the remote delivery of critical services and virtual working environments, digital innovations and solutions have focused attention on the potential of technology as well as on the importance of the digital infrastructure and its resilience. There is an increased recognition that, in a post-COVID world, businesses and governments have to reinvent themselves through the further incorporation of digital technology in their ways of working, and that they must pursue long-term digital transformation in order to compete and operate both nationally and internationally. Otherwise they risk falling behind, unable to find their place in an altered global landscape. At the same time, this sharp take-up of digital technology has exposed the widening digital divide not only between businesses themselves, but also between nations. According to the UN, around half of the world’s population is offline. For those people who cannot, for example, access essential healthcare information, the digital divide has become a matter of life and death.
As our lives continue to be transformed by the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and by the accelerated digital adoption associated with it, it is all the more urgent that questions concerning the impact of this transformation are now addressed. What is the price that we are paying for innovation and digital take-up, and what issues should we be considering? How can governments and businesses accelerate digital transformation while mitigating the risks that could emanate from it?
It has become evident that the pandemic has brought new opportunities for cybercriminals and for perpetrators of disinformation and ‘fake news’. In addition, serious concerns have been raised about the role of surveillance in containing outbreaks; the securitization of the healthcare debate; and the critical challenges of devising new technologies such as contact-tracing apps that are effective in notifying users of potential exposure to infection while also protecting individuals’ privacy. Hence, the pandemic has also given rise to a crisis of technology and cybersecurity, and is fuelling what Freedom House has termed a ‘crisis for democracy’.
This paper looks at some of the trends that have emerged from this process of rapid and unplanned-for digital adoption. In Chapter 2, Emily Taylor focuses on the relationship between governments and big tech, using the UK’s track-and-trace app as a case study. It explores the power imbalances between elected governments and private sector corporations, and the implication of those dynamics in developing and deploying technological solutions – in this case, for public health purposes – that respect individual rights, are robust from a cybersecurity perspective and can achieve epidemiological goals.
In Chapter 3, Allison Peters examines the impact that COVID-19 has had on the cybercrime landscape, exploring the potential for cooperation against cybercrime at national and international levels, and considering whether the awareness that the pandemic has arguably created as to the magnitude of the problem of cybercrime will act as a wake-up call, leading to sustainable policy changes for the long term.
In Chapter 4, Sophia Ignatidou discusses what has been dubbed an ‘infodemic’ in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, exploring how disinformation has been ‘weaponized’ and how high-profile political figures, including in liberal democracies, have used the pandemic to manipulate and control the information space. She emphasizes the importance of a ‘whole-of-society’ approach to curbing this problem, and suggests a number of measures that can be initiated by different stakeholders in order to help address what is an escalating situation.
Each of these three chapters sets its area of focus in the context of developments prior to the pandemic, explores the specific impact of the COVID-19 crisis, and identifies some potential future implications. Looking at these different areas in conjunction, Chapter 5 concludes by stressing the need to restore and build greater public trust in critical measures and policy approaches, and to increase cooperation nationally and internationally.
The paper has been produced as part of a wider Chatham House project, ‘Trends in technology: what does the future hold?’. The project aims to help bridge the current ‘siloed’ approaches in tech policymaking by highlighting common threads and patterns across a number of policy areas, and identifying the best ways to address those in a way that allows digital technology and cyberspace to continue to serve as an engine for social and economic growth for all countries and people around the world.
