Digital Transformation and Public Policies

Introduction

Analyzing the impact of digital transformations on public policies: a necessity

Currently, according to a broad consensus, digital technologies are radically restructuring entire industries. The multiplication and availability of vast sets of digital data from heterogeneous sources, coupled with an increasingly rapid and less costly analysis capacity, are opening the way to new expertise in fields as varied as biomedicine, mobility policies, commercial operations and even romantic relationships. This increased digitalization brought about by the growing computerization of organizations, or the development of mobile applications, connected objects, social media and collaborative platforms, is leading to profound changes in the behavior and strategies of companies. In the private sector, these technologies are driving new business models and new modes of organization and interaction, which can even take the form of hubs (Lansati and Lhakani 2017). At the global level, the most profitable companies are based on digital platforms, where a few players share markets, and expand through network effects (Evans and Schmalensee 2017). The largest capitalizations are represented by the platforms Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon (Cusumano et al. 2019).

In line with this trend, governments also see support for the production and use of digital data as one of the pillars of their economic and social development, as demonstrated by the massive investments made in recent ...