Not that the promise of technology wasn’t front
and center; talk of it dominated the week. An
“Roadmap for Digital Cooperation” summit was
held, and dozens of world leaders rhapsodized
about how the magic of electronic networks
— connections unthinkable when some of
them were children — is helping offset the
pandemic’s cleaving effects for both those who
run governments and those who are governed.
Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, said his
nation was “experimenting with how to adapt
so that this digital revolution can be wielded as
a source of economic opportunity” for younger
people and a way to develop governance
and law. He said 2020’s blend of tech and
circumstance was challenging Afghanistan to
“adapt the ways we consume, the ways we work,
and the ways we govern.”
Kersti Kaljulaid, the president of Estonia, calls
her nation “the world’s first digitally transformed
state” — a place where all public services run
online. Because of that, she said, when the
pandemic hit “we saw less scramble than any
other country to move everything online which
previously ran on paper.”
“We want the same for the rest of the world,”
Kaljulaid said. But she also issued a warning —
that technology without structure can make
things worse.
“Leaders globally must understand that digital
services do not, by themselves, rid any country
from fat bureaucracy, corruption or inefficiency,”
she said. “By digitalizing these problems,
we can only make things worse, unless we
simultaneously rise transparency and straighten
out our processes.”