Digital Governance, Public Service and Envirtizenship: Prospecting E-Society for Sustainability (E-S4S)

Abstract

1. Introduction: Governance Technologies for Sustainable Development Good governance is incontrovertibly and inexorably pivotal to development. The ability to institute and maintain governance processes describable as good governance is key to that phenomenon technically referred to as sustainable development. Birthing sustainable development requires, among others, environmentally responsible and responsive leadership; which is the crux of sustainable governance. As noted by Guney (2017) for example, governance has an important and positive effect on sustainable development. Additionally, the applications of data sciences are penetrating the governance spaces of nation-states and creating an international society best conceptualized as global e-society. The emergent e-society throws up issues and challenges of environmental sustainability in developing nations: communities in most developing countries are fast becoming easy labels and referents for environmental abuses and injustices. Against the background of the facticity of the transformation of governance spaces by technology, it is imperative to explore the possibility of harnessing the instrumentality of governance technologies to engender a public service delivery framework for sustainable development in communities across developing nations. To this end the paper consists of five interrelated parts. Following the present introductory part, we shall in the second part analytically conceptualize digital governance and global e-society. The third part explores the interplay between digital governance, public service delivery and sustainable governance; an interplay which births for us the epistemological construct envirtizenship. In the fourth part we prospectively analyze the plausibility of leapfrogging digital governance for birthing a global public service delivery framework for sustainable governance in developing countries. The fifth and concluding part critically recommends, among others the formation of a global framework-E-Society for Sustainable Development (E-S4S)-as a desideratum for engendering clean public service delivery architecture in developing countries. 2. Digital Governance and E-Society: Conceptual Analysis A broad concept that means different things to different people (GDRC, 2019), governance for our purposes refers essentially to that function of a largely elected body of the state referred to as government. Governance is in general understood as the art of administration. With particular reference to the state, governance refers to the processes, manners and machineries for the administration of the state. As noted by UNESCAP for example, governance means the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented). Implied in the concept governance is the institutional frameworks deployed by the state for enabling peace and security, facilitating socioeconomic growth and preserving the natural habitat, among others.