Future Government 2030+: Policy Implications and Recommendations

The Future of Government project started in autumn 2017 as a research project of the Joint Research Centre in collaboration with Directorate General Communication Network and Technologies. It explored how we can rethink the social contract according to the needs of today’s society, what elements need to be adjusted to deliver value and good to people and society, what values we need to improve society, and how we can obtain a new sense of responsibility.

Following the "The Future of Government 2030+: A Citizen-Centric Perspective on New Government Models report", published on 6 March, the present follow-up report provides follow-up insights into the policy implications and offers a set of 54 recommendations, organised in nine policy areas.

The recommendations of this report include a series of policy options and actions that could be implemented at different levels of governance systems. Most importantly, they include essential elements to help us build our future actions on digital government and address foundational governance challenges of the modern online world (i.e regulation of AI ) in the following 9 axes:

1. Democracy and power relations: creating clear strategies towards full adoption of open government
2. Participatory culture and deliberation: skilled and equipped public administration and allocation of resources to include citizens in decision-making
3. Political trust: new participatory governance mechanisms to raise citizens’ trust
4. Regulation: regulation on technology should follow discussion on values with full observance of fundamental rights
5. Public-Private relationship: better synergies between public and private sectors, collaboration with young social entrepreneurs to face forthcoming challenges
6. Public services: modular and adaptable public services, support Member States in ensuring equal access to technology
7. Education and literacy: increase digital data literacy, critical thinking and education reforms in accordance to the needs of job markets
8. Big data and artificial intelligence: ensure ethical use of technology, focus on technologies’ public value, explore ways to use technology for more efficient policy-making
9. Redesign and new skills for public administration: constant re-evaluation of public servants’ skills, foresight development, modernisation of recruitment processes, more agile forms of working.

As these recommendations have shown, collaboration is needed across different policy fields and they should be acted upon as integrated package. The majority of recommendations is intended for the EU policymakers but their implementation could be more effective if done through lower levels of governance, eg. local, regional or even national.