Knowledge Base

Security by design is an approach in software engineering that promotes to design software from the ground up to be secure.
Core pillars of information security are confidentiality (only allow access to data for which the user is permitted), integrity (ensure data is not tampered or altered by unauthorized users) and availability (ensure systems and data are available to authorized users when they need it). [1]

Governance is a term that has a quite broad context and means in its core to shape or design areas of life. E-Governance (Electronic Governance) is devoted to the challenges of shaping life areas in face of digital revolution and information era and affects all sectors encompassing the public, private and civil sector. It also affects communication and exchange between the sectors.

Data literacy is about the ability to handle data. It includes competences to collect, manage, evaluate and apply data in a critical manner. The public sector struggles with the growing skills gap, since data has become a central issue in our working environment, and the ability to understand and master the huge amounts of data available to the organisation is a key challenge. Key to this is establishing a culture of data literacy, meaning employees at all levels can access and have the ability to read, work, analyse and argue with data.

Data philanthropy is a kind of strategic partnership between private and public sector in which private companies donate data as a valuable resource for public benefit, i.e. for humanitarian, corporate, human rights, and academic use. [1]
However, there are numerous challenges to be mastered, such as competing tensions on data control and ownership, personal data protection and the lack of adequate frameworks for coordination and governance. [2]

Core idea of the lean approach is to maximise customer value and to focus on its key processes in order to continuously increase it through an optimum value creation process that has zero waste.
Lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimising separate technologies, assets, and vertical departments to optimise the flow of products and services through entire value streams that flow horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments. [1]

Technological Unemployment is about the societal impacts of technologies. Danaher defines technological unemployment “as the replacement of human workers […] by technological alternatives (machines, computer programs, robots and so forth)”. Furthermore, he assumes that artificial intelligence and robots will take over the work of humans in future. This is one reason why technological developments often come with people´s fear of the consequences. Everything is automated to such an extent that human work is no longer needed. [1]

The term “smart” in this trend indicates, that it is not only about collecting and storing data, but about automation of data analyses. Kim et al. describe this as follows: “Smart surveillance system is mainly composed of automatic video/audio analysis. Therefore, an emerging surveillance system must consider multimedia information for monitoring activities and extracting meaningful information from the environment.”[1]

This trend deals with the use of algorithms in policy and decision making. First, there is the trend of algorithmic regulation. Algorithmic regulation means that regulatory decision making is delegated to algorithms. The algorithms give the instructions of what should be done to achieve a desired outcome. [1]
The trend of using algorithms in governance and an increasing reliance of public decision making on algorithms is sometimes also called algocracy. [2]