This is a masterclass for Government officials seeking to understand the impact of digitalisation on their work and for civic techies and innovators who work with government/issues
This masterclass was led by Wits School of Governance senior lecturer Halfdan Lynge-Mangueira and lecturer Rekgotsofetse Chikane lecturer.
They kick-started the workshop by sharing some insights on the topic of Digitalising Governance. Through a series of charts, they were able to highlight how the country of Estonia was able to implement key policy reforms by making use of technology and data science over the past 10-12 years. Halfdan shared three major trends happening in the space of data processing.
- The first trend is that ‘Data volumes are increasing’ where he displayed a graph showcasing how the data available to us is on an exponential upward rise between the year of 2010 and 2025.
- The second trend pointed out was that ‘the nature of data is changing’ where we no longer are just obtaining organised structured data, but rather unstructured data that comprises of photos, text files and webpage posts.
- The third trend happening is that ’our processing power is constantly improving’. As we take note of these three global trends happening in the space of data processing, the question arises as to what are the implications on how we engage with public policy?