Technology & Policy — a game of catch up?

Gone are the days when governments could make policies and then import, adopt or grow technologies. With the rise of technology and rapid pace of growth, policies play catchup and most often become irrelevant by the time they come into force as the technology itself would have been substituted by then. This is more true especially in the case of information technology and associated communications.

Chris Yu of the Tony Blair Institute of Global change argues that “A world infused with new technologies demands courageous, imaginative policy solutions that will both harness technology’s tremendous potential for good and mitigate the displacement effects of rapid change. This is one of the greatest policy challenges of our generation, and one of the biggest gaps in the prospectus across the political spectrum.”

And one cannot but agree more. Governments will need to balance the polarity of harnessing technology for great good along with protecting the most vulnerable.

Most often, technologies come in and make themselves available and adopted when governments wake up to them. And even then policy comes into question only if some constituent is deeply affected —

1. it could be the government itself
2. or a market entity that has enough power or clout to make the government listen
3. or worse a huge accident or calamity that gives no option but for the government to react
4. or a social noise that threatens to become a movement which someone wants to ride on.

We have seen this cycle repeat itself — ecommerce policies, fin-tech policies, OTT content policies, social media content policies etc. In every case, policy did not just play catchup, but only when there was a serious nudge involved; yet none of these technologies came out of the blue. Most of them were doing the rounds for years before they hit the country and yet policymaking was asleep until it was woken up.

The question is when and how should the policymaking engagement happen?

Governments should wake up to the fact that in a technology dominated world, taking a backseat on policy will not just hamper progress, it can in fact set us on the negative. On the other hand, while taking an aggressive position on formulating policy, if governments tend to be way too cautionistic as they usually are and/or dependent heavily on experimental evidence to determine policies, once again, this will hamper progress for the future.

Policymakers should then take a strong progressive technology and should be willing to educate themselves so they can formulate meaningful and useful policies. While we cannot expect all policymakers to be tech experts, it is a fair assumption to make that their teams comprise the right tech skilled advisors and consultants who can help them think through impacts and potential. They need to stay much ahead of the game with their “systems thinking” — their ability to understand and map both the vertical effect (the specific long term effect of the technology on society directly) and the horizontal effect (the effect of the technology on other associated & allied industries & technologies).

Taking an early view and iterating on policies will provide more benefit in the longer term than taking a late, restrictive/cautionary approach to a policy. For example, let’s talk about advancements in transportation technology — drones and self driven cars. The current laws on drones are at best cautionary where policies talk about requiring explicit clearances before take off, drones to be visible to pilots at all times etc . Similarly in case of self driving cars, the policy is that the country is disallowing the technology given the job loss it could create.

The potential societal benefits of these near future technologies are immense -

1. drones — emergency rescue, rapid transportation of items to the needy, assess damage in disasters, deliver aid etc.
2. self driven cars — more productive use of human time than driving, better traffic rules following, reduction of human errors etc.

Unfortunately, our current approach to policies in these areas will allow drones to be at best used in wedding & movie photography and self driven cars just to be experienced as a novelty while visiting the Netherlands (when it is projected that 10% of the World will be on self driven cars by 2030 ) — an utter disregard for the for the potential and growth of these technologies.

While the intent of this post is not to argue for the benefits or merit of the above said transportation technology, it is to point out that there is a larger scope for having an advanced and better viewpoint and policy on some of these upcoming technologies. Having such clear views are helpful even to those who are willing to invest and launch such technologies in the country and put their energies to a positive use. Clearer ecommerce policies in the first 5 years of the 21st century could have helped the ecommerce companies to be clearer on their offerings, what they need to be compliant with and how the existing retail SMBs adjust to this growth. Instead, delayed and unclear ecommerce policies end up companies spending their energy to figure out how to circumvent policies and existing retail SMBs to depend more on government protection as opposed to awareness & readiness.

It is the policymakers responsibility to formulate policies as much as possible in advance to help prepare the society for changes. Changes in education, upgrading skills, discoveries, investments all take time and unless policy stays ahead, technology will become a gamble to be played only with those with deep pockets and having the ears of those in power. It will hamper the creativity and incentive for innovation and progress.

*The opinions published here are strictly the personal opinions of the author and are in no way reflective of the organizations that he works or is associated with. The images displayed are publicly available images.

References:

1. Technology for the Many: A Public Policy Platform for a Better, Fairer Future — Chris Yiu.
2. Bridge the gap between technology and policymaking — Bruce Scheneier, WEF
3. Managing Drone air traffic — The Print.
4. Self driving cars a distant dream — DNA India
5. 1 in 10 will be autonomous — Research by Statista