The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Are We Ready?—Part II

Md. Fakrul Islam Chowdhury wtites for DOT : 
The real challenges of the fourth industrial revolution lie in the impact on governments and its various institutions it would have.
On the plus side, the continuous converge of physical, digital, and biological worlds will bring new technologies and platforms that would increasingly enable citizens to engage with governments, voice their opinions, coordinate their efforts, and even circumvent the supervision of public authorities.
On the flip side, governments will gain new technological powers to increase their control over populations, based on pervasive surveillance systems and the ability to control digital infrastructure.
On the whole, however, governments will increasingly face pressure to change their current approach to public engagement and policymaking, as their central role of conducting policy diminishes owing to new sources of competition and the redistribution and decentralization of power that new technologies make possible.
In this rapidly changing context the future survival and nature, whether, democratic or autocratic, of Digital Bangladesh, will depend on the ability of our government systems and public authorities to adapt to these new technologies and their impacts.
If we can prepare us to be capable of embracing a world of disruptive change, subjecting our structures of governance to the levels of transparency and efficiency that will enable us to maintain our democratic and competitive edge, Digital Bangladesh will endure. If our government and its institutions cannot evolve, they will face increasing challenges.
Most importantly, in the realm of security and regulation the challenges our government and institutions would face will be unprecedented.
Most of our existing systems of public policy and decision-making evolved alongside the Second Industrial Revolution, when decision-makers had time to study a specific issues and develop the necessary response or appropriate regulatory framework. The whole process was designed to be linear and mechanistic, following a strict “top down” approach.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution’s rapid pace of change and broad impacts makes it impossible for legislators and regulators to hold on to such an approach as a feasible one. Governments are now being challenged to an unprecedented degree.
As we are beginning to reap the benefits of the digital revolution in our country our challenge is then, how we can preserve the interest of the consumers and the public at large while continuing to support innovation and technological development?
We need to rise up to these challenges by embracing “agile” governance, just as the private sector has increasingly adopted agile responses to software development and business operations more generally.
This means regulators must continuously adapt to a new, fast-changing environment, reinventing themselves so they can truly understand what it is they are regulating. To do so, governments and regulatory agencies will need to collaborate closely with business and civil society.
Another sphere The Fourth Industrial Revolution will have a profound impact is in the nature of security, affecting both national and global level.
Today’s “smart” conflicts involving states are increasingly “hybrid” in nature, combining classical warfare techniques with elements previously associated with non-state actors.
The distinction between war and peace, state of emergency and state of normalcy, the legitimate democratic movements and the extremist xenophobic ones, between combatant and noncombatant, and even violence and nonviolence, truths and post truths is becoming uncomfortably blurry.
Within this context of profound technological and societal changes which is taking us towards global digitalization, cyber security has become both a serious concern and a goldmine of economic/ business opportunity.
Thanks to the extra ordinary leadership of our Prime Minister, aided by his visionary son, we have come a long way in transforming Bangladesh in to a digital-friendly country.
The challenge now is to prepare us and take advantages of this fourth revolution.
The writer is Consulting Editor, Amader Notun Shomoy