Social Policy and Public Administration Ecosystems

Abstract

The article examines the transformation of social policy in countries that prioritize the use of digital technologies in public administration. State integrated platforms – ecosystems –that emerge in these countries serve as a basis for social interaction, using data on organizations and citizens of one or more countries interactively, which leads to changes in social policy. The main changes of this kind include convergence of state and corporate structures for managing social processes and individualization of the state’s interaction with people. The article identifies the social imbalances that have limited the creation of a global ecosystem of social management and become the driver for the emergence of several types of such ecosystems. The analysis demonstrates that implementation of business models of digital transformation of public administration in some countries retains the historical continuity of the principles that underpinned their social policy earlier. The author concludes that the partnership role of the corporate sector in setting goals for social development leads to formation of cross-border horizontally oriented ecosystems in countries with social-democratic and liberal traditions. In countries with etatist and paternalistic value orientations the striving to achieve digital sovereignty leads to the introduction of an hierarchical principle of ecosystem formation. Meanwhile, countries with similar historical continuity and value orientations develop various digital forms of realization of public goods – monetary or in the form of socially valued services. As a result, the study proposes a typology of public administration ecosystems built on two bases. The first is the institutional basis of digital transformation, which implies the consolidation of the leading role of the state or public-private partnership, and the second is the one concentrating on social policy supported by digital technologies.