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3. 11.12.2024

Our opinion on the Ministry of Digital Affairs’s ”State Digitisation Strategy”

The Strategy submitted for public consultation deserves recognition for presenting a vision that Poland has not previously had. It is a genuine milestone in designing technology policy.

While appreciating the boldness of the strategy and its ambitious scope, we wish to draw the Ministry’s attention to a few (avoidable) pitfalls in thinking about digitisation.

The authors of the strategy rightly observe that technology is not a solution to all problems. The entire strategy must focus on the overarching goal of improving the quality of life for citizens. To achieve this, the strategy’s implementation cannot rely solely on quantitative objectives. While these metrics gauge the scale of digitisation, they do not guarantee the fulfillment of its ultimate purpose. Fully realizing the strategy requires a more detailed definition of the qualitative social, political, and economic changes we aim to achieve in Poland through digitisation.

For instance, without addressing fundamental questions about what should and should not be automated, we are facing a risk that automation could become an end in itself, rather than a tool for enhancing citizens’ lives.

We appreciate the cross-sectoral and comprehensive nature of the strategy. We fully support the vision of digitisation aimed at improving state efficiency, enhancing quality of life, and building a robust society and economy. At the same time, we believe that achieving these goals requires more than just digitisation. Poland needs a technology policy interconnected with social, cultural, and scientific policies. Such a policy must not shy away from deeper questions about the vision of the world, society, and humanity in the digital age.

In our view, key areas requiring a long-term state policy include:

• Technological sovereignty,
• An efficient and lawful state,
• Citizen safety in the digital space (including that of children, workers, and consumers),
• Technology education fostering critical thinking and empathy.

We appreciate that these issues have been acknowledged in the draft of the Strategy. Taking this further, we would like to highlight desired directions for state actions in our position, agreeing that Polish technology policy should aim to enhance citizens’ quality of life while safeguarding digital sovereignty.

Grounded in the values we wish to see in Polish technology policy, we propose a series of initiatives that would bring tangible benefits to citizens. Our goal is to move the discussion on the Digitisation Strategy from broad objectives to specific actions that support achieving the strategy’s indicators, while reflecting the government’s values in its technology policy.