Digital Preparedness: A New Modality of Governance
Digital Preparedness: A New Modality of Governance
Journal: Digital Society. Digital Society publishes articles on topics related to governance, transformations, environments, and developments of digital technology and their implications for society. The journal encourages rigorous investigations, evaluations, and recommendations respectful of good scholarship from any disciplinary tradition and particularly welcomes submissions that fall within the journal’s four thematic Areas. More on the journal can be found here.
Date of Publication: July 13, 2026.
Authors: Kjetil Rommetveit, Ana Maria Delgado Aleman, and Niels van Dijk. Rommetveit is with the Faculty of Humanities, in the Center for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities at the University of Bergen, in Norway. More on Rommetveit can be found here. Delgado is a Professor in Science and Technology Studies at the TIK Centre of Technology, Innovation and Society at the University of Oslo, in Norway. More on Delgado can be found here. Van Dijk is an Associate Professor of Legal Philosophy and Legal Sociology at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, and a senior researcher at the Centre for Law, Science, Technology and Society. He also serves as Director of the Brussels Laboratory for Privacy and Data Protection Impact Assessments. More on van Dijk can be found here.
The article can be found here, and a PDF of the article can be downloaded from the same page.
Photo by Alperen Erfidan on Unsplash.
Abstract: In this article we introduce a concept of digital preparedness as a critical inroad to the study of politics in the 21st century. Digital preparedness is a hybrid form of governance mobilised to enhance future capacity for emergency response through increased data connectivity and collaboration across domains. It is triggered by a state of exception and works through a dual suspension: of rights and regulations, on the one hand, and of hindrances to innovation in the public sector and health data infrastructures on the other. We develop our concept through an analysis of digital responses to the Covid pandemic in Norway, focusing on the rapid creation of a preparedness registry. This registry integrated previously siloed health databases with mobility, social services, education, and defence data, while simultaneously justifying expansions of Norway’s extensive health data ecosystem. We describe how digital preparedness was used to instigate regulatory and institutional reforms, and to overcome prior ‘barriers’ (such as fundamental rights) to increasingly connect heterogeneous data sources. We conclude by identifying the defining features of digital preparedness as a mode of governance and considering its implications for politics and crisis management.
Why ISSE Is Recommending This Article: This article offers an important conceptual contribution to the study of contemporary exceptional governance by introducing the idea of "digital preparedness"—a form of governance in which emergency-driven digital infrastructures and data integration become embedded within the ordinary operation of the state long after the immediate crisis has passed. Using Norway's COVID-19 preparedness registry as a case study, the authors argue that emergency measures can accelerate lasting institutional, regulatory, and technological change, expanding executive capacity while reshaping the relationship between individual rights, public administration, and digital infrastructure. Whether or not one agrees with all of the article's normative conclusions, it provides a valuable analytical framework for examining how crises can transform governance through technological systems as well as through legal and constitutional change, making it highly relevant to ISSE's broader research on the long-term institutional consequences of states of exception.
