The Digital Challenge think tank's overall conclusions

The Digital Challenge think tank was launched by IT&Telecom companies in September 2015 and operated until July 2017, with the mission of highlighting, discussing and problematizing issues and challenges brought about by digitalization.

The think tank, which has worked independently, has discussed six overarching issues linked to digitization and its impact on our society in the next 10-15 years in the form of six separate consultations, which involved a large number of experts and opinion leaders over a limited period. A time perspective that is both long enough to imply dramatic changes, and short enough to need to be concrete about challenges and solutions.

This anthology presents the conclusions of all the workshops, all of which have previously been released as various forms of interim reports after each completed workshop. The think tank has also resulted in a number of articles and opinion pieces, all of which are available on techsverige.se.

The think tank's overall conclusions on digitization and the challenges and opportunities it brings constitute a solid and valuable basis for further discussion and problematization, and to contribute to further understanding among broader groups of the difficult decisions and reforms that may be necessary for future welfare.

Foreword: Digitization is real!

When the Digital Challenge think tank started its work in mid-September 2015, the ambition was to contribute to a deeper, longer-term conversation about the opportunities and challenges of digitalization. Asking difficult, constructive questions would be as important as delivering clear-cut answers. Digital Utmaning wanted to problematize and challenge the view of digitalization as a number of quick fixes to various complex societal problems. The perspective was not the present and the near future, but 10-15 years ahead.

But Digital Challenge also wanted to be a different think tank in our approach. We gave ourselves a time-limited mandate. We did not build up a heavy investigation apparatus, but worked with light-footed consultations composed of selected experts in their particular field, free to think in their own way and free to present their results in the forms they chose.

We wanted to avoid the easy and predictable results. Although there was a client in the background, IT&Telekomföretagen and its members, the think tank would act independently and be responsible for its own results. The main benefit for members would be a deeper understanding of the disruptive power of digitalization. We also wanted to remind our politicians of the power of this force. We wanted to help them realize that digitalization is real.

After just over two years, it is now time to take stock of the Digital Challenge, to hand over our results to the client to consider, develop and hopefully use in its future activities. So how successful has the think tank been? How well have we achieved our ambitions from the start in September 2015?

In quantitative terms, the results are impressive. From the first consultation, on the impact of digitalization on the labour market, to the last and sixth, on filter bubbles, digital silos, collective discourse and democracy, the Digital Challenge has engaged hundreds of qualified experts from different fields of research and society. Together, they have produced just the interesting, thought-provoking and sometimes provocative conclusions we hoped for.

Alongside this, the Digital Challenge has built up an extensive network over its two years. Advisors and Council members are an integral part of this network. Many interested guests have also come back to the presentations of the various Councils and enriched the debate with questions and comments. We hope that IT&Telecom companies will continue to develop these valuable contacts.

Have we managed to influence public debate and policy? This question is more difficult to answer. In the short term, we must probably conclude that digitization issues continue to be treated much as before, i.e. as nice technical solutions that will primarily help to patch and fix rather than create something new and different. So the idea that everything will be much the same in the digital society, just a little bigger, better and faster, lives on.

On the other hand, I would like to think that Digital Challenge, through its consultations and through a large number of debate articles, has helped to lay the foundation for another insight in the long term; namely that digitization creates completely new conditions in a large number of areas and will lead to many parts of our lives working fundamentally differently.

A first test of how far this realization has taken hold will be the upcoming 2018 election campaign. Will our politicians dare to cast off the notion that digitalization is the cure for the shortcomings that have become increasingly apparent in the old society? Will they dare to see and accept that digitization means a revolutionary structural transformation for almost all areas of society? The Digital Challenge has given them the tools to develop such an understanding. This is a good thing.

Lars Ilshammar, Deputy National Librarian and Chairman of Digital Challenge
December 2017