In Argentina today, issues such as the influence of the State, tax pressure, balance of trade, security, among others, are being debated. For years we have been discussing how to solve our economic and public administration problems. However, in the midst of these disputes, the world continues to turn, technology continues to advance and our public administration continues to lag behind the technological vanguard.
Is it really important to discuss converging technologies in a country that keeps sinking in the same disputes? Or perhaps many of those problems that generate disputes can be solved by implementing new technologies in public administration. We cannot think of a country for the present, if we cannot discuss a public management fit for the 21st century.
The current leadership is very far from understanding the benefit of new technologies and the changes in social and political paradigms that they generate in society, this is because most of them are not digital natives and continue to govern, legislate and understand phenomena such as blockchain, as if our society continued to function as in the analog era, this mismatch is so serious that it comes to affect the representativeness of the political leadership.
Many important issues such as: what consequences will automation have on society and how we will be able to address it, how to modify our education system to access work in the era of artificial intelligence, how to include citizens in the new decentralized economy, or the importance of a cyber defense and cybersecurity policy for the proper protection of citizens' data. The importance of these debates in today's society is crucial, not only because of the urgency of an era that does not await us, but also because through them we can solve most of the problems that until now have submerged us in endless debates that did not lead to any solution. Technology allows us to go beyond human limits, with artificial intelligence we can replace the repetitive tasks of human beings if we know how to direct the question. In the same sense, we can transfer money anywhere in the world, without limits and without control through cryptocurrencies. At the same time, special brain implants are being tested to expand the cognitive abilities of the brain and to incorporate virtual reality and network management without the need for a cell phone, which immerses us in endless ethical debates that although these types of devices exist, our leadership is not interested in providing them.
All this happens while we continue to delve into debates of the twentieth century. While we debate whether we should have public education, low taxes or whether we should invest in science and technology, the technological revolution is passing over us, which affects us in our daily lives. Our labor market and state project is stuck in the last century and it is our duty to promote real change.
Converging technologies (or new technologies) need not be our enemies. We can make the State incorporate them in its daily work to be more efficient and less vulnerable, improving the quality of life of citizens. If we use this irruption intelligently, we can maximize them for the welfare of the population, but for that we must settle past debates and begin to incorporate into the public debate the role of technologies both in politics and in the functioning of the State and legislation.
The key lies in this intelligent use, since we can use these new tools to solve the problems we still suffer from as Argentines, such as monetary instability, insecurity and privacy. For example, the implementation of a better cybersecurity policy, among others, would allow us to secure the State's data more efficiently and without being exposed as we were weeks ago, with the hacking of the RENAPER registry, where thousands of Argentineans' data were violated. At the same time, we can incorporate artificial intelligence in the State's bureaucratic processes in order to provide more personalized responses to citizens' needs, since we create an impartial tool that allows us to streamline State processes. To be more specific: this would mean being able to chat, for example, with a bot that articulates all the codes and administrative regulations in order to give more accurate answers when setting up a business, reviewing the transfer of automotive domain or making an administrative claim. Convergent technologies are only tools at our disposal which we must use to our advantage.
The technological revolution is today, and if we do not stop delving into the cyclical conflicts that we carry from the 20th century, we will be exposed to the inequalities that arise in each industrial revolution, of which the fourth will be no exception and must be addressed urgently. Public administration today, along with most of the services provided by it, finds itself operating in the last century. Making intelligent use of the tools provided by this Fourth Industrial Revolution and maximizing their use is the future of our country. We have a unique window of opportunity that as a society we cannot waste and we must move towards it.
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