Canadian Government Executive - Volume 25 - Issue 02

April/May 2019// Canadian Government Executive / 41 Governing Digitally In the case of Facebook, the social media giant has been labeled a “digital gangster” by a UK Parliamentary Committee, while Ger- man authorities imposed new rules limiting the company’s data gathering abilities in that country (a model that could be uploaded to all of Europe, although the ruling is under appeal). In response to such storms, Facebook recruited a former British Deputy Prime Minister to overhaul and strengthen government relations. With respect to Amazon, after a two-year media circus that saw the company essentially extorting local and state governments for assistance in building a second global headquarters (HQ2), the fi- nal selection was ultimately awarded to both New York City and Northern Virginia. Whereas the former was viewed as ideal for diverse human talent, the latter’s proximity to the U.S. federal government underscores the importance of working with public sector authorities (even despite the over-arching tensions between Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos). Yet in a stunning reversal, Amazon abandoned NYC in the face of mounting, albeit uneven, political opposition to the several billions of local and state subsidies offered to the company to effectively redevelop Long Island City. Critics of the deal hailed the decision as victory for the community, despite public opinion sharply in favour of the huge investment, while the Mayor of NYC lamented Amazon for its weakness in not staying the course. Google (now Alphabet) has faced anti-trust allegations in Eu- rope, much as its data-gathering partnerships with the National Health Service in the UK have been a source of controversy. In Canada, Google’s efforts to partner with the City of Toronto to cre- ate a new ‘smart district’ in downtown Toronto (Sidewalk Labs) have become an important magnet for privacy activists and others concerned about the privatization of waterfront land. The initiative has been called a “colonizing experiment in sur- veillance capitalism” by the former head of Research in Motion, Jim Balsillie. City of Toronto representatives have been invited to a Parliamentary Committee to explain the privacy implications of the experimentally connected community, while several local Councillors are calling for annulment as details have leaked out from a process that has not exactly been characterized, on either side, by proactive openness. Across all such examples, legitimate questions have been raised about the lobbying prowess of these tech giants, seemingly ill- equipped to forge stronger collaborative ties with governments and communities. At the same time, these companies are rela- tively young and – as noted, operate across a plethora of varying governance models with rules and expectations often in flux. Two key lessons present themselves. For governments, an im- portant challenge is to find new ways to work together to orches- trate public interest capacities in at least a partially globalizing manner. The collaborative gatherings of legislators from nine countries, including Canada, to forge common privacy protocols – particularly with respect to social media – is one such fledging example. The second lesson for emerging companies such as Uber and Airbnb is to invest more proactively in building a stronger and more supportive stakeholder eco-system. The CEO of Uber, for ex- ample, has sought to cultivate a more collaborative path forward than his predecessor, whose start-up mission was disruption and growth. In an increasingly digital world, integrative arrange- ments enjoining private and public interests are risky, unavoid- able and central to the new world order. J effrey R oy is professor in the School of Public Administration at Dalhousie University (roy@dal.ca ).