
Digital Twin Technology and Public Administration: Ethical and Security Issues
Chapter from the book:
Mücevher,
M.
H.
(ed.)
2025.
New Concept and Theory Proposals for Management Science.
Synopsis
The pace of social change in the last fifty years has also triggered changes in public administration. Changes in technology, in particular, have led to significant innovations and changes in the “state perspective” of societies and states. As technology develops, the social structure, working life and public administration have been oriented towards new structures, new tasks and new goals in an understanding of adapting to the new environment and making the best of the situation. Within this orientation, public administration has started to move towards the digital public administration phase, which is the last phase of change today. Public administration is striving to integrate the possibilities offered by technology into its structure in this age where digital life is moving at full speed. One of the digital systems that has become widespread in recent years in this effort is the digital twin. While the data stores hosted by digital twin systems offer great opportunities, they can also cause some dangerous situations. After the stages of e-State, mobile state and smart state, the public administration, which has reached the point of digital state, has started to think about what technology can take away as well as what it brings. The public administration, which has to protect its data amid the information overload of the digital world, has realized that it has to take measures to prevent ethical violations with an emphasis on individual privacy and malicious software that could jeopardize digital data security. In this period when it is not difficult to predict what a possible digital crisis could lead to, governments and public organizations must take measures to protect themselves first and data subjects second. If there is information, there will always be someone with bad intentions who will use it for malicious purposes. The digital world, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world thanks to global digitalization, can be both a great blessing and a great burden for public administrations.