Emerging Risks In Digital Procurement Governance

By: Albert Sánchez-Graells (How To Crack A Nut)

In a previous blog post, I drew a technology-informed feasibility boundary to assess the realistic potential of digital technologies in the specific context of procurement governance. I suggested that the potential benefits from the adoption of digital technologies within that feasibility boundary had to be assessed against new governance risks and requirements for their mitigation.

In a new draft chapter (num 8) for my book project, I now explore the main governance risks and legal obligations arising from the adoption of digital technologies, which revolve around data governance, algorithmic transparency, technological dependency, technical debt, cybersecurity threats, the risks stemming from the long-term erosion of the skills base in the public sector, and difficult trade-offs due to the uncertainty surrounding immature and still changing technologies within an also evolving regulatory framework.

The analysis is not carried out in a vacuum, but in relation to the increasingly complex framework of EU digital law, including: the Open Data Directive; the Data Governance Act; the proposed Data Act; the NIS 2 Directive on cybersecurity measures, including its interaction with the Cybersecurity Act, and the proposed Directive on the resilience of critical entities and Cyber Resilience Act; as well as some aspects of the proposed EU AI Act…

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