Global governance and data ethics challenges in the context of digital transformation

Abstracts

This article examines the impact of digital transformation on global governance, with particular attention to the ethical challenges arising from data-driven technologies and artificial intelligence. The aim is to describe the impact of digital transformation on global governance and how it is involved the data ethics issues. What can we suppose as a digital transformation in the sphere of governance and which points of data ethics are crucial soon. The accelerating pace of digital transformation is fundamentally reshaping the structures and mechanisms of global governance. The growing reliance on data-driven technologies, AI and other algorithmic-based decision-making systems affects not only economic and organizational processes but also the distribution of real power, responsibility, and legitimacy of decision making across contemporary societies. This article describes the governance challenges emerging from the digital age, with particular attention to the role of data as a strategic resource and the ethical implications of its collection, use, and commercialization. Drawing on contemporary research in global governance, digital transformation, AI governance, data governance, and discourse ethics, the article analyses the tensions between economic value creation, the protection of fundamental rights, and the pursuit of public good within the emerging data economy. Special attention is devoted to the concepts of digital sovereignty, human agency, and distributed responsibility as key dimensions of governance in increasingly “digitalized” and “datafied” societies. The article further presents the Discourse Data Ethics project at Bern University of Applied Sciences and its Ethics-as-a-Service (EaaS) model as an innovative approach to ethical data governance based on participation, communicative rationality, and stakeholder dialogue. It is argued that effective global governance in the digital age requires not only technological innovation and regulatory frameworks, but also new mechanisms of ethical deliberation, accountability, and human-centred decision-making to balance competing social, economic, and political interests.