Digitalizing infrastructure, digital platforms and public services

Abstract

This article discusses the challenges posed to the traditional, physically delivered public services as a result of their digitalization, something that mainly concerns infrastructure public services in the transport, the energy, and the communications sectors. In addition, it assesses whether the digital interfaces that increasingly intermediate between the traditional, physical public services and the citizens also have public service features and, as a consequence, should be regulated accordingly. The article first clarifies the concept of public service in the context of the liberalization of the infrastructure sectors, sectors in which public services had come to play an important role over time. It then explains how to conceptualize digitalization and its effects on physical services providers by paying particular attention to the business model of the digital platforms. It furthermore examines how digitalization affects the traditional physical public services and whether the digital platforms in the concerned infrastructures could have public service features. In the concluding section it discusses remedies.