Competing digital capacities: between state-led digital governance and local data center tradeoffs

Governments worldwide are embracing digital transformation, envisioning limitless data capacities for public policy. However, this paper uncovers a crucial oversight: the neglect of material resources sustaining digital ecosystems. This paper introduces contested ‘digital capacities’ in public policy, to show how the aspiration for unlimited data processing strains local resources. Through a comparative analysis of national digitization strategies in the United States and the United Kingdom, this paper reveals a disconnect between the sociotechnical imaginaries and infrastructural demands underpinning these strategies. The infrastructural demands are leading to social and environmental tradeoffs in regional areas strained by digital infrastructure development. I argue that these competing digital capacities – the capacity to govern through digitization and related resource capacities – provide productive data friction for governments to pause and assess the broader social and ecological costs of their national digitization policies. As such, this article emphasizes the need for policymakers to align national digital governance strategies with regional planning for equitable outcomes. By reevaluating competing digital capacities encompassed in national sociotechnical imaginaries, this paper highlights the urgent need for a balanced approach to digitization.