Doctoral Defence: Logan Carmichael “Cybersecurity Governance Responses in the Estonian Digital Governance Model, 2007-2023“

On 17 March at 14:30 Logan Carmichael will defend her doctoral dissertation “Cybersecurity Governance Responses in the Estonian Digital Governance Model, 2007-2023“ for obtaining the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (in Political Science).

Supervisor:

Associate Professor Mihkel Solvak, University of Tartu

Opponent:

Senior Research Fellow Miguel Alberto Gomez, National University of Singapore (Singapore)

Summary:

As governments across the world have increasingly digitalised in recent decades, concerns about how to implement cybersecurity mechanisms to protect e-governance provisions have emerged. This dissertation employs Estonia as a critical case in the domains of cybersecurity and e-governance, examining the evolution of Estonian cybersecurity governance, particularly pertaining to its e-governance system, between 2007 and 2023. This examination of the Estonian case is threefold: firstly, this dissertation explores the landscape of Estonian e-governance and the unique cybersecurity concerns of this highly-digitalised context. Secondly, it examines the governmental structures and ecosystem crafted to govern cybersecurity in a highly-digitalised setting, and the considerations surrounding this process. Thirdly, this dissertation looks at how governance processes and decision-making unfold when a cybersecurity crisis befalls the e-governance system, and the myriad factors that are considered in this process. This dissertation makes novel theoretical and practical contributions in the field of cybersecurity governance. It provides an exploratory case study of the Estonian case, providing an in-depth overview of the Estonian e-governance and cybersecurity landscape using publicly-available documentation. Subsequently, it contributes at the nexus of policy change and collaborative governance theory, looking at how a process of learning and adapting in a multi-stakeholder setting has led to the development of a cybersecurity governance ecosystem aimed at bolstering future cybersecurity and tailored to the unique digitalisation context of Estonia. Additionally, this dissertation examines the governmental approaches to key cybersecurity crises in Estonia, viewing these through a lens of historical institutionalist theory and a crisis management approach, ultimately ascertaining the ways in which decision-making was undertaken, aimed at bolstering future cybersecurity. As these theoretical fields are currently underdeveloped in the domain of cybersecurity governance, this dissertation makes new theoretical contributions in these spaces. In addition, this dissertation offers practical learnings from the Estonian critical case that can be transferred and tailored to the local intricacies of other go