THE ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES IN THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL REGULATION OF PUBLIC SAFETY, LAW, AND ORDER

The fast pace at which information technology is being implemented in public administrations and security systems globally has dramatically changed the way public safety and law and order can be regulated internationally. Despite the extensive use of information technology by international organizations, there is very little scholarly work that provides empirical evidence of how digital technologies impact the efficiency, transparency, and legality of international security frameworks. This paper attempts to fill that void through a comparative empirical model based on a case study of the role of information technology in international legal regulation. This paper aims to assess how information technology impacts the performance of international legal frameworks that regulate public safety and law enforcement and also to identify the legal circumstances under which the digitalization process increases the regulatory effectiveness. To achieve these objectives, the authors have employed an interdisciplinary methodology using Legal Modelling of Standards, comparative doctrinal analyses and the Legal Impact Assessment Method in a controlled legal simulation environment (LexSim-Lab).Three international legal frameworks were analyzed as examples of international governance models - the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, the SIRIUS and SIENA platforms of Europol, and the OSCE cybercrime recommendations. The results show that the application of information technology clearly improves the time it takes to resolve conflicts, the level of procedural transparency and the level of adherence to norms; yet, the level of improvement varies across regimes. The results indicate that those regimes where the international legal framework was binding, institutionalized and/or had a high level of embeddedness, such as Europol, exhibited much better legal efficiency (up to 46.77%), greater transparency, fewer violations of norms and greater accountability than those regimes that were either politically coordinated or voluntary.Additionally, the results show that the digital tools used to support the various international legal frameworks acted as a "legal stress test" revealing structural weaknesses in international legal regulation that relate to accountability, jurisdiction and data sovereignty. The scientific originality of this study lies in the combination of legal and technological modeling approaches used to analyze the relationship between digitalization and measurable legal outcomes. Furthermore, the paper presents new knowledge by demonstrating that the effectiveness of international regulation of public safety depends less on the technological sophistication of the digital tool, than on the existence of enforceable legal architecture regulating the digital tool. Finally, the paper offers some practical advice for the development of international harmonized legal standards that can support secure, transparent and compliant with rights digital governance.