Digital protocol in the age of artificial intelligence: Transformation, challenges and strategic recommendations for public sector management

The accelerating digitalisation of inter-state communication has produced a new field of institutional practice - digital protocol - which regulates the conduct of official interactions across electronic channels, virtual platforms and social media. Grounded in the network society theory and the author's published monographs on state protocol and the digital era, this paper offers both a conceptual examination and a multi-source empirical analysis of digital protocol as a strategic management challenge for the public sector. Drawing on North Macedonia's National Cybersecurity Strategy 2025-2028, the ECHO H2020 project, the ITU Guide to Developing a National Cybersecurity Strategy, the GFCE/Cybil Portal, the GCSCC Oxford Cybersecurity Capacity Maturity Model, and the MoI Digital Forensics Laboratory OKTIV (ISO/IEC 17025 | ENFSI | IACIS), the paper identifies five operational domains of digital protocol and derives seven evidence-based strategic recommendations for public sector managers. The central argument is that digital protocol is the functional transformation of traditional protocol - not its replacement - and requires institutional governance equivalent to that of its physical counterpart.