SECURITY OF UKRAINE’S DIGITAL SPACE AS AN OBJECT OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: DOCTRINAL AND CATEGORICAL FOUNDATIONS

Abstract

The article substantiates the need to treat the security of Ukraine’s digital space as an autonomous object of public administration rather than reducing it to the technical cyber protection of information systems. Digital space is interpreted as a socio-technical environment formed by electronic communications, public registers, cloud services, digital platforms, critical information infrastructure, algorithmic systems, data, public authorities, businesses and civil society. Its networked, cross-border and rapidly changing nature, together with dependence on privately owned technological infrastructure, makes purely centralised administrative control insufficient. The study distinguishes cybersecurity, information security, digital resilience, technological sovereignty and digital-space security. The latter is defined as a condition of protection, resilience, governability and value-consistent ordering of the digital environment maintained by the public administration system. Such a condition ensures the continuity of vital services, sovereignty over critical data and technological decisions, protection of human rights, trust in the digital state, and the collective capacity of stakeholders to prevent, detect, deter, contain and overcome digital threats. The doctrinal principles of public administration in this field are systematised: legality, human-centredness, risk-based governance, proportionality, resilience by design, subsidiarity, interoperability, accountability, technological neutrality, public-private cooperation, international compatibility and adaptive learning. National, sectoral, territorial, organisational and platform levels of governance are identified. A policy cycle linking doctrine, strategy, regulation, capacity building, monitoring, response, recovery and policy review is proposed. The scientific novelty lies in shifting the focus from protecting isolated information resources to safeguarding the integrity of the socio-technical digital environment and public interests within it. The proposed criteria and conceptual framework may be used to align Ukraine’s cybersecurity, digital transformation, critical infrastructure protection and human-rights policies as of July 2026.