Uncovering the Metaverse Governance Tensions for Public Sector Compliance

Abstract

The metaverse ecosystem presents new governance challenges for public institutions, whose mandates for transparency and accountability often conflict with the technology’s anonymity and borderlessness. This paper examines how public sector actors conceptualise effective metaverse governance and how their governance requisites align or collide with platform design. Drawing on interviews with officials and document analysis across three public sectors, the study applies the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) to analyse how governance requisites, technological characteristics, and actor interpretations evolve in parallel. Findings reveal compliance tensions between public sector governance requisites (identity verification, clear jurisdiction, regulatory alignment), and metaverse characteristics (anonymity, borderlessness). The study provides early empirical insights into public sector entry to the metaverse and offers implications for developing multi-stakeholder governance approaches.

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