Résumé
Clearly, the year 2020 has shown how sensitive human society is to crisis situations. This is not only a simple matter of fact, this is also and mainly the consequence of the hyper connection of this human society. There is actually no more absorption space for our world and society to absorb any significant disruption and avoid its spreading across the whole planet. However, the progress of human society, in addition to being considered as the main cause of this dangerous evolution, could also provide avenues to deal with it: data science, artificial intelligence, social networks and more globally information technologies are amazing avenues that "in charge" institutions and governments should deeply consider to take the right path to deal with the tremendous next challenges of the century (global warming, pandemics, overpopulation and lack of resources, disbalance north and south, drop of biodiversity, etc.). The DIRECT minitrack of the eGov track of HICSS 54 presents nine great papers addressing these issues but also these perspectives. The following presents each of these articles.