The Congress on Internet, Law and Politics has the aim of continuing the task of reflecting on, analyzing and discussing the main changes taking place in law and politics in the information society. This third congress focuses on the questions that currently represent the most important challenges and new developments in the fields of copyright, data protection, Internet security, problems of responsibility, electronic voting, and the new regulation of e-Administration, as well as dedicating a specific area to the current state of the use of new technologies by law professionals.
Law Project for the electronic access to Public Administration by the citizenship
Juan Miguel Márquez, Director General of Administrative Modernisation at the Spanish Public Administration Ministry
The aim of the new law is avoiding having to include tons of exceptions or specific cases on “analogue” law on the Public Administration. Thus, this new project provides a brand new framework that includes, on its ground basis, all kind of electronic approaches. Another big aim is to bring into this new framework absolutely all public services so they can be accessed digitally, not just a handful of them: the right to access the Administration, regardless of the platform or the means, is now the goal of this new law (actually in a draft/project version).
The e-Administration Law
Julián Valero, Professor of Administrative Law, University of Múrcia
Left to right: Agustí Cerrillo, Juan Miquel Márquez, Julián Valero
Law, a barrier? There is a crisis in the scope of Law, but Law should come first, and then technology, not the other way egovbarriers.org is just doing a research in this field: in what measure Law is a barrier to technology and technological change.
In this sense, the new law puts some order in some things that were already happening in a somewhat existing “legal void” related to technology and law. This does not mean that we have to forget all guarantees, but evolution is now a need, and the statu quo does not anymore give most answers to nowadays’ reality.
On the other hand, the challenge is to avoid entering into “fashion regulation”, and regulate each and every case as e-Administration when (a) maybe it is already solved or (b) maybe it requires highest level regulation instead of case to case regulation.
One of the best improvements of this law project is that it does not detail each and every procedure (as it was usually done until now), but just set a framework, and quite a flexible one. This is, of course, a good asset, as technology is so quickly changing that, as it had long happened, it overrode or invalidated the regulation framework.
A lacking question in this new law is networking: it is not the same thing information or communication (i.e. data sharing, data transmission), that working with the same information (i.e. working with the same databases), which should be (if it not really is) the reality and not just a hypothesis.
A couple of interesting links:
- Red Derecho TICs, network of ICT Law specialists
- IV Congreso de la Red DerechoTics, IV edition of the “Red Derecho TICs” Congress on e-Administration, Murcia (Spain), 23-25 May 2007
Last but not least: on one hand, the new law enables brand new paths, but, on the other hand, it does not empower little (i.e. local) Administration neither with sufficient budget nor with applications to go on and implant the law in its full scope. This might generate a divide among those Administrations that can and the ones that cannot implant full e-Administration as the law sees it.
3rd Internet, Law and Politics Congress (2007)
If you need to cite this article in a formal way (i.e. for bibliographical purposes) I dare suggest:
Peña-López, I. (2007) “3rd IDP Congress on Internet, Law and Politics. Briefings, part VII: The Law on e-Administration” In ICTlogy,
#44, May 2007. Barcelona: ICTlogy.
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Hi there! Law on the Internet/IT field? Coooool…and it’s true that the law should be flexible since the IT infrastracture changes, there’s nothing permanent in IT. For example, a new version of a specific application this month will be released. Before you even get to finish studying, there’s already a new version the following month. That’s IT so it’s best that the law will be flexible, better yet generalized. Thank you so much for sharing and keep em coming! Have a nice day! :)