Opening Session (part II)

Chairs Carmen Sánchez-Carazo

Intelligent Cities
José Gumersindo García

ICTs will improve the image that public administrations have before the citizenry: proximity, transparency, etc.

e-Administration and Modernization go hand in hand and they are co-requisites for the development of both.

The Public Sector does have to bet on digital literacy training for their public servants. But not only their employees, but also firms. With this digital literacy many projects can take place: instant messaging for better communication, datasharing through wireless networks, e-commerce, etc.

Free software is very important for the Public Sector, and again, also for enterprises.

Some reflections:

• To be connected does not mean appropriate use of the Internet
• To be in the Net does not mean being in the Net.
• Technological quality does not guarantee quality in Politics

Plan Avanza
David Cierco Jiménez de Parga

Video in Spanish about the Plan Avanza, the Spanish Government plan to foster the Information Society:

The Plan Avanza is a bottom-up aimed plan, where it pursues empowering citizenship initiatives, the main asset being sharing: experiences, resources, knowledge, etc.

Thus, many nonprofits are being the actual leaders of many projects.

Comments

For an e-Administration to be really “2.0″ in the field of development cooperation, the output of the development cooperation founds should be open: open contents, open educational resources, free software… Once payed with public money, all output should be made freely available to the society at large.

There’s an agreement that there’s an urgent need for training:

• training on use, to learn how to get the most benefit from digital technologies, specially to the citizenry at large
• training on e-awareness, to learn how to change our functioning paradigms and models (and business models), specially to decision-takers and policy-makers