The situation we are in is a context of crisis of political legitimacy. This means much less political participation in general and, more specifically, protest voting, young people voting less, decreasing levels of affiliation to parties or other civic organizations, etc.
On the other hand, we see the explosion of the Information Society and of the Web 2.0, “participative” by definition. ICTs are adopted by political organizations in the fields of eGovernment — to provide public services for the citizen — and eDemocracy — to enhance and foster participation.
Two different perspectives in the crossroads between political disaffection and the Information Society:
Cyberoptimism: ICTs will lead to a mobilization effect. More people will participate because participation costs are lower, there is much more information than before, etc.
Cyberpessimism: ICTs will lead to new elites because of the digital divide. The existing differences between the ones that participated and the ones that didn’t are broadened.
Realists: we need more empirical studies (and to avoid technological determinism).
We have new technologies for citizen participation but, what tools for what uses? A research for the Barcelona county council.
After a survey within the Barcelona municipalities, we can state:
There are different participation activities depending on whether the communication is horizontal or vertical.
There are topics more prone to intensively use ICTs: urban planning, youngsters, education and equality, elder people, sustainability.
Not organized citizens, resources, transversal coordination are variables that are usually identified as barriers not overcome; while training, innovation, agenda, associations or political agreement are usually identified as goals reached through ICT-enhanced participation.
The study then goes on to analyze tools and applications and how they fit in the participation process:
Directionality, quantitative: one-to-one, one-to-many, many to many.
Competences: basic, advanced, expert.
Applications: type of tool, cost, hosting, “mashability”.
Participation moments:
Mobilization: information about the participation process and the goals to be achieved.
Development: putting into practice the participation project.
Closing: stating the decision being made.
Follow up: monitoring and assessment of the decision reached.
A first analysis of 19 international cases, we see that most tools have a one-to-many directionality, are bidirectional, and are mainly used in the mobilization moment. User registration and the data they have to provide is an important issue and must be decided in advance, as happens with deciding the goals and functioning of the process, which includes defining and identifying the role of the online facilitator. Free software is usually the option chosen, and accessibility (in a broad sense) is normally taken into account.
We find two different models. Even if models are not “pure”, we can see opposite approaches: Initiatives aimed at community building, characterized by being open, relational, fostering engagement, using free tools and aiming at a networked participation, with a facilitator that engages in a bidirectional conversation. And policy oriented initiatives, characterized by being more formal (or formalized), focussing at decision-taking and representation, using own platforms and more “traditional” participation means, with a facilitator that guides and information that flows asymmetrically and unidirectionally.
Cloud computing is both an opportunity and a challenge. On the one hand, there are legal hazards that need being solved, but that also disclose some interesting spaces. Indeed, the new a-institutional logic is disruptive but also provides new ways of learning, as the public and private spheres intersect one to each other and get confused (want it or not) one with each other. It is a response to the de-legitimation of political institutions, but it is also a reassurance that citizens do care about public affairs: the crisis is in the institutions, not in participation itself.
Bernard Woolley: “Well, yes, Sir…I mean, it [open government] is the Minister’s policy after all.”
Sir Arnold: “My dear boy, it is a contradiction in terms: you can be open or you can have government.”
(from Yes Minister, 1980)
Evgeny Morozov, Georgetown University’s E. A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Decisions made at the technological level in Western economies/businesses will affect how cyberactivism takes place… all over the world. What Google, Twitter or Facebook decides impacts citizen action everywhere.
There is much effort on building social capital online, uploading content, gathering people in a group, and this effort relies on a potential arbitrary decision by the owner of the online platform, who serves who knows whose will. Groups in social networking sites disappear every day without previous notice and most times without an explicit and clear reason for it.
But regulating these corporations is often seen as a barrier to democratize more quickly less democratic countries. You don’t want to “spoil” a Web 2.0 application if it is seldom used to raise protests against non-democratic regimes, or used on human emergencies, etc.
But outside of Western countries, most applications are owned and run by local companies that have less freedom of choice than in other places of the World. If the Chinese or Russian or Iranian governments ask for user personal data to these companies, they have little chances not to deliver them. This makes datamining by governments very easy and very effective to locate and identify dissidents.
Besides direct extortion to companies, governments can directly monitor and put up several kinds of citizen surveillance, including entering an individual’s computer because the government infiltrated the computer with a trojan or any other kind of spy-software. Of all, the major problem is not even being aware of that manipulation. Same applies to web servers, of course.
On the legal side, governments or several lobbies have the power to manipulate content online, by crowding out conversations. If this is a trivial debate, then the influence of the strong part has no major impact. But if that is a pre-election debate, it can lead to indirect tampering and not-really-legitimate democratic participation.
And doing all that is not very difficult: custom police can (actually do) google people and see what comes up in the search results, scan their Facebook profiles, see who a specific person is related to and, according to that, decide to decline a visa request.
Besides governments, authors that we would not consider very “democratic” (e.g. fascist movements) are doing impressive things online in social networking sites, mashups, etc. So, Web 2.0 and cloud computing tools are double-edged swords and both serve noble and evil purposes and goals, like e.g. mapping where ethnics minorities are mashing up rich public data with map applications either to avoid or to attack them.
There is a dynamic that the Internet brings and that might makes us stop and think whether we like it or not: is a shift towards full openness a good thing? is a shift towards direct democracy a good thing too?
Discussion
Ana Sofía Cardenal: can you provide more information about the survey you talked about? Batlle: the survey was made in 112 cities (more than 10,000h less Barcelona). 81% answered the survey explaining use of ICT in participation initiatives.
Ana Sofía Cardenal: why nationalist movements are more present online than liberal ones? Morozov: the short answer is that hate travels more faster than hope online. But it might be more about phobia rather than nationalism. On the other hand, the Internet has no borders and allows for birds of the same flock to cluster around online spaces rather than having to stick to their artificial national myths.
Ismael Peña-López: data havens yes or no? protection or impunity? Morozov: One the one hand, governments should not support law circumvention tools (like TOR), basically because they are massively used by criminals, or by people whose purpose is not very clear and its justification varies depends on your approach. Regarding Wikileaks, the problem is that once a hot file is out, it is difficult to block, and the more you try to block it, the more it is disseminated (the Streisand effect). Something should be done, yes, but it is not clear what.
Ronald Leenes: It is also true that governments also use tools that activists use for security reasons, so they should at least allow for these tools to develop and even be funded. Morozov: right, but you cannot be pushing for the rule of law and with the other hand allowing the proliferation of tools that are clearly used to break the rule of law. Leenes: this apply to many technologies!
Jordi Vilanova: We’re talking about social networking sites as being run by corporations, but it is likely that in the future we find SNS being ruled by foundations or non-governmental organizations. So, there still is some room for Web 2.0 applications being “safely” used by individuals. A second comment is that we are looking at non-democratic regimes but, in the meanwhile, so-called liberal democracies are trimming citizen rights with the excuse of security and so. So we should be more concerned about these hypocrite countries. Morozov: it is true that foundations can run their own SNS, but the thing is that most times is not about the tool, but about audience and critical mass, and this audience is in private corporations’ platforms, and this will be difficult to change. And regarding transparency, transparency has to come with footnotes to avoid misleads.
Irekia is the open government project of the Basque Government to provide public data in a very accessible way, easy to reuse. Open Cloud Government is more a philosophy than a technology, it is another way to manage public affairs, to decide taking into account the citizens’ opinion. Irekia is not a services website, it is not an e-Administration website. Irekia is a website to listen to the citizen, to offer immediate information in search for debate and reflection.
Data are linked from the original source.
Transparency, participation, collaboration.
What does Irekia offer the citizen:
Tools for collaborative work.
Streaming of events.
Informations in real time.
Daily agenda
Audiovisual and multimedia material.
Tools to comment and share information.
This kind of initiatives are based on leadership and government commitment. Otherwise, they are neither possible nor sustainable. Besides political support and commitment, open government also requires a radical organizational change and, over all, a change in attitudes. It is in the daily tasks that open government succeeds or fails.
What does Irekia offer the members of the public administration:
On demand audiovisual material.
Internal agenda per department.
Possibility to diffuse events.
Active Internet monitoring (escucha activa, what is being said about you on the Net).
Consultancy 2.0.
Comment moderation.
Complete, tag and disseminate on the Web information published by the departments.
One of the goals of open government is not to have a lot of traffic, or a lot of sympathisers of the website, but to be a hub and distribute interests to their goals. e.g. what open government pretends is not creating online communities of patients, but that they are able to do it by themselves.
One of the problems, notwithstanding, of “all being open” is that anyone can create their own participation platform (government and citizens) and it is becoming increasingly difficult to know who’s “legitimate” to promote a certain activity; it is also becoming increasingly difficult to find out where to participate, or what for; there’s a big replication of projects that reinvent the wheel on and on, etc.
Open Administration Consortium: built upon the principles of collaboration, ICTs and change. Why collaboration?
Interoperability: not about technology, but about the citizen and the interaction between public administrations.
Reutilization: Avoid reinventing the wheel.
Security. Digital identity, electronic signature, long-lasting validation.
Cloud computing is not a new technology, but a new way to provide services. But, in the public service, this means some struggles:
82% of cities and towns are below 5,000 inhabitants which means they have no resources for an IT director. Same happens with organizational management.
Actually, in general city councils have increasing obligations and decreasing revenues/resources.
The management of (electronic) services is complex: more services, specific regulation, security, 24×7 availability, scalability, etc.
Reluctance to change.
The Open Administration Consortium works with district and province councils — as they are the more knowledgeable on the reality of city councils — and Localret, a consortium of municipalities to develop ICT strategies. The Open Administration Consortium provides, thus, different services to the different municipalities according to their needs, nature and resources. Among others, main services include public procurement, online invoicing, inter-administrative procedures, citizen documents, etc.
Reluctances are the usual about privacy, data security, liability of data management, fear of change, fear of cyberwar, etc.
I look forward a municipality that will have no physical space, no web servers, no… but a virtual desktop where all data, applications and services will be hosted. This will be especially useful for the secretary of several tiny towns (small towns usually share a single public officer) that will be able to manage three or four of them from just a virtual desktop and teleworking from home.
Freedom on the Net (FOTN) report analyses how are rights respected on the Internet, especially right of communications, privacy, etc. Questions asked:
Internet and new media dominating flow of news and information
What techniques do governments use to control and censor online content
What are the main threats
What are the positive trends
The methodology examines the level of internet and ICT freedom through a set of 19 questions and 90 subquestions, organized into three baskets:
* Obstacles to Access—including governmental efforts to block specific applications or technologies; infrastructural and economic barriers to access; and legal and ownership control over internet and mobile phone access providers.
* Limits on Content—including filtering and blocking of websites; other forms of censorship and self-censorship; manipulation of content; the diversity of online news media; and usage of digital media for social and political activism.
* Violations of User Rights—including legal protections and restrictions on online activity; surveillance and other privacy violations; and repercussions for online activity, such as prosecution, imprisonment, physical attacks, and other forms of harassment.
Negative trends
11 of the 15 countries censored content; 7 of the 15 countries blocked web 2.0 applications; there are also restrictions on infrastructures (speed restriction or broadband restriction, total access restriction, etc.)
In low-income countries, there are infrastructure and economic constrains, but, in general, economic issues are barriers that are overcome in low-income countries when a benefit can be made from ICTs.
Censorship is not always related to political or social content. We find significant lack of transparency in censorship procedures, including in some democracies. There is a wide range of techniques for blocking and/or removing content.
Censorship is being outsourced in some countries, the government hiring companies to run censorship or surveillance procedures themselves.
In many cases, it is ‘offline’ regulation, or general regulation the one that has an impact in online activity, like general media legislation against online activities, etc. This is leadind, in some cases, to “libel tourism”, where people have they web servers e.g. in the UK to put legal responsibility for posting or hosting content in a more democratic jurisdiction.
Of course, we find too extra-elgal repercussions, with detentions, intimidation, torture and extra-legal harassment and violence in general against “dissidents”. This also includes DDoS attacks, hacking, etc.
Positive trends
In general, there is more Internet freedom than press freedom, though the gap might be narrowing.
“Sneakernets” to avoid being monitored or scanned when being an activist on the Internet. Bloggers, though sometimes pushed-back because of threats, are increasingly creative in their usage of the Internet to have their voices heard.
Future trends:
more access to the Internet because of the mobile web and smartphones;
globalization and spread of Internet will not necessarily lead to greater freedom;
web 2.0 leading to Authoritarianism 2.0
foresight and creativity needed from more open countries to establish policies to protect free expression on new tecnologies.
Discussion
Albert Batlle: how is it that the UK scores worse in Freedom on the Net than Freedom of the Press. A: It might be because of “libel tourism”. Maybe because of that, maybe because of other issues, the reality is that it is easier in the UK to close a website than a newspaper, etc. All in all, it all highlights that though related, these are freedoms that can be taken independently.
Jordi Vilanova: what about the US and other western countries? A: Summing up, surveillance and even censorship are much more paramount that what would look like at first sight.
Mònica Vilasau: how do we tell censorship from e.g. fighting against copyright violation? A: It is always difficult to tell. It is nevertheless true that any kind of legal activity against online activity (legitimate or not) has chilling effects in the whole ecosystem.
Ismael Peña-López: the Wikileaks affair seems to have found a solution in a data haven in Iceland. Are data havens the solution to censorship? Will data havens allow people to act illegally under the flag of freedom? A: The problem with data havens, as with other barrier circumvention tools like TOR, is that they can be used both in good and evil ways. Nevertheless, it seems like, as now, there are more good uses than illegal ones, and way more need to enable transparency and to help democracy advocates rather than focus on prosecuting some illegal activities.
Notes from the Workshop on Youth Participation, organized by the Diputació de Barcelona, and held in Barcelona (Spain), on June 11th, 2010. See here the first part of these notes.
The second session was led by Ivan Serrano and myself, and presenting some preliminary results of a small research project we are both taking part in, along with other members of the GADE research group.
The goal of the session was to make a brief introduction to some web 2.0 tools and applications, and see how they had been put into practice in some localities. Our approach was neither to remain in the theoretical level nor to focus on the tool, but, on the contrary, to see what tools fit better in what participation purposes and goals.
Tools and applications
So, the first distinction I made was to tell tools (a way to do things, e.g. a blog) from applications (the different incarnations of tools, e.g. WordPress, Blogger, Typepad…). This distinction is relevant because we might find better applications for a specific use/tool than the most popular ones. Thus why focussing on the concept, not the service.
Directionality, quantitative: one-to-one, one-to-many, many to many.
Competences: basic, advanced, expert.
Platform: phone, Internet, both.
Though I believe the Platform will be deprecated because of the increasing pervasiveness of smartphones, that render it quite irrelevant.
Concerning applications, the main classification types are:
Kind of tool.
Cost: free, freemium, payment.
Hosting: installation, online service, both.
Mashable: open API or similar.
The latter a last-minute addition and that might well explain part of the success of the most popular tools, as mashability enables ubiquity of the tool, thus making possible to bridge all the tools one is using.
Slides 6 & 7 show a simplified matrix where the above mentioned categories are crossed:
Cases
Ivan went on with the applied cases, among others the following:
He ended up with some preliminary conclusions that came after the analysis of the preceding (and many other) participation initiatives. They seemed to be gathered in two groups and with different aims and characteristics:
Initiatives aimed at community building, characterized by being open, relational, fostering engagement, using free tools and aiming at a networked participation.
Policy oriented initiatives, characterized by being more formal (or formalized), focussing at decision-taking and representation, using own platforms and more “traditional” participation means.
Though all what we presented in this session is still in a draft stage, we believe that some interesting insights come from the e-participation experiences on the purposes-tools relationship. All in all, hi-engagement approaches demand more participatory and horizontal tools, and more top-down or traditional ones also demand traditional 1.0 tools. The error being, of course, first choosing the coolest 2.0 tool and then forcing the institution or the process to (against nature) adapt to the tool.
Notes from the Workshop on Youth Participation, organized by the Diputació de Barcelona, and held in Barcelona (Spain), on June 11th, 2010. See here the second part of these notes.
I had the luck to attend the fourth and last session of the Workshop on youth participation in youth policies — participated by local administration officers to explore new ways to engage the youth in public affairs —, this one focused on the role of ICTs in youth participation.
The session had three parts: a first one consisting in a brainstorm of challenges and opportunities, a second one on tools an case analysis, and a third one on proposals, unreported because it looked very much like the first part, but rephrased.
The first part, excellently facilitated by Manel Ruiz i Victor Garcia from INDIC, was based on Edward de Bono‘s Six Thinking Hats, where you perform a brainstorm of ideas under a specific approach (“wearing a hat”) and repeat it for all different approaches (we actually only did it for four “hats”). These approaches or colour hats are:
White: objective data, raw information. No feelings, no interpretation.
Yellow: optimism, positive thinking.
Black: what can go wrong. Caution, critical assessment.
Red: emotions, feelings, intuitions.
Green: possibilities, possible alternatives, creativeness.
These are the ideas, almost raw, unsorted, that came out of this session:
White: objective data.
How many people have access to ICTs.
How many public access points and usage level.
How many people have a computer at home.
How many hours connected.
Cost of access to ICT.
Have a mobile phone? What age do people begin to have a mobile phone?
Can connect to the Internet through mobile phone?
Main tools used and by age, gender, origin, income, education, etc.
Main uses: get information, to communicate amongst themselves…
Where people connect to the Internet and whether they do it alone or accompanied by others.
At what time: what hour, what day(s).
What is the legal framework in the use of these technologies, privacy, security, etc.
Possibilities (features) of a specific tool.
Digital competences: what is the level of digital competences of the user, and the level required by each tool.
Value given to each tool by the user.
Number and variety of tools, providers, costs of acquisition and/or customization, etc.
Entry barriers: ease to set up an account, time cost of access, etc.
ICT usage at schools.
Political framework: prone to foster ICTs and online participation or not.
Yellow: positive aspects.
Engage more people.
Higher outreach.
Positive regional spillovers, work in different geographic ranges.
Immediacy on response.
Break the institutional barrier.
Continuous participation.
Anytime participation and bottom-up initiated.
Get more information about the citizen though data mining from participation tools.
Plural participation: more people from more strata.
Tools that highly motivate the youth, approach youth channels and ways, “speak in their language”.
Information through participation.
Generate a multicultural platform, a virtual community of youngsters.
Alternative channels, complementary to other channels.
Stable channel of communication.
Returns of scale.
Easy to update information, cost-effective error correction
Generate a culture of participation, of engagement, which can lead to a culture of accountability and transparency.
Enables networking.
Black: what can go wrong.
Lack of knowledge of how tools work, or even that they exist.
Difficult to catch-up with changes.
Information overload, participation proposals overload.
Time consuming.
Crowding out effect.
Loss of non-verbal language.
Who owns personal data? Who is monitoring the conversations?
Security and privacy hazards. Lack of awareness on a wrong use of ICTs.
Banal participation.
Participation rich in debate but leads to no conclusion or decision.
Poor netiquette, impunity, cyberbulling.
Digital divide: only those who have access and can use the tools can participate. And as access and usage depends on socio-economic status, participation is biased.
Serendipitous participation: face-to-face participation makes it easier to know other initiatives or people by chance (e.g. when visiting the civic centre).
Adjust expectations of the tool to what can actually be achieved with it.
Mediated communication, not direct.
That people that “should not participate” actually participate (non-identified people, not relevant to your proposal, etc).
Notes from the research seminar e-Administration and Transparency: the diffusion of public information on the Internet, by Enrico Carloni, held at the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, on May 27th, 2010.
e-Administration and Transparency: the diffusion of public information on the Internet Enrico Carloni
Public administration as a glass house, where people can look through it and peek on the inside. In Italy, public transparency is a constitutional value, though it is not referred in this terms but using: impartiality, responsibility, democratic principles, politic responsibility or accountability. All these principles require transparency and that all citizens are knowledgeable of what the government is doing.
But, traditionally, in Italy, the de facto rule was secrecy. It is in 1990 that transparency is added in a reform of the Law that regulated the public administration. The right to transparency is strengthened in 2005 in the Italian Law for Digital Administration. In 2009, the ‘Brunetta’ Law regulates the publication of information on the Internet, including transparency as publicity online, instead of right of access to information, which was what was stated in 1990. Right of access vs. publicity online are quite different rights.
Right of access (law of 1990) required a “motivated” request, disclose direct interest, etc. In the end, this requisites implied an “access without transparency”, and the right of access was more of a monitoring device rather than a principle in itself.
In 2005, the law for Digital Administration (or Codice dell’amministrazione digitale) requires that transparency is guaranteed as a principle in itself, forcing a shift from right of access to publicity.
The new law uses an old device — open data and transparency of public information — that had been set up for efficiency purposes, and adds a new use for that old device: public information for transparency. This will, with time, be applied in the Operazione Trasparenza.
Advantages of the new model
Absence of mediation, any capable citizen can individually access all the information (Orsi Battaglini).
Increase and ease of availability, abandonment of the request-and-wait-for-a-response approach (Herz, 2009).
Possibility of new products, creation of new knowledge, really in line of transparency 2.0.
Risks of the new model
It is a system too weak in front of digital divides and knowledge divides in general.
Privacy hazards, from the glass house to the glass official.
Messy rooms: against maximum transparency, maximum opacity: the area of public information is fully open, but very limited.
Information overload
Biases of accountability, where transparency is used instrumentally: massive information on non-significant information, propaganda, etc.
Discussion
Blanca Torrubia: What are the limits of public information publicity? Who sets the rules of publicity? Who decides what is to become public information? A: The Law is very clear about that.
Ana Delgado: What happens if the information that is made available is wrong and this damages the citizen’s interests? A: This situation follows the usual legal paths of damages to third parties.
Ignasi Beltran: Is there a system to penalize misbehaviours? A: A way to penalize misbehaviours, by law, is firstly to penalize the responsible of that information. Another one is to assume the responsibilities that come from a lack of information (e.g. a citizen cannot be fined if they did not something that was not properly published). Citizens can also denounce misbehaviours and ask them to be corrected.
Ismael Peña-López: What does publicity exactly mean: open data or information? First hand raw data, or elaborated second hand information? A: Italy is in its transition from open information to open data. Traditionally, it was about opening documents, as the document was both content and container. The logic of the document and the logic of the data went together. And the inertia is still to high, so the logic of date is superseded by the logic of the document. As some new laws are designed with the logic of data, there are some pressures to push ahead the transition from document to data.
David Martínez: Has there been a constitutional evolution about the concept of transparency? Has it been more formally recognized as a right in itself? How do we monitor impartiality in public transparency? A: There has not been a change in the Constitution or the like, but there have been court rulings that have strengthened the new nature of the concept of transparency. But transparency still is not a principle in itself, but an enabler or an instrument to reach other principles (e.g. transparency for accountability).
Mònica Vilasau: How to monitor privacy? And how to cope with the trade-off between privacy and access? A: Access usually prevails on privacy. But the citizen can perform any “treatment” on their data. Some data, nevertheless, are private and cannot be published unless they are anonymised. On the other hand, if some public data are used to harm privacy of third parties, this can be treated as a law infringement, as it is like a non-consented use of private data.
Agustí Cerrillo: Does the CAD allows for an increased efficiency in public administration? What relevant information does get to the citizen? Wouldn’t it be better to keep the right of access, which allows for asking for further information, instead of right of publicity, which just provides public information on specific issues? A: Efficiency of the act, efficiency of the Administration, efficiency of a more transparent administration. The more the knowledge about the procedures of the public sector, the more likely to achieve higher levels of efficiency.
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