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.
What will be the content of the EDem Conference 2020?
Find below the video and, after, short answers to the previous questions:
5 Words to eDemocracy?
eDemocracy is not about making democracy “electronic” (i.e. to use digital devices to perform our usual democratic participation), but how Information and Communication Technologies have transformed democratic institutions — mainly parties and governments — and what will be the role of such institutions and the role of the citizens because of the introduction of these ICTs, digital content, and the Information Society as a whole.
The future of eDemocracy in a nutshell?
The future of eDemocracy is about how to mainstream Democracy in people’s lives. It is usually said that (a) people are not interested in politics and/or that (b) people have other problems more important than democratic participation.
I think that we should be able to “embed” democratic participation in people’s daily lives so that participating (being informed, deliberation, voting, etc.) could be part of your daily “routines”, mainstreamed in your daily activity.
A simplistic though illustrative example of this mainstreaming — helped by ICTs and out of the democratic arena — is what Amazon does with your online behaviour and recommendations: you do not need to take any especial activity besides buying to build your profile upon which Amazon recommends books for you. Is that possible in political preferences?
Your favourite eDemocracy project?
One eDemocracy project that I know of and that I really like is Parlament 2.0, the Parliament 2.0 initiative by the Catalan Parliament led by its president Ernest Benach himself, a project that opens up the whole activity of the Parliament and really enables and fosters citizen participation.
President Ernest Benach wrote a book about this project and other “politics 2.0” reflections: #Política 2.0.
Prospects and risks of eDemocracy?
The main risks are, of course, the digital divide in all its senses (physical access, digital competences, etc.).
Besides the digital divide, we have to rethink political institutions… without necessarily destroying or ignoring or circumventing them.
What will be the content of the EDem Conference 2020?
Did we succeed in transforming political institutions and how?
Did we manage in how to mainstream democratic participation in everyone’s daily life?
During the 250 years of our industrial society, capital owners (capitalists) have been the ones that have ruled the world, the ones that are in power.
Our democratic system is shaped according to this industrial society and its power relationships.
In the upcoming knowledge society, the ones that will be able to manage cleverly knowledge by means of digital tools (digerati) are likely to have a higher share or power in all the aspects of life, especially the government (goverati).
We need to work to make access to knowledge as widespread as possible — access to infrastructures, digital competences, effective usage — so to avoid replacing the existing plutocracy with a new e-aristocracy.
Župa – Grassroots Democracy Revolution on the Web Alois Paulin
We have to find out a way to get rid of inefficiencies, lobby-influenced politicians or sheer corruption in governments.
The Župa — slavic for community — model aims at reducing the size of the government through an intensive usage of Information and Communication Technologies.
You can set up a profile (with your blog, ideas, etc.) and be elected as anyone’s candidate.
[this projecte reminds me of something Ethan Zuckerman explained to me two years ago]
E-Parliaments and novel Parliament-to-Citizen Services: An initial Overview and Proposal Aspasia Papaloi and Dimitris Gouscos
Age group parliaments, social parliaments, thematic parliaments, alternative or counter parliaments, etc. have been initiatives to open up parlaments.
e-Parliaments are a new way, supported by ICTs, to open up the parliaments to their citizens.
Examples of activities taken up in e-Parliaments include participatory budgeting.
For these to work there is needed: political will, strategy planning, etc.
European Status of E-Participation and what is needed to optimise future Benefits? Jeremy Millard and Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen
eParticipation initiatives are quite common all along the European Union, and they are especially relevant at the local level. And while eParticipation initiatives are important too at the national level, we still find crossborder initiatives, aiming at people that communte between countries, are immigrants within Europe, etc.
At the local level, e-Participation initiatives have much more users (in % of the targeted population) and participation decreases as we move up in the scale of the government (regional, national, international, etc.), though the latter are better funded than the former.
Among the tools, e-Voting or e-Petitioning are in the lower end of usage, being websites in the upper part. It is surprising that voting has such a poor importance in these initiatives.
How to optimise e-Participation?
Formalise and mainstream e-Participation as part of a coordinated ‘open engagement policy’.
Help establish or support independent, neutral trusted third party service for e-Participation.
Governments/institutions should listen to and provide frameworks for building citizen participation from the bottom (but not control it).
Unleash the empowering potential of easy to use Public Sector Information for re-use in machine-readable format.
The Policy-cycle is a simplified, ideal-type model of policy processes. It is useful to structure and systematise the complex, though in real-world policy-making does not follow clear-cut stages and chronological sequences:
Problem definition;
agenda setting;
policy development;
implementation;
policy evaluation.
Most e-Participation initiatives focus on the first two stages, while other stages are largely ignored. Notwithstanding, we do not have to underestimate these first stages or the power of “non-decisions”: indeed, many projects went on or were prevented to evolve in these precise two stages. Indeed, agenda setting is but another way to decide what is to be dealt with and, hence, what is to be decided in the latter stages.
[interesting debate difficult to catch on these notes]
Even if petition initiatives are interesting, there still is a very tiny minority that participate in any kind of petitioning, be it online or offline. Indeed, people do have the right to write letters to their governments or their representatives and actually nobody does.
[the speaker assumed that everyone at the audience had read his paper, included in the book of proceedings that was delivered yesterday, and based his speech upon that assumption — I wonder how many people could easily follow his reflections and without the help of visual support…]
Communication without borders Evgeniya Boklage
The political blogosphere is about political blogs dealing with political issues, from a professional or non-professional point of view.
Public sphere: open communication system, based on exchange of opinions, free type of participation, and that includes three functions: transparency (input), validation (throughput) and orientation (output).
Transparency requires openness. But transparency is not about journalism transparency, as transparent journalism can be embedded in a non-transparent (political) system.
Is the blogosphere a significant asset to the public sphere or is it information overload? Is the blogosphere citizen empowerment or is it merely a symbolic tool?
How can blogosphere enhance transparency?
Media-watchdogs
Shed light to obscure topics
Observation of mass media, the political system and the society
Navigation, creation of an embedding context, providing additional materials, raise awareness on immediate and noticeable impact
Access to the public discourse
A tribune for NGOs, advocacy groups and politically driven citizens
Throwing the Sheep’s Long Tail: Open Access Noella Edelmann and Peter Parycek
New Journal of eDemocracy (JeDEM), which will be an open access journal.
We can find a close relationship between open access publishing and e-democracy and transparency.
We can now publish all the information we can without anyone’s permission.
We have to force a policy change where openness is the default, and closeness the option you might choose.
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