ICTlogy

I have recently been involved in both a project on citizen participation and participation at the University. Not surprisingly — to me at least — both projects share much more than what they differ on. Indeed, they both share a very similar infrastructure:

• They are both initiatives of the public sector (in Spain, private Universities are really a minority).
• They both provide core services that have a central source and whose reliability is based on the legitimacy of that source.
• They both address a large community that is interested not only in getting those services, but in participating in their design, including the transparency and accountability of the whole process.

The central source and need to certify the information generally goes in the opposite direction of participatory design and engagement. The former asks, naturally for centralization, the latter for decentralization.

The fall of transaction and replication costs (the two big constrains of the industrial revolution) make it possible to separate management from participation. It’s like if you could have a football game being played in every player’s living room while still being able to have a game and keep an up-to-date scoreboard and stats.

But, as said, centralization attracts both management and activity to your own platform (the learning management system, the government’s portal), while participation centrifuges activity out to social networking sites.

Simplifying things to the max, my landscape now looks more or less like this (please understand Management in a non-restrictive way):

Education

Government

In my opinion, there is enough evidence that centralization of participation will not work any more. Education is asking for an increasing de-institutionalization and government portals won’t get any participation just because they were built. This leaves out cases I and III as possible approaches to create strategies that try to match management with participation.

The problem with case IV is obvious to me and is about the risks of Cloud Computing which, again simplifying, are twofold:

1. The risks of security and ownership, which are still to be fully addressed and fixed by cloud service providers, and which a public service just cannot afford to leave unattended;
2. and the blurring of the institutional identity, which undermines the main asset of a public institution: legitimacy.

I thus advocate for a mixed solution of keeping your main assets centralized while externalizing all the participatory side (see case II):

• The core value stays “home”: data of the students, syllabuses, data from the government, government plans…;
• Centralized, the core information is legit, certified;
• A centralized management is compatible with a decentralized access: open API and open data provide gateways so that access can be remote but management of data still be centralized, secure, private;
• Your staff has to develop skills to outreach your target while focussing on management, which is your core;
• Your staff has to develop skills to monitor and even capitalize what’s happening outside of your platform, but without needing to interfere in off-core activity;
• Participation is not mediated by management needs or management staff, can freely emerge, and can do it where it pleases.
• And, most important, participation has the fuel to fully engage with all the information possible;
• If communication and information channels are open and work in two-ways, the (virtuous?) circle closes and the cycle starts again.

In my Predictions for Social Media in 2010 I revisited the importance of the ePortfolio and the institutional website. As I there said, I plead for the construction of the (e-)portfolio, for a return to the personal or institutional website, using social media as a game of mirrors that reflects us where we should also be present.

Andrea DiMaio writes — Why Do Governments Separate Open Data and Social Media Strategies? — about the need to merge open data strategies and social media strategies. He there complains about open data and social media strategies being treated as independent ones, which he believes to be actually related one to the other one.

I not only believe they should go altogether and hand in hand, but that their interaction defines different ways of understanding government or education. It always helps me to draw things and see what see what comes out of it:

Case I is definitely what we do have nowadays in most modern democracies: a democracy based on 4- (or 5-) years time span between elections, increasingly ruled by plutocracies bound to the economic powers.

Case II is common in plutocracies willing to be seen as cool. They “engage in the conversation” but, without the required information to feed a true democracy, it finally becomes a dialogue of the deaf. The governments perform populist acts and the masses believe they will be heard by shouting out the louder.

Case III is a genuine approach to openness, transparency and accountability. Nevertheless, without the proper communication channels, data can only be used (then exploited) by the “best” (in an elitist sense of the word), hence the ones that can interpret them and make their feedback get to the governments (the Goverati in its worst meaning).

Last, Case IV, is what we should we be aiming to. I definitely avoided labelling it Government 2.0 because it is surely not the “2.0” what matters, but its components: participation, engagement, collaboration, cooperation… all in all, democracy in its purest sense.

In fact, it is just another way to thoroughly look at e-Government, which means Government enhanced by means of Information and Communication Technologies. Or, if you prefer it, enhanced by means of Information (data, open data) and Communication (Social Media) Technologies.

Yesterday I spoke at the Jornadas sobre redes y cultura compartida: De la cultura distribuida a la transformación del conocimiento (Conference on networks and shared culture: from distributed culture to the transformation of knowledge).

I had been asked to answer this question: could we, thanks to the Internet, forget about political parties and let people express their own opinions, debate and vote their representatives directly?

An initial answer to the question would be: well, yes, why not? But, should we?

Instead of providing such an answer — or any answer at all — I tried instead to:

1. explain that some dire (socioeconomic) changes were taking place,
2. focus on why these socioeconomic changes were taking place and
3. infer, from this, what conditions shall take place in the future for
4. another wave of changes to happen.

In other words:

1. we have shifted from an Industrial Society to an Information Society (and what each concept means),
2. that this has been because of digitization and Information and Communication Technologies (and other aspects, all of which led to second order factors, etc.) and
3. that we should really be aware of digital competences, the digital divide and the unbalances of power
4. for full e-Democracy to happen.

As can be seen in the presentation, I showed and explained almost 20 cases which I consider either successful or revolutionary or both, cases that have been replicated and will inspire many others.

But I also devoted plenty of time at showing, with real data, that these initiatives are mostly piloted by a tiny minority, my caveat being that we should try and bring more people in — by fighting the aforementioned barriers — instead of keeping on exploring new territories. The reason being that we could find ourselves having replaced a democracy by a digital aristocracy.

I admit that (One of) the bad point(s) in my approach is that it is very economy-focussed, instead of being politics/government based and thus leaving aside many aspects tied to the nature of the subject. On the other hand, I think that the good point is that it makes it easy to go back to the reasons, the whys, and not just the hows. Indeed, the approach is equally useful (as I did yesterday) to explain some changes in education or media.

During the questions & answers session, I really got clever feedback from the audience, while also giving me a second chance to clarify some aspects. Here they go:

• The main aspect to address to achieve good e-Democracy is not the “e-” part, but the “Democracy” part. Difference, for instance, in the USA and European e-politics are more related with the political system rather than the different rates of Internet adoption or digital literacy (which are not that significantly different, by the way)
• Information overload is a problem, which has to be addressed (among other things) with information literacy. Urgently.
• New media literacies will be required too as we learnt to tell true from false when watching TV or FX-intensive movies.
• Editors should be, in my opinion, a keystone in the new Information Society. The problem is that journalists/editors are more concerned about selling audiences to their advertisers or paper to their readers, rather than creating/editing good information and finding out how to get paid for it.

More information

• Blocs&ClubsII: Conferencia de Ismael Peña, by Lize De Clercq
• See presentation online in English
• Download presentation in English ( 14.3 MB)
• See presentation online in Spanish
• Download presentation in Spanish ( 14.4 MB)
• Download video in Catalan ( 149.64 MB)

Andrea DiMaio has recently published two posts — Apple’s iPad Could Do For Governments More than the One-Laptop-Per-Child, Could the iPad Redefine Public Service Delivery? — about the hypothetical impact that the new device by Apple, the iPad, will have on e-Government and citizen participation in general. My point is not to show disagreement — I agree more than disagree with DiMaio’s statements — but to (a) put a grain of salt and, especially, (b) to move the focus from the device towards the concepts.

And I’ll begin with a strong agreement: the iPad is very likely to do more than the One-Laptop-Per-Child, just because the OLPC is doing very little for education, as I think is clearly explained in the Framing the Digital Divide in Higher Education monograph. But it is also possible that the iPad will do as little as the OLPC, just because it’s not about devices.

Pieter Verdegem co-authored two interesting articles — User-centered E-Government in practice: A comprehensive model for measuring user satisfaction, Profiling the non-user: Rethinking policy initiatives stimulating ICT acceptance — that, along with the aforementioned monograph, can help to centre the debate.

Just for the sake of clarity let us look at some points raised by the monograph authors, Verdegem and DiMaio about access to e-Government (including the “e-” part), keeping in mind that I fully share DiMaio’s vision on what e-Government should be and the conviction that, somehow, we’ll get to that point.

Affordability

This still is a key issue for many people not to go online, hence not to use e-Government services. It is decreasing in importance and becoming almost marginal in higher income countries. But. While a desktop/laptop + broadband connectivity might be affordable, the addition of a second device + the addition of a second broadband service (3G or whatever) is definitely not affordable for many many people.

Yes, I am assuming having both devices and duplication of Internet access services. But I think this will be the scenario in the short and middle run, for the simple reason that the iPad is not a typing-aimed device or a hard-computing-power device, besides the fact that I do not believe in quantum leaps in computer adoption (i.e. in the short run, iPad users will be computer users, not late-adopters).

Skills

Claire from liberTIC recently commented about lack of skills playing havoc on e-Democracy and Democracy at large.

I think the iPad — as its i-predecessors — will make computer usage simple, much simpler than before. But e-Government is not only about computer usage, but much more. As I introduced in Towards a comprehensive definition of digital skills and Goverati: New competencies for politics, government and participation, there is much field in the area of digital competences that the iPad just won’t and cannot address. And, as time goes by, technological literacy is less of an issue, which is were the iPad could make a major contribution.

Availability

Which leads to where the Gordian knot is: existence and access to content and services. I fully agree that the iPad can contribute to ease access to online public services through its applications, and I am already looking forward this to happen. But the prerequisite is either open data or open application programming interfaces (APIs). There already exist devices and applications to access online public services. And their successes and failures have mostly depended (a) on the richness of the data they could access and (b) the degree in which they could make an impact or contribute to a change. We take for granted that iPad applications will play magic, but the magic is in the data, not the device (though magic wands always help, let’s admit it).

Awareness and peopleware

But things can exist, be accessible, be affordable and people know how to use them, and still don’t make any use of them. This is, indeed, the tragedy of e-Government (and Internet adoption at large) today in higher income countries: I either don’t know what’s out there or frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. The iPad can raise awareness, and the more friendly user interface will help, but I haven’t seen much success in iPhone educational or e-Government applications being used massively.

I honestly doubt that the problem of e-Government (lack of) pervasiveness is a matter of the device, but of peopleware. If Obama succeeded it was not because of the Internet, but because of “hope”. And the Internet was there to deliver it, of course, and to channel people’s hope back. If Ushahidi succeeded in Kenya it was not because of SMSs and mashups, but because of the basic substrate upon which these were erected. I find AppsForDemocracy not only an amazing initiative, but amazing things in themselves and I look forward the day they will be used massively. But, so far, I have the sense it’s just for us the usual e-Government suspects.

Notes from the research seminar Citrizen security in electronic environments. The case of electornic voting, by Jordi Puiggalí, held at the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain, on January 28th, 2010.

Citrizen security in electronic environments. The case of electornic voting
Jordi Puiggalí, Scytl

Electronic voting is the natural evolution of the electronic count in elections. Two main kinds:

• Face to face: people still go to polling stations, but vote in polling machines
• Remote voting: you vote from home

Advantages

• Count of votes is faster and exact
• Cost saving in paper and printing (though there are added costs, especially in face to face electronic voting)
• Increase of accessibility for disabled people. Also avoids identifying who was the voter (e.g. there’s only one blind voter in town: the ballot-paper in Braille is theirs)
• Flexibility to include last-minute changes
• Support for multiple languages. This, at its turn, avoids errors and avoids identifying who was the voter (e.g. there’s only one voter in town that speaks arabic: the ballot-paper in arabic is theirs)
• Prevents involuntary errors that can end up in spoiled ballot-papers
• Economies of scale (specific of remote voting)
• Eases citizen participation (specific of remote voting)
• Increases the mobility of the voter, as they can vote from anywhere (specific of remote voting)
• Eases access to the voting process thus increasing participation (specific of remote voting)

Security threats

In traditional polling, the voter has a direct relationship with their vote and the polling station, committee, etc. Electronic voting adds an infrastructure layer that implies that the relationship between voter and vote becomes indirect/mediated. This mediation poses 4 security risks

• The digital nature of the votes means that they can be easily added, erased, manipulated, and the privacy of the voter compromised at large scale;
• The complexity of the systems at use, with the possibility of hardware functioning errors, bugs in the software, etc.;
• Lack of transparency, as the technological infrastructures are more difficult to audit (e.g. how can you tell whether someone cracked the system?);
• The introduction of new actors with privileges in the voting process, like system and platform administrators that can have privileged access to the voting process.

Side note: these threats can be extrapolated to the case of health records and many other cases.

How to address risks?

Physical measures

• Avoid physical access to the protected device
• This cannot be done in remote voting, at least not in the whole process

Organizational measures

• Who has access to what
• They necessarily have to be accompanied by monitoring measures (intensive log recording)
• Intensive monitoring can lead to knowing who’s voting what

Logic measures

• Automatic security measures
• Easier to audit
• Logic measures can, at their turn, be attacked themselves
• Logic measures must not interfere (or even alter) the normal voting process

Security services

• Information privacy: guarantee that no one knows what you did (e.g. your vote)
• Information integrity: guarantee that information is not altered
• Non-repudiation: avoid that you cannot deny having done something that you actually did
• Authentication: ensure that the person that claims to have done something is that person
• Authorization: you can do what you are allowed to do
• Auditability: be able to track the system and assess its performance
• Availability: always available.

One of the big differences between circumventing security in off-line voting and online voting is that scalability of the attack is much higher in online environments. E.g. identity theft in the offline world can be easy to do once, but not several times in the same polling station, but if done once in the online world, it is very likely that it can be done again, and very quickly, ad infinitum.

Electronic voting can identify which votes are valid and which ones not. You need not invalidate the whole polling station, but only the invalid votes.

eDem2010, the 4th International Conference on eDemocracy 2010 is taking place on May 6th and 7th, 2010, in Krems, Austria.

I want to warmly thank Noella Edelmann for inviting me to give a keynote speech in this event. For many reasons.

The first one is that the other keynote speakers are people that I am really willing to listen to, and that very rarely get together in this side of the pond (kudos for the organization!):

• Stevan Harnad, American Scientist Open Access Forum; Universite du Quebec a Montreal, CAN; University of Southampton, UK
• Jochen Scholl, The Information School, University of Washington, USA
• Micah L. Sifry, Personal Democracy Forum, TechPresident, New York, USA
• Andy Williamson, Hansard Society, London, UK

A second reason is that I am an enthusiast about the possibilities of the digital revolution to also revolutionize the concept of citizenship and politics. But I’ve become increasingly upset about the barriers to overcome. Amongst others:

• ¿what has changed — and what has not — because of the digital revolution?
• The digital divide because of physical access
• The digital divide because of skills access and the new digital competences
• The raise of the Goverati: ¿digital democrats or digital aristocrats?
• The concentration of media, of digital media, the echo chambers and the daily me, etc.
• Cons, but also pros of representative democracy
• Pros, but also costs of deliberative democracy and direct democracy

I already dealt with some of these issues in my seminar Goverati: New competencies for politics, government and participation, but I have been increasingly concerned about that after having been working on a chapter proposal about the case of Spain for a Politics 2.0 book within the Information Technology and Law Series series, edited by Wim Voermans, Simone van der Hof & Marga M. Groothuis (the chapter is provisionally entitled Striving behind the shadow: the dawn of Spanish Politics 2.0 and you can see here the bibliography). So, having the chance to share my thoughts about this to a knowledgeable audience is quite a gift.

Call for Papers

By the way, the call for papers for eDem2010, the 4th International Conference on eDemocracy 2010 is open, the deadline being March, 1st. I copy-and-paste from the official website the subjects of the conference:

The EDem10 focuses on these changes which can be seen occurring in different areas and which are manifest in different way:

• Transparency & Communication (freedom of information, free information access, openness, information sharing, blogging, micro-blogging, social networks, data visualization, eLearning, empowering, …);
• Participation & Collaboration (innovation malls, innovation communities, bottom up, top down, social networks, engagement and accountability, collaborative culture, collaboration between C2C, G2C, …);
• Architecture, Concepts & Effects (access and openness, user generated content, peer production, network effects, power laws, long tail, harnessing the power of the crowd, crowd sourcing, social web, semantic web, …);
• Different Fields: open government initiatives, eDemocracy, eParticipation, eVoting, eDeliberation;
• Approaches and Disciplines: law & legal studies, social sciences, computer sciences, political sciences, psychology, sociology, applied computer gaming and simulation, democratic theory, media and communication sciences;
• Multidisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Approaches;
• Research Methods.