ICTlogy

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session III.

Case Study: Gijón. The Connected City
Chairs: Chiqui de la Fuente

José M. Pérez

The political role is fundamental in the process of change.

Active listening is crucial, and it’s very important to avoid the “Big Brother” paranoia in order to let information flow free. Only with absolute openness can the Administration make its information interact with the citizen’s. Interconnection requires openness and access to private information — not the same thing as surveillance. This can be made possible by making public the “what” but anonymizing the “by whom”.

Interesting experience: digital literacy courses which enrollment had to be done through the Internet. Contradictory? No: there were computers and connectivity in households, but only used by kids. Thus, by making on-line enrollment compulsory parents (and grandparents) had to ask their sons (or grandsons) for help. A complicity was sowed.

Benefits and empowerment are the keys to engage the citizenry in the e-Administration.

The city council has created and ID Citizen Card — an e-ID Card — that can be operated in “ATM” run by the city council that, instead of producing money, they run administrative tasks/services. 24h a day, 365 days a year. Without queues. Absolute trust (e.g. no credit card numbers and passwords submitted on a “suspicious” website).

Think of the e-Administration as the “permanent beta” concept: constant innovation, thinking ahead, vision of future, etc.

The Administration cannot wait the demand to grow and reach a critical threshold before setting up the service that will fulfill this demand: it is the Administration’s commitment to generate demand through the creation of several services ahead of the citizenry’s will/needs.

The Web 1.0 is not exhausted: there’s still path to run in the field of Web 1.0 services that can be useful to citizens and/or that citizens are demanding.

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session II.

Round Table: Innovation and Change. Is it possible to make the citizen’s life easier?
Chairs: Jose Antonio Donaire

Xavier Llinares Sala

Users and managers don’t usually think equally concerning the design, use and satisfaction of a specific service.

To make ends meet, some changes have to take place:

• There are too many public servants… in exchange of better, up-to-date, adding-value ones.
• Public servants that add value have to be rewarded.
• Barriers have to be removed.
• More management, less bureaucracy.
• Politics have to be de-professionalized and put, instead, professionals. Politics not as a career, but as a place for real experts to bring in ideas.
• The shift from the private sector to the public sector is good because it adds value. The contrary is not.

The long tail in politics is narrowing: open lists in elections.

Added value, governance (not administration), citizen-oriented, more choice, more transparency, more and cheaper services, proactivity, transformation, connectivity…

Carlos Guadián Orta

Innovation has to be based on citizens’ needs. On one hand, the Administration has to help the citizen. On the other hand, it has to aim towards active listening.

If you build it, they will not come: it’s the Administration the one that has to approach the citizen, listen and know what are they talking about.

Roc Fages

Nowadays there’s a “wall” that does not allow the entrance of some social software (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in their mainstream and daily life.

We can imagine some “uchronies” where some social software adoption takes place in the Administration, such as the “Funciotwit“, twitter for public servants, or “GencatGoogCal“, shared Google Calendars among the Government and the citizens, or “AdmiDopplr”, where public servants and/or citizens can (professionally) share their trips and geolocalize their actions, or the “Admibook”, the Facebook of the Administration where all public services are gathered.

For these initiatives to really work:

• Act according to the citizenry needs.
• Individual effort in the network is beneficial if it reports collective benefits.
• The Administration has to think from the costumer’s point of view, not as a service provider: citizens are customers and this is how they think and behave.
• Combine off-line and on-line.
• Perform actions to dynamize the network.
• Let’s forget about the unified Administration and let’s work together with the private sector.
• Open environments have to be somehow secured (privacy, security, moderation, etc.) by the Public Sector.

Comments

Is it technology, or it’s “just” knowledge management? (Ildefonso Mayorgas). Roc Fages: there sometimes already is knowledge management, but we don’t get the most of it because of lack of technology and innovation.

Is it technology or is it human resources? Carlos Guadián answers: it’s both, it’s a virtuous/vicious circle.

The only problem is the Administration? Carlos Guadián: A proximity policy can only work with an engagement will.

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session I (part II).

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

iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.
Here come my notes for session I (part I).

Opening Session (part I)
Chairs Carmen Sánchez-Carazo

Digital Citizens vs. Analogue Institutions
Ismael Peña-López

These are the materials I’m using at the iCities: Primeras Jornadas sobre Blogs, e-Government y Participación Digital [First Conference on Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation], for the opening speech, in which I take part on Friday 9th May 2008.

Slides:

Video

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Ricard Ruiz de Querol deserves my sincerest gratitude for his always challenging insights about the Information Society. Jaume Moregó also pushed me to a project that payed back with good reflections. A good buch of this conference was inspired by them both, thank you. And also thanks to Julio Meneses for his lightning fast and valuable help with some graphic materials.

There is a constant buzz on the importance of blogs as both proxies for the freedom of speech in one country and also as the paradigmatic tool for citizen participation, activism, advocacy and so on. But, what’s the reality behind this (strong) statement? Is it just the mad dream of an enlightened digerati, or is there some truth in blogs politically empowering the citizenry?

These are some of the questions behind iCities: Primeras Jornadas sobre Blogs, e-Government y Participación Digital [First Conference on Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation]. Preparing the opening speech, which I impart on Friday 9th May 2008, I found some interesting things.

Even if data have to be taken with maximum care and minimum work was performed on the statistical apparatus, it does seem that there is a relationship between the amount of existing liberties in one country and its degree of development of the Information Society. Data come from the Freedom Aggregate Scores published at the Freedom in the World 2007, and the Networked Readiness Index published at the Global Information Technology Report 2007-2008: Fostering Innovation through Networked Readiness.

First chart compares the Networked Readiness Index (Y) with the Civil Liberties score (X). We can see that, beyond a threshold (here arbitrary set at the 50% of the total score), there is a relationship where the more rights, the more developed an Information Society is. Or the contrary: as no causality has been analyzed, we can also state that the more digitally advanced a society is, the freer. Anyhow, these are two variables that do go hand in hand.

Civil Liberties and development of the Information Society
[click to enlarge]

But the next chart is even more interesting. This second chart compares the Networked Readiness Index (Y) with the Political Rights score (X) — again split in two at the 50% of the total score (democratic vs. not democratic). First thing we can see is that the relationship tightens: political freedom seems to be really important for e-readiness, for the development of the Information Society. Surprising? Not really: once the main infrastructures are set, e-Readiness strongly depends, for it to increase, on market liberalization, e-Government, content, communication channels, users… If you want these variables to increase, it looks plausible that freedom and participation is a must.

Political Rights and development of the Information Society
[click to enlarge]

But we have added, as the buble size, the Gross Domestic Product (the bigger the bubble, the bigger the country’s GDP). This gives us, at least, two more hints:

• First one: beyond a threshold, you’re e-readiness won’t grow despite the power of your economy. The two big pink bubbles on the left are China (far left) and Russia. Their GDP is quite big (let’s not forget that there are only +120 countries plotted in this chart: most of the remaining +100 countries/territories just “don’t count” as per e-readiness matters because they are too poor to). But both Russia and China seem to have topped a crystal ceiling on e-Readiness development. Could it be because of the evident lack of liberties in these countries?
• Second one: in the Information Society, the international environment matters. Malaysia and Singapore are the two pink dots on the upper part of the chart, almost in the horizontal middle. The first thing to say is that, even if they are but democratic, they are nor the typical corrupted and/or tyrannic system. On the other hand, they are surrounded by ICT early adopters, which is something Helen V. Milner has already pointed as being very important to set an Information Society agenda in her work The Global Spread of the Internet: The Role of International Diffusion Pressures in Technology Adoption. Nevertheless, these are two interesting exceptions that surely need deeper analysis.

Summing up

• Are blogs a good measure of (a) the freedom in a country and (b) the degree of development of a country’s Information Society?. Maybe. What seems clear — though more and better analysis should be performed — is that these are social variables that go together.
• Are non-democratic regimes to survive the Information Society? Who knows. But, again, it seems clear that there is a trade off between authoritarianism and digital development. The rulers — and their citizenry — will perhaps have to choose between democracy and digital development or keeping the power. But power cannot be kept at all costs and against all odds. How much will the e-excluded tolerate losing the digital train towards development?

Today I imparted a seminar belonging to the Executive Master in e-Governance organized by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and partnered by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

General information

• Details of the presentation (including slides to download)
• Slides on Slideshare
• Recommended Bibliography

I just want to thank the attendants to the course for being such an interesting audience and for making me think because of their witty questions.

Syllabus

Information and Communication Technologies for Development: ICT4D

• Food or computers?
• Efficacy, efficiency
• Leapfrogging Development
• Second Bests
• Endogenous development

The concept of access and the measurement of the Knowledge Society

• The Telecommunications Model: limitations
• The Broadcasting Model: limitations
• Access vs. Ownership: different solutions
• Access vs. use

Digital Divide: a holistic approach

• A five tier model
• Old and new divides

• Hardware
• Software
• The broadband divide
• Informational Literacy
• Content and Intellectual Property
• e-Awareness and the leadership divide

e-Readiness and Web 2.0 for e-Governance in Developing Countries

• e-Participation and e-Democracy
• Censorship circumvention and freedom of speech
• Transparency and accountability
• Law enforcement
• Open Access and access to knowledge

Slides

Recommended Bibliography