ICT4D Blog
type: channel
description: Information Society, Digital Divide, ICT4D
date: 2025-07-01T05:39:28Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
generator agent: https://wordpress.org/
items: REPORT. Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement in Public Procurement for Artificial Intelligence. A Mission-Oriented Playbook
items: BOOK CHAPTER. Solving Wicked Problems Through Open Government Approaches
items: Working bibliography on public procurement of Artificial Intelligence (updated)
items: COMMUNICATION. New Public Governance in practice: a toolbox model for public policy in times of networks, uncertainty and complexity
items: New Public Governance in practice: a programme for the Administration in times of networks, uncertainty and complexity
items: Managing complexity for systemic impact: responses to VUCA and BANI environments
items: REPORT. Catalan Participation Lab Network. Public facilities and social innovation
items: GUIDE. Guide to gender mainstreaming in participatory processes
items: BOOK CHAPTER. The ecosystem of public governance: institutions as open infrastructures for collective decision-making
items: Citizen Participation in policy-making: internalizing externalities and preventing conflict through planning and evaluating
items: Governance of the Ecosystem of educational communities
items: Current challenges of informal participation: what can an Artificial Intelligence do for citizen participation
items: Three challenges of citizen labs
items: The role of public facilities and civic centres in a citizen participation ecosystem
items: BOOK CHAPTER. The differential impact of crisis in the Information Society

REPORT. Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement in Public Procurement for Artificial Intelligence. A Mission-Oriented Playbook
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2025-07-01T05:39:28Z
subject: Cyberlaw, governance, rights
subject: e-Government, e-Administration, Politics
subject: News
subject: artificial_intelligence
subject: mission-oriented_policy
subject: public_procurement
subject: stakeholder_engagement
description: For the last months I have been working analysing the public procurement of artificial intelligence solutions in Public Administration. The results have now been published as a playbook: Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement in Public Procurement for Artificial Intelligence. A Mission-Oriented Playbook.
encoded: <img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" src="http://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004845_playbook_meaningful_stakeholder_engagement_in_public_procurement_for_artificial_intelligence.png" alt="Cover of "Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement in Public Procurement for Artificial Intelligence"" width="695" height="986" class="size-full wp-image-4846" srcset="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004845_playbook_meaningful_stakeholder_engagement_in_public_procurement_for_artificial_intelligence.png 695w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004845_playbook_meaningful_stakeholder_engagement_in_public_procurement_for_artificial_intelligence-211x300.png 211w" sizes="(max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px" /> Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement in Public Procurement for Artificial Intelligence [click to download] For the last months I have been working analysing the public procurement of artificial intelligence solutions in Public Administration. The results have now been published as a playbook: Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement in Public Procurement for Artificial Intelligence. A Mission-Oriented Playbook. The general goal of the research, fostered and commissioned by ParticipationAI, is whether AI is just a regular technology that can be purchased yet as another commodity, or is it “something else”. Our thesis is that, effectively, it is much more than something else. And that, at least, two crucial aspects should be taken into account: Purpose, aimed at the public interest. Impact, as it has a high transforming potential. In both cases, we believe that the meaningful concurrence of a plural diversity of actors is strictly necessary at all stages of the life cycle of AI. Thus, Ai procurement needs quite a different framework from that of traditional procurement: Deal with it like the investment in a digital public infrastructure. Think of the concurrence of many different actors, and have a strategy on how to best engage them. Organise governance of AI procurement as a mission-oriented policy…

BOOK CHAPTER. Solving Wicked Problems Through Open Government Approaches
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2025-04-27T07:52:11Z
subject: News
subject: Participation, Engagement, Use, Activism
subject: Writings
subject: covid
subject: elections
subject: open_government
description: When organising elections during the COVID-19 crisis, the way to address the complexity and uncertainty of the environment was to adopt a strategy based on the open government paradigm.
encoded: <img decoding="async" src="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004838_book_was_the_open_government_promise_fulfilled.png" alt="Book cover the book "¿Se cumplió la promesa del Gobierno Abierto?: Balance de una década, aprendizajes y desafíos de futuro en Iberoamérica"" width="701" height="989" class="size-full wp-image-4839" srcset="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004838_book_was_the_open_government_promise_fulfilled.png 701w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004838_book_was_the_open_government_promise_fulfilled-213x300.png 213w" sizes="(max-width: 701px) 100vw, 701px" /> Was the Open Government Promise Fulfilled?: A Decade’s Balance, Learnings, and Future Challenges in Ibero-America In 2013, La Promesa del Gobierno Abierto (The Open Government Promise) was published, coordinated by Andrés Hofmann, Álvaro Ramírez Alujas, and José Antonio Bojórquez. The title referred to the resurgence (with strength) of the concept of open government, this time promoted by the of Barack Obama —then President of the United States of America— through his famous Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government of 21 January 2009 and the subsequent Open Government Directive of 8 December of the same year. The concept gained considerable traction at a time when the 2008 financial crisis had just erupted, and one of its causes had been identified as the obsolescence of the still prevailing Public Administration model, which was strictly hierarchical, closed, and inflexible. Open Government proposed a radical shift based on three main pillars: transparency, citizen participation, and collaboration between administrations. Ten years later (twelve by the time the book has been published), a sort of assessment of the promises made by open government emerged has just seen the light, ¿Se cumplió la promesa del Gobierno Abierto?: Balance de una década, aprendizajes y desafíos de futuro en Iberoamérica (Was the Open Government Promise Fulfilled?: A Decade’s Balance, Learnings, and Future Challenges…

Working bibliography on public procurement of Artificial Intelligence (updated)
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2025-03-28T13:39:19Z
subject: Cyberlaw, governance, rights
subject: ICT4D
subject: Participation, Engagement, Use, Activism
subject: artificial intelligence
subject: public procurement
subject: stakeholder engagement
description: Collection of works related with AI in public Administration
encoded: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004830_working_bibliography_public_procurement_artificial_intelligence.png" alt="The text: Working bibliography on public procurement of Artificial Intelligence" width="591" height="332" class="size-full wp-image-4835" srcset="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004830_working_bibliography_public_procurement_artificial_intelligence.png 591w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004830_working_bibliography_public_procurement_artificial_intelligence-300x169.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 591px) 100vw, 591px" /> I am collaborating with ParticipationAI on finding out what would be an ideal model of stakeholder engagement in the life-cycle of public procurement of Artificial Intelligence. So far, I’ve put together a collection of works related with AI in public Administration, in a very broad sense. Here it comes. All suggestions are welcome. Working bibliography Ada Lovelace Institute, AI Now Institute & Open Government Partnership (2021). Algorithmic Accountability for the Public Sector. London: Ada Lovelace Institute, AI Now Institute, Open Government. Ada Lovelace Institute (2022). NMIP algorithmic impact assessment User guide. London: Ada Lovelace Institute. Agencia Tributaria (2024). Estrategia de Inteligencia Artificial. Madrid: Agencia Tributaria. AI Now Institute (2018). Algorithmic Accountability Policy Toolkit. New York: AINOW. Ajuntament de Barcelona (2022). Definició de metodologies de treball i protocols per a la implementació de sistemes algorítmics. Llibre blanc. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona. Ametic (2025). IA al Servicio de la Administración Pública Local. Madrid: Ametic. Association for Progressive Communications, Article 19 & Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (2019). Global Information Society Watch 2019. Artificial Intelligence: Human Rights, Social Justice and Development. [online]: APC, Article 19, SIDA. Autio, C., Cummings, K., Elliott, B.S. & Noveck…

COMMUNICATION. New Public Governance in practice: a toolbox model for public policy in times of networks, uncertainty and complexity
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2025-03-11T11:43:48Z
subject: Cyberlaw, governance, rights
subject: e-Government, e-Administration, Politics
subject: News
subject: Participation, Engagement, Use, Activism
subject: Writings
subject: college of economists of catalonia
subject: communication
subject: governance
subject: new public governance
subject: public administration
subject: transformation
description: I here present my communication for the 4th Congress of Economics and Business of Catalonia 2025 organized by the College of Economists of Catalonia. The communication is titled New Public Governance in practice: a toolbox model for public policy in times of networks, uncertainty and complexity and proposes and applied model to transform public Administrations in order to face this new era of complexity, uncertainty and networks.
encoded: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004824_20250302_ismael_pena_-_lopez_new_public_governance_in_practice-724x1024.png" alt="Cover page (title, abstract) of the communication New Public Governance in practice: a toolbox model for public policy in times of networks, uncertainty and complexity" width="724" height="1024" class="size-large wp-image-4826" srcset="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004824_20250302_ismael_pena_-_lopez_new_public_governance_in_practice-724x1024.png 724w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004824_20250302_ismael_pena_-_lopez_new_public_governance_in_practice-212x300.png 212w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004824_20250302_ismael_pena_-_lopez_new_public_governance_in_practice-768x1086.png 768w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004824_20250302_ismael_pena_-_lopez_new_public_governance_in_practice-1086x1536.png 1086w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004824_20250302_ismael_pena_-_lopez_new_public_governance_in_practice-1448x2048.png 1448w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004824_20250302_ismael_pena_-_lopez_new_public_governance_in_practice.png 1654w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 724px) 100vw, 724px" /> Click to download the article (PDF) I here present my communication for the 4th Congress of Economics and Business of Catalonia 2025 organized by the College of Economists of Catalonia. The communication is titled New Public Governance in practice: a toolbox model for public policy in times of networks, uncertainty and complexity and proposes and applied model to transform public Administrations in order to face this new era of complexity, uncertainty and networks. The theoretical background is that of New Public Governance that has been building momentum for the last 20 years approximately. The intended contribution of my paper is not to build up on theory, but how to bring all this theory into practice, how to provide something public managers can cling on to foster the much needed transformation of publ…

New Public Governance in practice: a programme for the Administration in times of networks, uncertainty and complexity
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2025-01-11T09:37:07Z
subject: e-Government, e-Administration, Politics
subject: applied
subject: model
subject: new_public_governance
description: This scheme represents the convergence of my academic profile with my profile as a public manager over the last six years and a sort of work plan for the coming years. My aim is to continue advancing in its theoretical development, to be able to implement the model in practice and to evaluate its validity as an application of a new paradigm of public management.
encoded: With the crisis of the major ideologies of the 20th century and the current revision of the socioeconomic model and the social contract in the 21st century, the concept of an entrepreneurial Administration is gaining strength. This is an Administration capable of engaging in dialogue and articulating the other actors within its ecosystem, asserting its voice in the design of a constituent process centered on the public interest, and fostering economic, social, and environmental sustainability in a changing, complex, and uncertain environment. Although this model has been conceptually referred to as <a href="http://New Public Governance, there are still challenges in translating it both to internal organization —procedures, spheres of competence, relationships between units and among Administrations— and to the provision of policies and public services —effectiveness, efficiency, and citizen engagement. Below, I present a framework outlining the key considerations for implementing this model in practice, leveraging a constellation of tools already aiming to initiate deeply transformative policies oriented toward systemic impact beyond mere outcomes. These tools acknowledge the difficulties of establishing clear causal relationships, unanimous diagnoses, and stable courses of action. The framework is structured around six levers of change —governance, organization, talent, processes, quality in management, and democratic quality— which, in my view, constitute the backbone of any organization, but especially of the Administration. In general, the framework shifts us toward an Administration that does less and enables more, becoming a platform that facilitates, articulates, fosters, and connects ecosystems of actors toward widely shared goals and impacts. In short, it opens the public system to the civic, economic, political, and social ecosystem. This framework is part of a broader analysis that has been submitted for consideration at the 4th Congress of Economics and …

Managing complexity for systemic impact: responses to VUCA and BANI environments
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2023-08-22T10:49:44Z
subject: Development
subject: Knowledge Management
subject: Activism
subject: bani
subject: design_thinking
subject: ecosystems
subject: Engagement
subject: facilitation
subject: foresight
subject: framing
subject: futures
subject: naming
subject: Participation, Engagement, Use, Activism
subject: potfolio_based_approach
subject: sensing
subject: stakeholder_analysis
subject: system_analysis theory_of_change
subject: Use
subject: vuca
description: In recent decades, the acronyms VUCA and, more recently, BANI have become popular to describe the environments in which we live and work. But, beyond describing the situation or environment as VUCA or BANI, can we do anything about it? How can we change our way of managing projects or promoting impactful public policies? We […]
encoded: In recent decades, the acronyms VUCA and, more recently, BANI have become popular to describe the environments in which we live and work. But, beyond describing the situation or environment as VUCA or BANI, can we do anything about it? How can we change our way of managing projects or promoting impactful public policies? We have compiled below a set of emerging methodologies that allow us to move from theory to practice, from fear to action. Table of contents New environments: VUCA & BANI VUCA BANI Managing complexity for systemic impact Stakeholder analysis, naming, sensing, framing Systems (systems analysis) Foresight, futures Outcome mapping Theory of Change Portfolio-based approach Participation, facilitation, design thinking Ecosystems New environments: VUCA & BANI VUCA VUCA appears with the end of the Cold War, with globalization, with the digital revolution, with the financialization of the Economy. Adapting theories on leadership from Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, it proposes that we increasingly operate in environments: Volatile: the dynamics of change are accelerated and the stages of the situations are short-lived; Uncertain: it is increasingly difficult to predict the future (and science must adapt to post-normality); Complex: where the causal relationships of a phenomenon are multiple and even impossible to define; Ambiguous: since it is difficult to make categorical statements, especially independent of each different situation or context. BANI Impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Jamais Cascio proposes in Facing the Age of Chaos to go beyond the definition of VUCA environments and suggests the BANI framework instead: Brittle: due to the extreme delicacy and contingency of situations, which can change quickly and drastically as a result of any cause; Anxious: in the sense that situations increasingly generate anxiety (due to the difficulty of dealing with them, due to the scope and depth of their impacts); Non-linear: due to the apparent disconnection, i…

REPORT. Catalan Participation Lab Network. Public facilities and social innovation
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2020-12-08T12:08:00Z
subject: Development
subject: Information Society
subject: News
subject: Writings
subject: antoni_gutierrez-rubi
subject: carles_pont_sorribes
subject: covid19
description: To leverage the fact that there are already public facilities on place and that people are already using them and gathering around them and use them for citizen innovation on quality democracy.
encoded: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004775_participalab.png" alt="Cover of the report "Xarxa ParticipaLab de Cataluña. Equipamientos ciudadanos e innovación social"" width="669" height="951" class="size-full wp-image-4778" srcset="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004775_participalab.png 669w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004775_participalab-211x300.png 211w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 669px) 100vw, 669px" /> Xarxa ParticipaLab de Cataluña. Equipamientos ciudadanos e innovación social When working with the idea of the citizen participation ecosystem from the point of view of a national government, one of the basic questions is how the Administration should nurture and facilitate such ecosystem. There are, at least, two approaches that have been traditionally explored. On the one hand, the Administration can fund the creation or growth of a body of professionals that can contribute to deploy a number of citizen participation initiatives all over a given territory. These professionals can work at the higher level of the Administration or can be distributed or scattered on lower levels of the Administration (i.e. local administrations), but the result is to be able to cover most necessities with a good amount of trained and dedicated professionals. On the other hand, and sometimes compatible with the former approach, the Administration can fund the creation or growth of a constellation of facilities that would run initiatives specifically devoted to the promotion of citizen participation. They can have many names depending on their particular focus or especialization: citizen labs, living labs, social innovation labs, fabrication labs (fab labs), maker spaces, etc. The problem with these approaches is, at least, double: They are not very economically sustainable, as they require and maintaining groups of people and networks of facilities with a single purpose and which can very difficult be replicated or scaled outside of thei…

GUIDE. Guide to gender mainstreaming in participatory processes
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2020-11-18T09:05:27Z
subject: Development
subject: Information Society
subject: News
subject: Writings
subject: antoni_gutierrez-rubi
subject: carles_pont_sorribes
subject: covid19
description: Guide to gender mainstreaming in participatory processes Although I had been long interested on gender studies, during December 2018 and the first months of 2019 I began to actively search for documents that dealt with the issue of gender (discrimination, inequality, etc.) on citizen participation. I found out that there was quite a lot of […]
encoded: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004774_guide_to_gender_mainstreaming_in_participatory_processes.png" alt="Cover of the "Guide to gender mainstreaming in participatory processes"" width="892" height="888" class="size-full wp-image-4777" srcset="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004774_guide_to_gender_mainstreaming_in_participatory_processes.png 892w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004774_guide_to_gender_mainstreaming_in_participatory_processes-300x300.png 300w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004774_guide_to_gender_mainstreaming_in_participatory_processes-150x150.png 150w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004774_guide_to_gender_mainstreaming_in_participatory_processes-768x765.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 892px) 100vw, 892px" /> Guide to gender mainstreaming in participatory processes Although I had been long interested on gender studies, during December 2018 and the first months of 2019 I began to actively search for documents that dealt with the issue of gender (discrimination, inequality, etc.) on citizen participation. I found out that there was quite a lot of literature on gender and democratic institutions, but nothing specifically on gender mainstreaming in participatory processes. So, at the Directorate General of Citizen Participation and Electoral Processes we decided to do our own research and project on the issue. With the valuable help of Fundació Surt, and after an initial training, we analyzed public procurement, the facilitation of events, the evaluation processes, information and communication protocols, etc. under the light of gender mainstreaming. The result was triple. First, the aforementioned analysis and evaluation; second, a set of internal protocols to improve our own work; third, a Guide to gender mainstreaming in participatory processes so that anyone in the field of citizen participation can use and apply in their own citizen participation instruments. The guide has been published in C…

BOOK CHAPTER. The ecosystem of public governance: institutions as open infrastructures for collective decision-making
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2020-10-11T08:03:15Z
subject: Development
subject: Information Society
subject: News
subject: Writings
subject: antoni_gutierrez-rubi
subject: carles_pont_sorribes
subject: covid19
description: A public governance ecosystem is a technopolitical, self-organized, autopoietic, replicable and scalable system that articulates actors, spaces and instruments around a set of open and distributed infrastructures rich on knowledge for collective decision-making.
encoded: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004773_ecosystem.png" alt="First page of the book chapter "El ecosistema de gobernanza pública: las instituciones como infraestructuras abiertas para la toma de decisiones colectivas"" width="537" height="654" class="size-full wp-image-4776" srcset="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004773_ecosystem.png 537w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004773_ecosystem-246x300.png 246w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 537px) 100vw, 537px" /> El ecosistema de gobernanza pública: las instituciones como infraestructuras abiertas para la toma de decisiones colectivas At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis I wrote about the differential impact of crisis in the Information Society based on the first fact that were quickly becoming evident before our eyes and at plain sight. Shortly after, professors Josep M. Reniu and Víctor Meseguer led a monography on how the COVID-19 crisis was impacting democratic institutions and what to do about it. The book ¿Política confinada? Nuevas tecnologías y toma de decisiones en un contexto de pandemia [Confined politics? New technologies and decision-making in a pandemic context] focuses on how institutions are responding to a pandemic that keeps people at home or away from each other, and how they are figuring out ways of keeping in touch with citizens and keep performing the tasks they have been committed to. I wrote a book chapter, the second one, with the aim to provide a wide landscape on how democratic institutions and the democratic arena are configuring themselves, and how the pandemic crisis may be an accelerator to it. On El ecosistema de gobernanza pública: las instituciones como infraestructuras abiertas para la toma de decisiones colectivas [The ecosystem of public governance: institutions as open infrastructures for collective decision-making] I take the idea of the citizen participation ecosystem to a higher level, trying to scale it up to the global public governan…

Citizen Participation in policy-making: internalizing externalities and preventing conflict through planning and evaluating
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2020-09-26T15:47:26Z
subject: Participation, Engagement, Use, Activism
description: Citizen participation can contribute to planning, evaluation, conflict prevention and internalizing externalities
encoded: Some people use to believe of citizen participation as something that is at odds with policy-making. That is, that citizen participation complicates the execution of policies and delays results. The reality is quite far from this —considering, of course, that one is committed with quality policy-making and actually aim at having an impact with the policies that one is pushing forward. Although there is an increasing number of instruments that can be called citizen participation, most of them have the following scheme: The Administration has something in mind. Citizens are asked for an opinion. The Administration tells citizens what it did with their opinion. These three apparently innocent steps are key to driving improvements —not delays— in policy-making. First, the Administration just cannot “have something in mind”. If one is not telling anyone, any crazy idea might be passed along and put into practice. But if the information is going to be public, and made widely available for public scrutiny, planning becomes a must. Thorough diagnosis, analysis, planning and design are a requisite for any kind of citizen participation initiative. In this train of thought, citizen participation is a vaccine for incorrect diagnosis, lack of analysis, bad planning and low quality design. Second, when the Administration provides the feedback it committed to do during the citizen participation initiative, it finds out that goals, indicators and evaluation are key for providing feedback and letting citizens know what happened with their opinions and proposals. Again, citizen participatino is a vaccine for trying to spend resources before setting up the pertinent goals, neglect of setting up the appropriate indicators and closing projects without its due impact assessment and evaluation. There are, notwithstanding, two more important issues that citizen participation can bring into policy-making and that are related with the second point above: the fact that one has to identify and…

Governance of the Ecosystem of educational communities
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2020-08-02T17:30:40Z
subject: Education & e-Learning
subject: covid19
subject: informal_learning
subject: non-formal_learning
description: This scheme aims not at being neither comprehensive nor thorough. It just aims at providing a general landscape on how to approach the complexity of non-formal and informal learning and how this could be leveraged to support teaching in these strange times where schools are not working normally
encoded: Non-formal and informal learning just happens. And the digital revolution has but increased exponentially both the potential and possibilities of such non-formal and informal learning to catalyse, emerge, cluster, deploy and have an educational impact. Non-formal and, especially, informal learning can be fostered and nurtured, and its ways and general horizons even by somewhat put in line with those of formal education. Sometimes. The COVID-19 crisis is one of these times. The difficulties of formal education are many, and in general have been focused on keeping schools open. But formal education does not only rely on schools being open: besides focusing on guaranteeing teaching (at school), there is a complementary approach based on guaranteeing learning (home, or elsewhere but the school) for times when schools cannot be kept open. We thus shift the approach from guaranteeing teaching to guaranteeing learning. Blended and online learning have been the recurrent alternative to schools kept open. Blended and online learning has usually been understood as replacing schools by a virtual campus (or a learning management system, an LMS). This has brought forward at least three dire problems: The obvious issue of the digital divide. The problem of student mentoring, both by teachers and also by families, which now have to assume a share of what formerly was mainly done by the school, i.e. by teachers. The difficulty to keep minors at home (especially the youngest ones) while their parents cannot stay home with them because they have jobs to attend too. A third option —besides just keeping schools open and just keeping kids in front of computers while burdening their parents— is to work collectively towards education. This option turns upside down priorities, from teaching to learning, and then tries to find the resources where they are. But not only: it also aims at strengthening those resources —quite often “human resources” (the term is not the best one)— so that they …

Current challenges of informal participation: what can an Artificial Intelligence do for citizen participation
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2020-07-29T13:21:57Z
subject: Participation, Engagement, Use, Activism
description: In order tell whether Artificial Intelligence can help the Administration, let's draw a list of the main challenges on knowledge management in citizen participation, and most especially in informal participation settings
encoded: Relevant topics Latent topics Informal participation Reputation Trends, clusters Actor mapping Sentiment analysis Real time analysis Ubiquitous analysis Current challenges of informal participation When we ask ourselves “what can Blockchain do for” or “what can Artificial Intelligence do for”, it is easy to begin with the solution (Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence) and then see whether that solution fits onto the “problem”. In Current challenges of online participation: a citizen e-participation journey I listed what were the main hypothetical steps that one should follow to participate online, and what were the expected barriers or problems to overcome. The tacit idea being how could (if ever) decentralized ledger technologies or Blockchain help all along the whole way. In order to prepare a meeting on Artificial Intelligence at the Administration and, most specifically, Artificial Intelligence for citizen participation, I here plan to repeat the aforementioned exercise, now for knowledge management in citizen participation, and most especially in informal participation settings. Relevant topics Informal participation begins on formal settings. There are lots of things happening around the formal discussion of a given issue. Thus, it is not always easy to tell the relevant topics from the irrelevant ones. And in two ways: relevant for the organization of the deliberative process, and especially relevant for the participant, which may find burdensome to go through all the information and proposals and comments that everyone else is doing — this is especially true on online participation platforms. Being able to distill what information is relevant (a) in relationship with the topic at stake and (b) in relationship with one’s own interests is crucial for the smooth and effective evolution of the deliberation process. Scanning, analysing, tidying up, summing up, and presenting in a clear way is the first demand to do to any technology aiming at crunching informatio…

Three challenges of citizen labs
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2020-06-30T06:50:42Z
subject: ICT4D
subject: citizen_labs
subject: fab_labs
subject: living_labs
description: Citizen labs seem to be a more than a hype but they do not seem to clearly take off and have a fluid relationship with the Administration
encoded: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004758_door_locked_morgane_perraud_unsplash-1024x386.jpg" alt="Photo of a garage door with the inscription 'this door blocked'" width="1024" height="386" class="size-large wp-image-4760" srcset="https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004758_door_locked_morgane_perraud_unsplash-1024x386.jpg 1024w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004758_door_locked_morgane_perraud_unsplash-300x113.jpg 300w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004758_door_locked_morgane_perraud_unsplash-768x290.jpg 768w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004758_door_locked_morgane_perraud_unsplash-1536x579.jpg 1536w, https://ictlogy.net/img/posts/0000004758_door_locked_morgane_perraud_unsplash.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /> Industrial garage door blocked, courtesy Morgane Perraud Citizen labs —as it happens with open innovation, social innovation, etc.— are very interesting tools for opening up what is now the monopoly of public decision-making. They contribute to enable a citizen participation ecosystem with open, distributed, autonomous public infrastructures, so that an ecosystem of public governance is possible. Citizen labs (fab labs, living labs, innovation labs, etc.) have already been around for a while. On the one hand, they seem to be a more than a hype and some have a long track of interesting experiences. On the other hand, they do not seem to clearly take off, be part of mainstream citizen activism and, most especially, have a fluid relationship with the Administration. The main three challenges of citizen labs nowadays are the following: Getting to know how their actual functioning, what works and what does not work, why things succeed or just do not happen, which actors are more relevant and what is their role, what different relationships between actors and tasks are more productive, etc. Of course, there already is quite a bit of literature about the topic, but I don’t think that “the”…

The role of public facilities and civic centres in a citizen participation ecosystem
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2020-05-22T09:43:49Z
subject: Cyberlaw, governance, rights
subject: e-Government, e-Administration, Politics
subject: citizen_participation_ecosystem
subject: libraries
subject: public_faclities
subject: telecentres
description: We here propose a set of strategic and operational goals that could lead the development of a network of public facilities within an ecosystem of citizen participation.
encoded: When considering sustainability, scalability and the transformative impact of citizen participation, it becomes strategic the promotion and articulation of a global participation ecosystem that shares the same values, vision and objectives. This model of participation, in addition to being shared, must be effective and efficient, which is why one would consider necessary that it also has a globally shared set of infrastructures in the field of participation. These infrastructures are, among others, an Administration coordinated at all levels so that it can optimize the available resources, a business sector that shares the participation model and collaborates in its improvement, consensus methodologies, technologies that incorporate these values ??in their design and methodologies and, finally, a network of training actors that share frameworks of skills, concepts and learning resources. Public facilities network within an ecosystem of citizen participation The Administration (taken as a whole) has several networks of public facilities —telecentres, libraries, civic centers, centers for young and old people, etc. An ecosystem of citizen participation can collaborate with the Administration’s networks of public facilities by superimposing a (new) layer of democratic innovation on the existing equipment networks. It is, then, not about creating a new network of facilities, but rather offering the existing ones a portfolio of services related to citizen participation, democratic quality and social innovation in politics and democracy, so that they enrich and complement what they currently offer to the citizen. At the same time, it is about contributing to the transformation of public facilities that has already begun: from facilities that provide services to facilities that become citizen infrastructure. The entry into the Information Society, as well as the advances in all areas of the social sciences, mean that the mission and organization of these facilities are in …

BOOK CHAPTER. The differential impact of crisis in the Information Society
type: item
creator: Ismael Peña-López
date: 2020-04-20T16:57:11Z
subject: Development
subject: Information Society
subject: News
subject: Writings
subject: antoni_gutierrez-rubi
subject: carles_pont_sorribes
subject: covid19
description: The COVID19 has impacted people unequally. And the digital revolution has to do with it.
encoded: Book cover of Comunicación política en tiempos de coronavirus The crisis of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is having an unequal impact on people, thus worsening the also unequal impact of globalization and the transition into the Information Society. It is not only that wealthier and healthier people have more resources to face the crisis, but also that the way society is being reshaped (new relationships of production, experience and power) is also making more evident where we are facing as a society and what is becoming more obsolete. And the coronavirus crisis is especially hitting hard those tasks and institutions becoming obsolete. But not only. While two worlds overlap —the aging Industrial Era and the upcoming Information Era— there are also several views overlapping, and casting shadows that distort reality. There are some production sectors that are seen as obsolete by those in the Information Era, but that is becase positive externalities of their functions are not being taken into account. This reflection has just been published as a book chapter, where I describe the uneven impact of the COVID-19, and why some social functions are really obsolete, but why some others should be revalued so that they do not disappear —and, on the contrary, should be treated with care. The full book is called Comunicación política en tiempos de crisis (Political communication in times of crisis), coordinated by Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí and Carles Pont Sorribes, to whom I am really thankful for putting together the book in such short time and by quickly inviting me to part of it. My book chapter is entitled El impacto diferencial de las crisis en la Sociedad del Conocimiento (The differential impact of crisis in the Information Society) and can be downloaded below. All texts are in Spanish. Downloads Full chapter: Peña-López, I. (2020). “El impacto diferencial de las crisis en la Sociedad del Conocimiento”. In Gutiérrez-Rubí, A. & Pont Sorribes, C. (Coords.), Comunicac…