ICTlogy

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

Round Table: Connected Citizens. Cyberactivism.
Chairs: Rosa Jiménez Cano

Alana Moceri, president Democrats Abroad Spain

First time that primary elections can be done on-line. This means increasing the number of countries where voting is possible from 34 up to 161.

Online, everyone can contribute: absolutely everyone can upload videos to YouTube, photos to Flickr or text to any blog. Pro: democratization. Con: loss of control over your campaing.

Fundrising is key and is a good proxy to test the health of a political campaign.

Obama’s discourse is really 2.0: you can, empowerment, engagement. MyBarackObama.com is a good example of it, where you can even earn points as a reward for your implication and helping recruit other people. This really builds up a formidable base of activists.

Marshall Ganz: It’s values, not only interests, what drives people to take part in civic movements.

Sebastián Lorenzo

Fundación Generación Libre: how voters connect to social networks in Argentina. Not centralized, not decentralized, not distributed, but complex networks. They best way to boost complex networks is to build software that enhances the connection between peripheral nodes to the central ones (leaders).

Cyberactivism: activities to help bridge the digital world with the off-line world, with impact in the “real” world.
Cybermilitant: someone commited in the long-run with “someting beyond” cyberactivism. We’ve yet to find out what this really means.

Noticias LA: a distributed network of volunteers, living in all coutries of Latin America and Spain, selecting local news and feeding them to the site, acting as a news agency 2.0.

César Calderón

Social mediators are no more the protagonists in the Administration-Citizenry interaction: it’s the citizen the one that has to lead the approach towards their Government.

We are used to long run political campaigns, this is why, how and what for political parties were created for. But now people gather around more ephemeral and ad hoc actions. And, indeed, the top-down way of designing engagement has given place to a more bottom-up way of participating. Horizontal replaces vertical.

Antoni Gutierrez-Rubi

Goals of activism: have to be possible to reach and well planned. Assessment is a must and often overridden because of the speed of times and lack of time to reflect.

Proposals: agitation is good, but also reflection. A choral voice (i.e. making the same proposal from different places and points of view, but the same one) might be desirable now and then. Continuity and orientation of the discourse would help in the long-run engagement of our target.

Arguments: less opinion, more arguments. Ideas are good as long as they are “well packed” and backed with arguments.

Leadership: hyperleadership is good to avoid fragmentation, but has to leave room for shared leadership. Of course, leadership to achieve changes and goals. The ROI on leadership has to be positive and as big as possible. What matters is not getting there alone and early, but with everyone and on time (León Felipe).

Activists: they have to feel comfortable working without parties and organizations. But linked to the causes by following some basic rules. ARTivists: someone to be taken into account to help in the “packaging” of our ideas and arguments.

Plurality: are we in a networked world without boundaries… or sheltered in our trenches? Open minds.

Influences: credible, proximate, creating opinion. We have to impact “reality 1.0”, not think from and for the minority.

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

Round Table: mGovernment. The Mobile Phone and its integration in e-Government
Chairs: Nacho Campos

What is a mobile phone

• Mobile
• A device you use every day
• 110% of penetration
• Many features

Tomy Ahonen: the mobile phone is the 7th medium:

• Personal
• Always on
• Always with us
• Integrated paying method
• Immediate tool

mGovernment: how the Administration adapts itself to the nomadic style of the citizen (The Economist)

Goal: from m-murmur to m-chat to m-conversation (unidirectional, bidirectional, multidirectional).

Barriers:

• Lack of leadership, political and technical
• Infrastructures
• Resistance to change of public servants
• Telecommunication Operators
• Lack of communication plans
• Digital Divide

Mario Moreno Sánchez: Mobile Marketing expert

The advertising market is absolutely saturated: the customer can no more get a bigger amount of ads.

The key of m-development is multistakeholder partnerships between the Administration, Banking and Telecoms. An appropriate legal framework is a must.

MMS is likely to be the next multimedia revolution… maybe more than SMS, because, among other things, it’s really multimedia.

Virginia Moreno: CIO Leganés City Council.

Why mobile communication between the Administration and the citizen?>/p>

• Highest penetration
• New communication channel with the citizen
• Integrated with other channels
• Secure systems

Almudena de la Fuente: Vodafone Government and Public Services Director

How do you sign? With a pen or with a mobile phone?

Multistakeholder partnership: service provider, the Administration, the certifier of the digital signature.

Very simple for the user: just change the SIM (keeping the telephone number) and pay (!) the registration to the service.

Víctor Solla: CIO Avilés City Council

First things first: organizational change before the application of new communication channels.

Technically, it’s everything already done: penetration is (almost) total in the user’s part, and knowledge/data digital management in the Administration part is (or should be) already a reality. It’s “just” a matter of making it happen.

Thus, sometimes the only problem is cost, but not developing cost, but the cost of leadership and organizational change.

The Administration should watch over the existence of an appropriate connectivity so its services can be properly reached. Otherwise, it should foster the establishment of the needed infrastructures, supplied directly or through partnerships with the private sector.

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.