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Theme 8: Information Society and e-Governance |
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Number
of abstracts currently posted to this Theme: 1 | 2 |
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5 | 6 |
7 | 8 |
9 |
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 Return
to List of Themes |
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(Last updated:
November 23rd, 2005) |
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The Role of Parliament
in Developing e-Government Policy |
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Paula
Tiihonen, Counsel
to the Committee for the Future |
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The Finnish Parliament,
Finland |
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For the past fifteen years we have learned that
in the New World – at least in the New Economy
based on the ICT – the role of the State
no longer holds importance. Governmental tasks
will be minimized, if not diminished all together.
But, on the contrary, the role of the governments
in the new, brave e-world full of different kinds
of e-things (e-mail, e-commerce, e-banking, e-democracy,
e-government, e-medicine) is changing, but it is
certainly not getting smaller. It would be a big
mistake to believe that the problems of the Internet
era can be solved by technology, by business, by
competition, by globalization, by interna-tional
forums, by networks, by NGOs, by the civil society,
or by any other actor alone – or even together.
Without active participation by the national governments,
really useful, effective and economically valuable
e-services – public and private – will
never succeed. The State’s role is to provide
an enabling environment for the new development
and support new initiatives for efficient economy
and competitiveness. |
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The technology policy and the national strategy
to build Finland as one of the leading information
socie-ties have enhanced the use of ICT, both in
public administration, private business and every
walk of life in society. Therefore, there is a
demand-pull for ICT products and services from
the markets, as well as an institutional environment
for enhancing ICT and its development. Thus the
reasons for the growth of the ICT sector are both
economic and social. |
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In the Finnish experience the following was a
short list of some new problems in which the State
had to assume some role, one that could be very
different in each case:
1) How to make sure that people have equal opportunities to participate in building
the information society?
2) Who is responsible, and how, for taking care of the problems related to safety
in a society where most of the individual, corporate, public, private, national,
municipal, or international actions or operations are handled totally or partly
on-line via the Internet?
3) How to make sure people can trust the society they are a part of? Who is responsible
for taking care of such basic elements of democracy as privacy, right to opinion,
equal opportunity and pub-lic discourse in the information society?
4) How should the necessary infrastructure be built for the next-generation telecommunications?
5) What are the majority and minority's rights in building e-government and e-commerce?
6) Taxation is one of the oldest tasks of the State, but is this basic tool for
creating welfare for all disappearing in the Internet economy? |
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In general, as in the knowledge economy, good
governance plays an invaluable role. Institutions,
both administrative and political, really do matter,
even if we think that we are moving from governing
to go-vernance (Tiihonen S., 2004). |
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Amitai
Etzioni, Professor,
Institute for Communication Policy Studies |
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George Washington University,
Washington, D.C., USA |
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Extreme
advocates of privacy find fault in practically
every new (and most old) security measures,
whether they seek to stop drivers from
running red lights (e.g. intersection cameras)
or to prevent terrorists from attacking
(e.g. analyses of email traffic by use
of Carnivore). Extreme advocates of security
seek unlimited access to the medical and
financial and all other records of all
people, including those never suspected
of anything. A reasonable analysis
starts from the viewpoint that we must
find proper trade off between these two
compelling values: safety AND privacy,
a typical communitarian perspective.
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More
important than assessing each technology
in its own right is to examine how carefully
their use is monitored and how those who
use them are held accountable by those
who themselves can be trusted. The same
feature, e.g. wire taps, can be used sparingly,
only following court order, or wantonly,
including against dissenters. To ensure
proper accountability we need not merely
layers of overseers and parliamentary oversight
but also an independent civilian review
board. |
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A
great threat to privacy is to be found
in databases kept by the private sector,
which has amassed very great amount of
private information and sell it to all
who will pay—including the government.
Here new regulations and oversight are
needed at least as much as in the public
sector. |
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It
should also be noted that despite many
new invasive technological developments
- such as Keystroke and Magic Lantern -
there are also tech developments that greatly
enhance privacy, especially
high power encryption. It is hence mistaken
to suggest that privacy is dying and better
to view its condition as an arms race between
the technologies of the attackers and those
of the defenders. |
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CRM in the Public Sector
- Theory and Practice |
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Alexander
Schellong, Visiting Fellow |
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John F. Kennedy School
of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA |
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Customer Relationship Management has been well
discussed as a holistic concept for the private
sector to start, maintain and optimize relationships
to make customers more loyal/profitable – in
sum to improve the relationship with the consumers.
Many companies have invested into the customer
driven CRM concept but research indicates varying
outcomes. Recent publications, mainly driven by
the private sector rather than academia, show a
rising interest about the application of CRM in
the public sector domain. Here the term Citizen
Relationship Management is also being used. Since
CRM is a concept enabled by technology this topics
is closely connected to the Digital Government
research agenda. Long term changes to the structure
and organization of the public administration we
know as of today, as well as the citizen government
relationship are imminent and need further attention. |
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In my paper, I will present early findings of
my empirical research done in several cities (e.g.
Miami, New York, Washington) in the United States.
The public administrations are at different stages
of the implementation of the concept. I will also
briefly review the latest findings in CRM research
from the private sector and connect it to the public
sector. The goal is to identify a framework for
future research. Some parts of the final theoretical
CiRM framework will be included in the research
paper. |
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Trial Simulation to Solve the Optimum Combination
of Polls for the Highest Voter Turnout Rates |
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Toshihide
Ito, Professor |
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Faculty of Informatics,
Kansai University, Kansai, Japan |
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Ryota Natori, Associate
Professor |
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Faculty of Informatics,
Kansai University, Kansai, Japan |
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In most of industrialized countries, it is quite
important to increase voter turnout rates because
it has always kept low level in recent elections.
Though some measures have been tried to make voter
turnout rates high, it has still been low in actual.
On the other hand, reconstructing the polls combination
would be expected to make its rate higher by reasonable
costs. |
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In this paper, simulation model was considered
to solve the optimum combination of polls for the
highest voter turnout rates. At first, a virtual
city was assumed from Takatsuki city in Japan.
The voters of this city were 250,000 and 60 polls
were choose from 80 public buildings. Both were
distributed based on the existent city. Each voter
has own attributes that influence voting decision,
for example, age, strength of the party identification,
distance from the closest poll, income, and so
on. These personal factors were randomly settled
by probability distributions according to census
or statistical data. Weather and temperature were
also settled by conditions in past elections. Utility
functions using these factors were considered to
solve the optimum combination. This model should
be quite useful in local governments to keep efficient
budget allocations. |
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A Survey for Developing a Unified Intranet for
a Metropolitan Municipality in South Africa |
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Udo
Richard Averweg, Information
Analyst |
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eThekwini Municipality,
Durban, South Africa |
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Carol Ann Barraclough, Consutltant
and Project Manager |
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ePages.net (Pty) Ltd, Westville,
South Africa |
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Angela
Frances O'Byrne Spencer, Webmaster |
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eThekwini Municipality,
Durban, South Africa |
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An Intranet (or internal Web) is an assembly
of open standard applications and technologies
supported by network architecture. It serves the
internal information needs of an organisation using
Web (Internet) technologies. It brings Internet
benefits to the organisational desktop, namely
inexpensive and easy browsing, communication and
collaboration – but by definition, is used
solely for intraorganisational communication activities
and information flow. |
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Intranets have the power to change decision-making
processes, organisational communication flows,
structure and procedures. The use of Intranets
is increasing rapidly as an internal communication
system and can be applied to enhanced knowledge
sharing and group decision and business processes.
KPMG Consulting (2002) reports that organisations
are focusing strongly on internal communications
projects (such as Intranets). Such projects can
be the differentiating factors which enable some
organisations to succeeed and flourish where others
fail. In the public sector, by streamlining processes
and facilitating internal communication, they enhance
service delivery. |
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The South African Government
Online: An examination of ANC Today (“The
Online Voice of the African National Congress”)
as a model for online participatory democracy. |
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Dinesh
Balliah, Assistant
Dean, Marketing and Recruitment, Faculty
of Humanities |
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University of the Witwatersrand, South
Africa |
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This paper examines the online presence
of the ruling party of South Africa, the African
National Congress (www.anc.org.za)
known as “ANC Today” as a way of
appreciating the potential tools that such
websites provide for participatory democracy.
The site contains a regular column by the President
of the country, President Thabo Mbeki, who
uses this mechanism to respond to media comments
of national government among other issues.
In this way, the site breaks with its party
focus and engages broader issues around national
government. In addition, the site does lack
an online forum and the reasons for this will
be explored in this paper. |
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The paper also examines the way in which
the press engages with the content of the site
as very little, by way of commentary on the
site, is to be found in the established mass
media particularly newspapers. This is of particular
concern as the domestic digital divide and
high levels of illiteracy means that the only
possible conduit of information from this site
to the public, namely the mass media, is failing
to fulfill the essential function of democracy
building. The paper examines the extent of
the coverage provided in newspapers in Johannesburg
on issues emanating from this website. The
paper argues though that the site is a useful
source of information and tool of engagement
for the media with the ruling party. |
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About the official
publications of web sites in Spain: A path
to official information of public domain? |
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Luis
Fernando Ramos Simón |
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Universidad Complutense
of Madrid, Spain |
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Iuliana
Botezan |
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Faculty of Information
Sciences, Universidad Complutense of Madrid,
Spain |
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Official publications are aimed at editing
and spreading messages elaborated by Governments
and other institutions of a public nature.
Originally, this obligation is twofold: on
the one hand, complying with the principle
of publicity of norms, as it constitutes a
foundation for the efficiency of norms, and,
on the other hand, fulfilling a general function
of information on the activities carried out
by the public authorities. As the action of
Government generalises, this function of communication
between the Governments and those governed
has expanded to other fields of activity, and
free or pay materials, both printed and electronic,
have been produced. |
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In relation with the traditional concept of
official publications, the Internet has provoked
a radical shift: the Web is, in the present times,
the major channel of information used by Governments
and Public Institutions. Therefore, it is urgent
to decide how the Internet is going to fulfil
these tasks, and to “think” the role
we give to the traditional official publications
and to the new systems of information. Moreover,
the Internet facilitates transparency of the
public sector’s management and makes Governments
become major producers of information in their
field of action, from the smallest Municipalities
to the most complicated level, i.e. the State. |
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This communication introduces the results
of research conducted as an attempt to approach
the Spanish reality by means of an analysis
of official publications edited in Spain between
2002 and 2004. The authors oriented the results
in order to follow UNESCO’s recommendations
to favour the fact that the official information
produced by electronic means becomes a factor
of transparency of the Public Authorities and
a way to promote democratic ideals (equality,
democracy and free access) without elaborating
on other positive factors of an economic nature. |
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Defining Jurisdiction
in Cyberspace: Assessment and Proposals |
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Amel
Mili, PhD
Candidate |
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Center for Global Change
and Governance, Rutgers University, Newark,
NJ, USA |
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The current judicial system is anchored to
territory, and is constrained by considerations
of state sovereignty, and within a given state
by jurisdiction rules. As such, it is totally
inadequate to deal with cyberspace, which knows
no borders. In this very preliminary work,
we wish to reflect on ways to superimpose a cyberspace-specific
body of law to the traditional body of international
and national law. As we envision it, such
a legal system would deal initially with civil
law (nobody has committed murder in cyberspace
so far) and would create a system of stakes for
cyberspace citizens commensurate with the stakes
we have as citizens of countries and the world,
such as our freedom of movement (as opposed to
being in prison), freedom of ownership, freedom
of speech, etc. The premise that these
stakes can be taken away by a cyber-court gives
cyber-citizens the necessary incentives to obey
cyber laws. Once geography / citizenship
is taken out of the equation, jurisdiction can
be defined in terms that are meaningful in cyberspace,
such as nature of the crime, competence of the
court, language of the defendant, etc. |
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E-Government and Information
Privacy in Caribbean Developing Societies |
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Richard
M. Escalante, Lecturer
in E-government |
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Faculty of Social Sciences,
University of the West Indies, St. Augustine,
Trinidad |
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In Caribbean societies, e-government represents
an emerging digital layer on top of traditional
government practices. However, even before Caribbean
governments can truly ascend to this level of
e-government, they must first create a citizen-centric
environment for the successful acceptance of
e-government. It is here that we observe a disconnect
between citizens and the government. In the first
instance, purported reforms for establishing
such an environment are perceived by an increasingly
educated citizenry as neither actually empowering
the citizens nor engendering citizen confidence,
and secondly, public officials tend to view citizens
as ‘participants’ in the development of policies
and regulations, instead of ‘owners’ of government
(Slaton and Arthur, 2004). |
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This is particularly the case when citizens
do not see themselves as ‘owners’ of their personal
information contained in ‘digital dossiers’ (Solove,
2004) and stored in government databases. Public
officials must realize that one of the most important
aspects toward increasing citizens’ confidence
in e-government is to create legislation to protect
the privacy of citizens’ personal data when it
has been given/demanded by the government. In
the absence of privacy and data protection laws,
Caribbean governments must therefore assuage
citizens’ fears about the use/abuse this ‘digital
dossier’. This paper looks at the underlying
reasons for citizens’ lack of confidence in moving
to the e-government layer, and considers how
best existing legislation on privacy and data
protection from developed countries can be utilized
to protect this ‘digital dossier’ and promote
citizen trust. Ultimately, a citizen-centric
environment would allow the successful implementation
of e-government, and with it, the means to ascend
to yet another layer, e-governance. |
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