Europe

Future of e-government: learning from the past

Curated on December 9, 2016August 20, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Special issue of SOCRATES edited by Manoj Dixit: “We are living in an era of digitization thus moving towards a digital government. The use of ICT in public-administration is beneficial and it is not mere a coincidence that the top 10 countries in e-government implementation (according to UN E-Government Survey 2016) are flourishing democracies. There has been a sharp rise in the number of countries using e-government to provide public services online through one stop-platform. According to the 2016 survey, 90 countries now offer one or more single entry portal on public information or online services, or both and 148 countries provide at-least one form of online transaction services. More and more countries are making efforts through e-government to ensure and increase inclusiveness, effectiveness, accountability and transparency in their public institutions. Across the globe, data for public information and security is being opened up. The 2016 survey shows that 128 countries now provide data-sets on government spending in machine readable formats. E-government and innovation seems to have provided significant opportunities to transform public administration into an instrument of sustainable development. The governments around the globe are rapidly transforming. The use of information and communication technology in public administration – combined with organizational change and new skills- seems to be improving public services and democratic processes and strengthening support to public policies. There has been an increased effort to utilize advanced electronic and mobile services that benefits all. Fixed and wireless broadband subscriptions have increased unevenly across regions, with Europe leading, but Africa still lagging behind. We have to focus on these substantial region disparities and growing divide. All countries agreed, in SDG 9, that a major effort is required to ensure universal access to internet in the least developed countries. The rise of Social media and its easy access seems to have enabled an increasing number of countries moving towards participatory decision making, in which developed European countries are among the top 50 performers. But, the issues of diminishing collective thinking and rising Individual thinking are some rising issues that we will have to deal with in the future. There are more sensitive issues like the new classification of citizens into literate-illiterate, e-literate and e-illiterate, that the governments need to look upon. It is a good sign that many developing countries are making good progress. Enhanced e-participation can support the realization of the SDGs by enabling more participatory decision making, but the success of e-government will ultimately depend upon our ability and capability to solve the contrasting issues raised due to this transition with sensitivity.

In this issue of SOCRATES we have discussed, this new era of Digital Government. We have focused on what we have learned from the past and the future we want. From discussions on the role of e-governance within the local government settings in a modern democratic state to the experience of an academia with online examination, we have tried to include every possible aspect of e-government….(More)”

Fighting Exclusion, Inequality and Distrust: The Open Government Challenge

Curated on December 7, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Remarks by Manish Bapna delivered at the Open Government Partnership Global Summit: “To the many heads of state, ministers, mayors, civil society colleagues gathered in this great hall, this is an important moment to reflect on the remarkable challenges of the past year.

We have seen the rise of various forms of populism and nationalism in the United States, Britain, the Philippines, Italy, and many other countries. This has led to surprise election results and an increase in anti-immigrant and anti-government movements.

We have seen the tragic results of conflict-driven migration, as captured in the iconic image of a three-year-old boy whose body washed up on the Turkish shore.

We have seen governments struggle to respond to the refugee crisis. Some open their arms while others close their doors.

We have seen deadly terrorist attacks in cities around the world – including this one — that have forced governments to walk a fine line between the need to protect their people and the risk of infringing on their civil liberties.

And we continue to confront two inter-linked challenges: the moral challenge of 700 million people in extreme poverty, living on less than $2 a day, and the existential challenge of a changing climate.

All of these point to a failure of governance and, if we are honest, to a lack of open government that truly connects, engages and meets the needs of all people.

World’s Problems Can’t Be Solved Without Open Government

The crux of the matter is this: While open government alone can’t fix the world’s problems, they can’t be solved without it.

Too many people feel excluded and marginalized. They believe that only elites reap the benefits of growth and globalization. They feel left out of decision-making. They distrust public institutions.

How we collectively confront these challenges will be OGP’s most important test….

Here are five essential steps we can take – we, the people here today – to help accelerate the shift toward open government.

The first step: We must protect civic space – the rights to free speech, assembly and association – because these bedrock rights are at the heart of a functioning society. Serious violations of these rights have been recently reported by CIVICUS in over 100 countries. In 25 active OGP countries, these rights are repressed or obstructed….

The second step: We must foster citizen-centered governance.

We cherish OGP as a unique platform where government and civil society are equal partners in a way that amplifies the concerns of ordinary citizens.

We commend the many OGP countries that have made significant strides. But we recognize that for others, this remains a major struggle.

As heads of state and ministers, we need you to embrace the concept of co-creation. …

The third step: We must make changes that are transformational, not incremental.

Drawing on our commitment to open government and the urgency of this moment, we must be willing to go further, faster…..

Transforming government brings us to the fourth step.

We need to make a real difference in people’s lives.

This is our Partnership’s ultimate aim. Because when open government works, it improves every facet of people’s lives.

• This means giving all people safe drinking water and clean air.
• It means reliable electricity so children can have light to do homework and play.
• It means health clinics where the sick can go to get quality care, where medicines are available
• And it means building trust in public officials who are untainted by corruption….

The fifth and final step: We need to reinvigorate the Partnership’s political leadership….(More)”

‘’Everyone sees everything’: Overhauling Ukraine’s corrupt contracting sector

Curated on December 7, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Contracting Stories: “When Yuriy Bugay, a Maidan revolutionary, showed up for work at Kiev’s public procurement office for the first time, it wasn’t the most uplifting sight. The 27-year-old had left his job in the private sector after joining a group of activists during the protests in Kiev’s main square, with dreams of reforming Ukraine’s dysfunctional public institutions. They chose one of the country’s most broken sectors, public procurement, as their starting point, and within a year, their project had been adopted by Ukraine’s economy ministry, Bugay’s new employer.

…The initial team behind the reform was made up of an eclectic bunch of several hundreds volunteers that included NGO workers, tech experts, businesspeople and civil servants. They decided the best way to make government deals more open was to create an e-procurement system, which they called ProZorro (meaning “transparent” in Ukrainian). Built on open source software, the system has been designed to make it possible for government bodies to conduct procurement deals electronically, in a transparent manner, while also making the state’s information about public contracts easily accessible online for anyone to see. Although it was initially conceived as a tool for fighting corruption, the potential benefits of the system are much broader — increasing competition, reducing the time and money spent on contracting processes, helping buyers make better decisions and making procurement fairer for suppliers….

In its pilot phase, ProZorro saved over UAH 1.5 billion (US$55 million) for more than 3,900 government agencies and state-owned enterprises across Ukraine. This pilot, which won a prestigious World Procurement Award in 2016, was so successful that Ukraine’s parliament passed a new public procurement law requiring all government contracting to be carried out via ProZorro from 1 August 2016. Since then, potential savings to the procurement budget have snowballed. As of November 2016, they stand at an estimated UAH 5.97 billion (US$233 million), with more than 15,000 buyers and 47,000 commercial suppliers using the new system.

At the same time, the team behind the project has evolved and professionalized….(More)”

A Guide to Data Innovation for Development – From idea to proof-of-concept

Curated on December 7, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “UNDP and UN Global Pulse today released a comprehensive guide on how to integrate new sources of data into development and humanitarian work.

New and emerging data sources such as mobile phone data, social media, remote sensors and satellites have the potential to improve the work of governments and development organizations across the globe.

Entitled ‘A Guide to Data Innovation for Development – From idea to proof-of-concept,’ this publication was developed by practitioners for practitioners. It provides step-by-step guidance for working with new sources of data to staff of UN agencies and international Non-Governmental Organizations.

The guide is a result of a collaboration of UNDP and UN Global Pulse with support from UN Volunteers. Led by UNDP innovation teams in Europe and Central Asia and Arab States, six UNDP offices in Armenia, Egypt, Kosovo[1], fYR Macedonia, Sudan and Tunisia each completed data innovation projects applicable to development challenges on the ground.

The publication builds on these successful case trials and on the expertise of data innovators from UNDP and UN Global Pulse who managed the design and development of those projects.

It provides practical guidance for jump-starting a data innovation project, from the design phase through the creation of a proof-of-concept.

The guide is structured into three sections – (I) Explore the Problem & System, (II) Assemble the Team and (III) Create the Workplan. Each of the sections comprises of a series of tools for completing the steps needed to initiate and design a data innovation project, to engage the right partners and to make sure that adequate privacy and protection mechanisms are applied.

…Download ‘A Guide to Data Innovation for Development – From idea to proof-of-concept’ here.”

Maybe the Internet Isn’t a Fantastic Tool for Democracy After All

Curated on December 6, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Max Read in NewYork Magazine: “My favorite story about the internet is the one about the anonymous Japanese guy who liberated Czechoslovakia. In 1989, as open dissent was spreading across the country, dissidents were attempting to coordinate efforts outside the watchful eye of Czechoslovak state security. The internet was a nascent technology, and the cops didn’t use it; modems were banned, and activists were able to use only those they could smuggle over the border, one at a time. Enter our Japanese guy. Bruce Sterling, who first told the story of the Japanese guy in a 1995 Wired article, says he talked to four different people who’d met the quiet stranger, but no one knew his name. What really mattered, anyway, is what he brought with him: “a valise full of brand-new and unmarked 2400-baud Taiwanese modems,” which he handed over to a group of engineering students in Prague before walking away. “The students,” Sterling would later write, “immediately used these red-hot 2400-baud scorcher modems to circulate manifestos, declarations of solidarity, rumors, and riot news.” Unrest expanded, the opposition grew, and within months, the Communist regime collapsed.

Is it true? Were free modems the catalyst for the Velvet Revolution? Probably not. But it’s a good story, the kind whose logic and lesson have become so widely understood — and so foundational to the worldview of Silicon Valley — as to make its truth irrelevant. Isn’t the best way to fortify the town square by giving more people access to it? And isn’t it nice to know, as one storied institution and industry after another falls to the internet’s disrupting sword, that everything will be okay in the end — that there might be some growing pains, but connecting billions of people to one another is both inevitable and good? Free speech will expand, democracy will flower, and we’ll all be rich enough to own MacBooks. The new princes of Silicon Valley will lead us into the rational, algorithmically enhanced, globally free future.

Or, they were going to, until earlier this month. The question we face now is: What happens when the industry destroyed is professional politics, the institutions leveled are the same few that prop up liberal democracy, and the values the internet disseminates are racism, nationalism, and demagoguery?

Powerful undemocratic states like China and Russia have for a while now put the internet to use to mislead the public, create the illusion of mass support, and either render opposition invisible or expose it to targeting…(More)”

Technocracy in America: Rise of the Info-State

Curated on December 4, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Parag Khanna: “American democracy just isn’t good enough anymore. A costly election has done more to divide American society than unite it, while trust in government—and democracy itself—is plummeting. But there are better systems out there, and America would be wise to learn from them. In this provocative manifesto, globalization scholar Parag Khanna tours cutting-edge nations from Switzerland to Singapore to reveal the inner workings that allow them that lead the way in managing the volatility of a fast-changing world while delivering superior welfare and prosperity for their citizens.

The ideal form of government for the complex 21st century is what Khanna calls a “direct technocracy,” one led by experts but perpetually consulting the people through a combination of democracy and data. From a seven-member presidency and a restructured cabinet to replacing the Senate with an Assembly of Governors, Technocracy in America is full of sensible proposals that have been proven to work in the world’s most successful societies. Americans have a choice for whom they elect president, but they should not wait any longer to redesign their political system following Khanna’s pragmatic vision….(More)”

The Crowd is Always There: A Marketplace for Crowdsourcing Crisis Response

Curated on December 4, 2016October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Presentation by Patrick Meier at the Emergency Social Data Summit organized by the Red Cross …on “Collaborative Crisis Mapping” (the slides are available here): “What I want to expand on is the notion of a “marketplace for crowdsourcing” that I introduced at the Summit. The idea stems from my experience in the field of conflict early warning, the Ushahidi-Haiti deployment and my observations of the Ushahidi-DC and Ushahidi-Russia initiatives.

The crowd is always there. Paid Search & Rescue (SAR) teams and salaried emergency responders aren’t. Nor can they be on the corners of every street, whether that’s in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Washington DC or Sukkur, Pakistan. But the real first responders, the disaster affected communities, are always there. Moreover, not all communities are equally affected by a crisis. The challenge is to link those who are most affected with those who are less affected (at least until external help arrives).

This is precisely what PIC Net and the Washington Post did when they partnered to deploy this Ushahidi platform in response to the massive snow storm that paralyzed Washington DC earlier this year. They provided a way for affected residents to map their needs and for those less affected to map the resources they could share to help others. You don’t need to be a professional disaster response professional to help your neighbor dig out their car.

More recently, friends at Global Voices launched the most ambitious crowdsourcing initiative in Russia in response to the massive forest fires. But they didn’t use this Ushahidi platform to map the fires. Instead, they customized the public map so that those who needed help could find those who wanted to help. In effect, they created an online market place to crowdsource crisis response. You don’t need professional certification in disaster response to drive someone’s grandparents to the next town over.

There’s a lot that disaster affected populations can (and already do) to help each other out in times of crisis. What may help is to combine the crowdsourcing of crisis information with what I call crowdfeeding in order to create an efficient market place for crowdsourcing response. By crowdfeeding, I mean taking crowdsourced information and feeding it right back to the crowd. Surely they need that information as much if not more than external, paid responders who won’t get to the scene for hours or days….(More)”

Data Literacy – What is it and how can we make it happen?

Curated on December 1, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction by Mark Frank, Johanna Walker, Judie Attard, Alan Tygel of Special Issue on Data Literacy of The Journal of Community Informatics: “With the advent of the Internet and particularly Open Data, data literacy (the ability of non-specialists to make use of data) is rapidly becoming an essential life skill comparable to other types of literacy. However, it is still poorly defined and there is much to learn about how best to increase data literacy both amongst children and adults. This issue addresses both the definition of data literacy and current efforts on increasing and sustaining it. A feature of the issue is the range of contributors. While there are important contributions from the UK, Canada and other Western countries, these are complemented by several papers from the Global South where there is an emphasis on grounding data literacy in context and relating it the issues and concerns of communities. (Full Text: PDF)

A Better Reykjavik and a stronger community: The benefits of crowdsourcing and e-democracy

Curated on December 1, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Dyfrig Williams at Medium: “2008 was a difficult time in Iceland. All three of the country’s major privately owned banks went under, which prompted a financial crisis that enveloped the country and even reached local authorities in Wales.

The Better Reykjavik website was launched before the municipal elections and became a hub for online participation.

70,000 people participated out of a population of 120,000
12,000 registered users submitted over 3,300 ideas and5,500 points for and against
257 ideas were formally reviewed, and 165 have been accepted since 2011

As an external not-for-profit website, Better Reykjavik was better able to involve people because it wasn’t perceived to be part of pre-existing political structures.

Elected members

In the run up to the elections, the soon to be Mayor Jón Gnarr championed the platform at every opportunity. This buy-in from a prominent figure was key, as it publicised the site and showed that there was buy-in for the work at the highest level.

How does it work?

The website enables people to have a direct say in the democratic process. The website gives the space for people to propose, debate and rate ways that their community can be improved. Every month the council is obliged to discuss the 10–15 highest rated ideas from the website….(More)

Big data promise exponential change in healthcare

Curated on November 30, 2016May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Gonzalo Viña in the Financial Times (Special Report: Innovation in Healthcare): “When a top Formula One team is using pit stop data-gathering technology to help a drugmaker improve the way it makes ventilators for asthma sufferers, there can be few doubts that big data are transforming pharmaceutical and healthcare systems.

GlaxoSmithKline employs online technology and a data algorithm developed by F1’s elite McLaren Applied Technologies team to minimise the risk of leakage from its best-selling Ventolin (salbutamol) bronchodilator drug.

Using multiple sensors and hundreds of thousands of readings, the potential for leakage is coming down to “close to zero”, says Brian Neill, diagnostics director in GSK’s programme and risk management division.

This apparently unlikely venture for McLaren, known more as the team of such star drivers as Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button, extends beyond the work it does with GSK. It has partnered with Birmingham Children’s hospital in a £1.8m project utilising McLaren’s expertise in analysing data during a motor race to collect such information from patients as their heart and breathing rates and oxygen levels. Imperial College London, meanwhile, is making use of F1 sensor technology to detect neurological dysfunction….

Big data analysis is already helping to reshape sales and marketing within the pharmaceuticals business. Great potential, however, lies in its ability to fine tune research and clinical trials, as well as providing new measurement capabilities for doctors, insurers and regulators and even patients themselves. Its applications seem infinite….

The OECD last year said governments needed better data governance rules given the “high variability” among OECD countries about protecting patient privacy. Recently, DeepMind, the artificial intelligence company owned by Google, signed a deal with a UK NHS trust to process, via a mobile app, medical data relating to 1.6m patients. Privacy advocates say this as “worrying”. Julia Powles, a University of Cambridge technology law expert, asks if the company is being given “a free pass” on the back of “unproven promises of efficiency and innovation”.

Brian Hengesbaugh, partner at law firm Baker & McKenzie in Chicago, says the process of solving such problems remains “under-developed”… (More)“