View Rui Barros and Fiorella De Cendio
Rapporteur: Jessica Mullen
Rui Barros: Technology issues and small municipalities
Rui began with describing context for his talk of the tech issues in small municipalities of Porto. The context is that there are scarce resources with low levels of investment and low motivation. The low motivation stems from citizens without habits of electronic services consumption, and civil servants digitally excluded or without internet skills.
He discussed e-ASLA, the e-administration for small local authorities. This is a partnership of municipalities and universities and others. The objectives are to stimulate usage of ICT to manage the processes inside the municipality and to introduce the concept of internet service delivery.
The work is involvement and initial training:
1. Understanding how the organization works and involving civil servants in the work.
2. Development and pilot actions: how to do everything without money (which turns out to be somewhat easy since it is a matter of choosing the best open source solution). Also, how can we hide system complexity. People are hesitant at first, asking “Why should I put my name here, why do I need a passcode?”
Rui discussed the implementation of “paperware” (which people can print out to fill in), then the movement to documents filled in on the computer. People accepted change well and this is considered a digital transformation.
The second phase is software. Through model driven development, the results were simple and effective. The impact was on 5 regions in 3 countries (France, Spain and Portugal, 20+ municipalities).
So what about now? People are beginning to use words like Web 2.0 and Myspace. What is the difference between digital expectation and digital revolution?
Discussion: We need to know cultures. People still want to talk to a person. People need to be empowered. A revolution cannot exist without expectations. People “found”/discovered Myspace, they were not told about it. Tech can’t transform politics, and revolution is all about politics. What is the impact of the new web? Is virtual public administration the answer? Are we excluding people? Why do people use websites for fun with ease, but have resistance to using services? Is it because they are only used to pay taxes? Should we use more fun web 2.0 applications? (note: is there a connection to Tiago’s participatory budgeting talk?)
Fiorella De Cendio: Facilitating participation and deliberation at the urban level.
Fiorella’s project has two logos for two arms. One is the research arm: Civic Informatics laboratory (1994), Milan community network. The other is the action arm: Participatory foundation (1998). It is a third party body. Local government are charter members (they can participate but are not owners). Fiorella offered a bit of a continuation from Doug’s civil intelligence discussion, and information can be found at publicsphereproject.org.
Democracy is three legged: government, economy and civil society. The trajectory is as follows: from the grass roots, bottom up level there are free community networks. From the top down there are institutional initiatives (digital cities like sites and egovernment). People only go to the institutional initiatives to pay taxes, no one uses them. So let’s discuss where these meet.
Civic engagement: People use the net for organizing protests and sharing knowledge. For an example, see Beppe Grillo (Bologna Sept 8 2007). There is a move toward deliberative democracy (discussions through public dialogue). Deliberative democracy needs to be supported by aware use of tools designed for specific purposes, not just reuse.
Deliberative community networks:
Community space: free dialog in forums, petitioning, blogs.
Deliberative space: informed discussion, online regulated meetings, brainstorming.
Authentication: Obama’s site is a mess of comments. Then there is the example of fixmystreet, to fix potholes.
We want people to put their face on their submissions. User pictures make people take responsibility for what they say. Who can contribute? Do they register? How do we preserve fair dialogue?
Contact fiorella.decindio@unimi.it.
Discussion: we must remember passive participation! Anonymity allows protection to participate. Not having money is a myth. It’s not a lack of money, it’s a lack of leadership.