Ideal Government Europe

30 Jul 2008

Les asks: what is Ideal Government?

Les Kobiernicki writes to say

What is Ideal Government ?

It consists of the following:

1.  Answerable post-holders ( who are prosecuted and convicted, when abuse of position is demonstrated to be present, and active )

2.  Personally-accountable individuals who consult ( and do not change the laws to remove choice, forcing consent as a prior default )

3.  Those with a consumer-voted proven track record of trustworthiness ( established in a profession of care, eg. People Empowerment )

4.  Persons who honourably act as whistleblowers ( reporting all criminal activity to public watchdog organizations and Ombudsmen )

5.  Proactive individuals ( who improve every working practice, structure, organization they have to work with - receiving recognition/thanks )

6.  Those who do not apply one law to themselves & their cronies - whilst enforcing target-group “ Governance “ restrictions on the rest

7.  People of heart and conscience, who feel the sufferings of others as their own ( acting to end the destruction of two-thirds of the world )

8.  Postholders who promote on the basis of ability, capability, and track record - not on the basis of defending existing vested interests

That just about lets out most people - admitting the 10% born leaders, who, in the days when principled officeholders existed, really made a difference - and were esteemed accordingly !

“ Reputation: it’s what you make, by unselfishly taking thought for others .. or what you lose, by pursuing exclusive self-interest “, old saying

Thanks Les! Stay in touch!

22 Aug 2006

This blog suspended…please goto Ideal Government

Citizens of the world...it became too complicated to maintain two different blogs when the issues we’re interested in are global. So just as I’d put together a lovely network of people happy to contribute to Ideal Government: Europe I found myself overextendedand my energies drained so I’ve been able only to work on the one original Ideal Government. It has a “Big Ben” logo, some of the content is parochial but we strive to maintain a global outlook, and are always pleased to hear from people all round the world. Anyone can comment - email me a text if you want to post and I’ll put it up and send you author keys. Thanks!

10 Mar 2006

Tell it like it is

The European Commission has launched a consultation process on Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID)—but let’s tell it like it is, these are tracking devices.

There are times when technological language concerning eGovernment tends to obscure the real purpose of new innovations.  Use of this type of language can make open debate about new innovations more difficult and can remove eGovernment even further from the understanding of the man or woman on the street—which must surely be bad practice when governments are trying to drive eService take-up.  Another example is semantic interoperability—aren’t these just fancy words for cataloguing and indexing?

RFIDs are primarily being developed in the private sector, e.g. for tracking products as they leave the supermarket shelves, but they may have eGov applications (tagging of prisoners on day release for example).  There are also privacy concerns, which governments will have to deal with.  Some background on the Commission’s consultation processes (from article on e-Forum):

The Commission’s language on RFIDs has so far been favourable. Information society commissioner Viviane Reding, for example, was quoted is a Commission press release saying, “RFID tags are far cleverer than traditional bar codes. They are the precursors of a world in which billions of networked objects and sensors will report their location, identity, and history. These networks and devices will link everyday objects into an ‘internet of things’ that will greatly enhance economic prosperity and the quality of life.”

However, Reding also highlighted privacy issues concerning the tags, noting, “We need to build a society-wide consensus on the future of RFID, and the need for credible safeguards. We must harness the technology and create the right opportunities for its use for the wider public good.”

The Commission established an RFID inter-service group in 2005, to coordinate the gathering, analysis and internal dissemination of information concerning RFID technology. The Commission is calling for common standard for the technology to ensure RFID interoperability across borders.

The public debate on RFID launched by the Commission will work through a series of workshops to build consensus on key issues associated with the use of RFID. These workshops will address RFID applications, end-user issues, interoperability and standards, and frequency spectrum requirements. They will take place in Brussels between March and June 2006 and their conclusions will assist the European Commission in drafting a working document on RFID. This document will be published in September in an online consultation. Additional feedback obtained will then be analysed and integrated in a Commission Communication on RFID, to be adopted before the end of the year. This feedback could lead to amendments of the e-privacy-Directive which is up for review this year. The Communication will also address the need for other legislative measures for RFID, such as decisions on allocation of spectrum.

28 Feb 2006

On line Intellectual property issue : first steps towards eDemocracy ?

Actually in France, one of the public debate focuses on intellectual property and peer to peer. A controversial law is discussed at the parliament. This is a transposition of the european directive of 22 May 2001 “on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society”.

In order to face this issue, and after the debate turned to be non consensual, the “ministère de la Culture” has recently provided a website where the law is explained and where people, particularly artists and websurfers, can share their own points of views about some documents. A lot of people seem skeptics, since there is no forums (only blogs attached to documents), since it is not explained if messages are censored or not, and since documents present a one way point of view. First steps towards electronic Democacy tools here ?

www.lestelechargements.com

21 Feb 2006

Write to them first birthday - with added Zeitgeist

Check this out - this group of UK volunteers wrote WriteToThem, a system to help people contact their elected representatives. It’s beautifully designed and coded, all open source etc, and people are really using it.

It’s one year old today (see James Cronin post on UK Ideal Government) and they’ve released what they call WriteToThem Zeitgeist which gives all sorts of stats on how much people write to their MPs and how often people respond.

It includes the hilarious epoisode of one MP, Ian Liddell Granger, who tried to improve his rankings by sending himself messages.

It’s enough to restore one’s faith in democracy, n’est-ce pas?

30 Jan 2006

Dutch biometric passport leaks details at distance of 10m

The Dutch biometric passport is shown cracked in the Dutch TV programme Nieuwslicht, says John Lettice in The Register (UK). .

The crack is attributed to Delft smartcard security specialist Riscure, which here explains that an attack can be executed from around 10 metres and the security broken, revealing date of birth, facial image and fingerprint, in around two hours. Riscure notes that that the speed of the crack is aided by the Dutch passport numbering scheme being sequential...The process is explained in greater detail by Bart Jacobs, Research Director of the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences, University of Nijmegen, in presentations to be found here. These make it clear that a skimming exercise could potentially yield all biometric data from a passport (or indeed a biometric ID card), giving ID thieves and would-be forgers a considerable leg up in the construction of fakes..

26 Jan 2006

Spanish public admin Minister in on-line meeting

Spanish minister for public administration Jordi Sevilla discussed the Moderniza plan, electronic ID cards, and the Conecta plan in an -->

07 Jan 2006

What do people who want ideal e-enabled government do about data retention?

The decision is made (see reports in BBC and NetZeitung).  As Euractiv puts it:

The vote means that member states will have to impose on internet service providers and telecommunication operators an obligation to store all traffic and location data for fixed and mobile telephony as well as e-mail, web-browsing, instant messaging and other internet services. The data will have to be stored for a period of six to 24 months and must be made accessible to authorities investigating on non-specified “serious crimes”.

Greens, Liberals, NGOs and industry groups have serious reservations - see the EDRI wiki. One has to ask whether this is an intelligent decision reached in a reasonable manner, and whether this a good procedure for laying the foundations of an e-enabled Europe.

It makes me wonder what is the best response. We could be happy and grateful in the confidence we’re less likely to suffer from criminality as a result of this decision. We could think about how to circumvent its effects - become more secretive, use crypto, aliases and anonymous services. We could watch the legislation get bogged down at great expense in the national legislatures and in its implementation.

Or we could continue with the campaign against the policy. But this begs the question of what next steps are available, given that defeating it in the European Parliament was probably the best hope for industry and NGOs. I doubt we’ll get get farmers muck-spreading government offices from their tractors on this one.

Bruce Schneier says about wholesale surveillance

Once this information is collected, it will be misused, lost, and stolen. It will be filled with errors. The problems and insecurities that come from living in a surveillance society more than outweigh any crimefighting (and terrorist-fighting) advantages.

This is a subject on which it’s very hard to articulate what an “ideal” vision of e-enabled public services would be like - the solution that places least temptation in front of corruptible officials, that costs the least, that allows us to live lives free of the fear of intrusion, manipuation and discrimination yet helps the police do their job when confronted with malevolence. 

03 Jan 2006

2006: “Jaar van de BurgerServiceCode”

Invoking the question What do e-Citizens expect from e-Government? the Dutch government has declared 2006 “Year of the e-Citizen Charter” - English version here. It has prepared a 2006 calendar with split panes - the larger half let’s you flip through the e-Citizen principles, each illustrated with its own cartoon. That sets a fair expectation of how long we should take to mull over these principles.

They’re the same principles we flagged here then discussed here. The workbook is here (pdf) and the original concept is set out here by Matt Poelmans and others based on work from Tilburg University. And yes, the word “Charter” goes back to John Major’s Citizens’ Charter.

Every European needs this.

01 Jan 2006

Austrians put EU sexiness on the agenda

The whole 25Peaces provocative-posters debate shows how controversial it is when you try to make Europe sexy. But it’s even harder to make e-enabled government sexy. We have a difficult but worthy task, mes amis. Happy New Year to all!

31 Dec 2005

Bertelsmann Foundation : “Balanced e-government”

here is some documentation about the german “Balanced e-government” study : you will find a document focusing on international criterias of success regarding local, regional and federal e-administrations. The study combines electronic government proper with the notion of eDemocracy. A self-evaluation tool (in german for the moment) for E-Government services is available on line.

http://www.begix.de/en/
http://topics.developmentgateway.org/governance/rc/ItemDetail.do~1024683

21 Dec 2005

Austrian EU presidency will give eGov high priority

The Austrian presidency of the EU, which runs for the first six months of 2006, will put a strong emphasis on eGov and developing ICT policy.  A number of events are scheduled to take place in Vienna in February and March.  Thus far, little information has been released about these events, I assume because the polite Austrians are waiting for the British presidency of the EU to exit stage left before they start to blow their own trumpet (for example, very little information has been released so far on the Austrian EU presidency website).  However, I have published information from the Austrian Federal Chancellery at the e-Forum website.

The forthcoming events are all advertised as ‘high-level’, and consider trust, pan-European services, content, security, etc.  There seems to be a strong top down rather than bottom up emphasis.  For example, the first event, Trust in the Net, on 9 Feb 2006 in Vienna, has as its first session Business and citizen concerns but the emphasis seems squarely on the EU institutions and industry (two speakers each) rather than the citizen, who is represented by a former privacy commissioner from Australia. 

Will such events really make much progress in developing citizen centred eGovernment?

20 Dec 2005

Leviathan with e-mail? Or Government2.0?

Bill Eggers closes his book Government 2.0 with two possible futures. It’s s pretty stirring WIBBI from the award-wining author (he’s Deloitte’s global director for public-sector research, and his book Governing by Network just won something called a Brownlow award). See extract below.

Is that a fair summary of how Europeans want to see the future?

15 Dec 2005

Should governments also deal with e-petitions ?

In france, 24 MPs have recently asked a modification of the National Assembly rules in order to take into account e-petitions supported by citizens. This could be a funny thing, if not powerfull, for each of us: popular e-petitions could be turned into amendments by committes before public sittings and a debate about a particular law. The more popular a petition is, the more it has a chance to be considered by the MPs. Knowing that the eworld nature is made of a wide interconnection of content and people, and that the circulation of messages is sometime very fast (hoaxes are nice exemples), e-petitions could be very usefull in the future and why not right now.

Electronically speaking, the use of petitions in the legislative process is not new in Europe : the scottish parliament was the first to launch it in February 2004, the system present also an electronic forum linked to the petition system. The German Budestag did it also in September 2005. I did’nt have the oportunity to read a feedback on those experiences yet.

Generally speaking, interfering in the legislative process by the mean of amendments is really well known by the National Assembly. I said “really” because the insitution deals with about 10.000 amendments each year. I read it on its own website (and it is written in english) . In my opinion, this quantity of amendments is the consequence of the inflation of laws now a days in France, and actually it comes also from the fact that the power to elaborate a law is in the hand of the government (it is called ”rationalized parliamentary system”. Idea : should the french government also deal with e-petitions ? Just joking.

The Rise and Fall (?) of Participatory Electronic Information Infrastructures

by Prof. Åke Grönlund
Örebro University, ESI/Informatics

Around the turn of the century, there were several “e-democracy” projects across the world. They were usually found at local levels of government, but there were also efforts at the national level (e g Macintosh et al, 2001; Hansard, 2002). One such endeavor was the ambitious Swedish Official Committee on Democracy (SOCD), initiated, like many others in other countries, as a measure to tackle the decreasing popular participation in democratic processes and the associated, as it was perceived, decreasing legitimacy of the democratic system (SOCD, 2000). The SOCD, in line with “Strong Democracy” (Barber, 1984; see also Premfors, 2000) concluded that there was currently too much focus on information and services, and too little on the individual’s political role as a citizen.

In the wake of the SOCD, Sweden created the position of Minister of Democracy, and several e-democracy projects aiming at citizen active participation were set up on government funding. There were national awards and a general euphoria around the reinvigorating effects of these projects. Some of them were very ambitious and created considerable change locally over the first couple of years. But then what? To what extent did these “e-democracy” projects lead to lasting change? Were different communication patterns established? Did the information infrastructure within the field of democratic decision-making change?  What follows is a description of two of the then leading projects, in Bollnäs and Kista.