Science and Industry

This topic has been in the line for some time and now it’s actually the time to say something of it. First, a bit of background: the World Bank works in several topics, one of them being e-governance services. I got mail form colleague that I might be intrested to join the session in July and they had real good topics that time.

The question is that what is the next step of governmental services in this forward going society. Actually this is the first thing that usually gets me worried: sometimes we push some values and assumptions so much that we don’t stop to think enough if they are needed by the users. In our case the user, citizen, needs some things but…  I’ve experienced some e-governance works in Finland that were done — actually rather well — but still haven’t flight so well. But during the online discussion I got the image that e-governance services are (thought to) provide transparency in the governance and this transparency is something that’s needed. As I don’t know the local environment of developing countries, I just need to believe.

But then to actual content of the session, which I think is relevant to most developed countries also. Mr. Randeep Sudan spoke many wise words about data interoperability and ability to mash data up. Clear, these services are getting more and more popular in internet services so they should enter the governmental services also. Actually, ability to mash up governance data sounds like a good place to have new innovative services.

As I have my background, I like the mentions of contextual as being one of those things that may allow new ways to interact between citizens and government. What if instead of pulling information of decisions you would get them pushed towards you? Or how could mashing things up with contextual data modify your daily interaction with society? I see hge potential but also huge risks here — and I actually might start working with these kind of questions if Tekes provides some funding for a project. Mr. Sudan also notified how important the mobile services are; this is rather clear as for developing countries — mobile device is de facto internet device.

Mr. Anthony Williams continues with the theme of data interoperability. He used interesting term “broadcast model of politics” — governments should be able to share the information as well as they could and this would generate transparency. This would also help with the changing technical environments, as governmental organizations usually aren’t in the cutting edge of ICT. But then there’s some down sides also: what about privacy? How should we position the privacy against freedom of information? And more — what kind of solution do we need to secure everyones private information. For the latter, we see that even big countries like the Great Britain has a some room for improvement — so is there any way to do this right in the first place?

As always, a bit more questions arise:

• Digital dive and the solutions for that?
• Who develops and maintains these services?
• And how to take care, using Mr. Williams terms: the end result is “gitizen centric goverment” and not just a bunch of services no-one uses?