Italy is stuck in 9-11 mentality when it comes to Internet

I already wrote about how Italy is worsening its delay on Internet take-up by forcing users to authenticate before using any wireless network. It is much more difficult than in other countries in Italy to find a cafe with wifi. Cafes should ask people the ID card and register them before giving them the wifi password. Andrea di Maio blogged on this as well.
The Pisanu law was made in the aftermath of 9-11 as a way to track down possible terrorist activities. Italy was the only country to have such a law and the most unbelievable thing is that it has been renovated every year since then.
This is why I joined the facebook group fighting against this (hat tip alberto cottica).

so long… catching up with the blog

Due to the intense activities for the Open Declaration, I had to leave the blog sleeping for a while. But many things happened recently which I would like to blog about in forthcoming entries:
- presented in Malmo: my write-up and videos available here
- spoke at pdf-europe: audio file available here
- published the report of the workshop on public services 2.0: available here
- book State of the eUnion came out where my paper is featured together with Tim O’Reilly, Lessig, Weinberger… (wow!) – free download
- moderated the Create round table on creative policies in Europe

Sorry for self-promotion. I sometimes use the blog to keep track of myself!

Endorse the open declaration

Draft declaration published – and to be presented in Malmo!!!

As planned, we prepared a draft declaration trying to summarize all the good ideas submitted in a short and readable text. Obivously we had to sacrifice some points for making it short and to the point, but we hope that it is good enough.

It is now your time to provide feedback and input. We published the declaration on a specific page: please provide comments and input to make it better! Furthermore, if you have specific suggestion that you want to include, you can directly edit the supporting document which contains all the most important policy recommendations we received!

The second great news, it that we have been accepted for presenting the declaration officially at the ministerial conference. This was our main goal and it is a great achievement, due mainly to the high level of participation that we achieved in the different phases. So thank to you for supporting us. And thank to the European Commission and to the Swedish presidency for being so open-minded. This is a promising sign for the future of public services in Europe.

Please share your views on the Open Declaration. We have a chance to really make a difference!

[CROSS POSTING FROM eups20.wordpress.com]

Back from ENISA summer school on security and privacy

Monday I presented at ENISA (European Network and Informaton Security Agency) summer school
It was very interesting to be mixed with the security community – while I know very little of it. I presented how differently security and trust are managed in government 2.0 applications, basically emphasizing the importance of self-regulation and soft governance. I also referred to the recent decision of the US government to allow third party authentication (e.g. OpenID) on government websites. This was perfect, because just before me, a representative of the Austrian government presented their eID system, super secure, available to all the population but used only by 3%
So I thought about the following visualization – which I did not have time to add in my presentation

Anyway here is my presentation

And here are 2 articles commenting it, on ITPRO and ComputerWeekly

it’s not about small or large government, gov2.0 is augmented government

CROSS POSTING FROM Open Declaration Blog

I see many metaphors on government 2.0 around. It’s a good sign we’re doing an effort of self-awareness and shared understanding – very much in line with the Open Declaration. We need to structure our thinking and to communicate it better to government. We need to go from cool project to policy proposals, as we write on the eups20 workshop report.
Here are 4 different visions I came across:
- no government scenario: Andrea Di Maio argues that government should give up building interfaces, and concentrating on releasing public data and web services. Private sector will take care of interfaces and identity management. On the same line, Robinson argues that government “rather than struggling, as it currently does, to design sites that meet end-user needs, it should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that «exposes» the underlying data”. Similarly, Sunlight Foundation argues that government should not visualize but only expose the data.
- government websites as public goods: Tom Steinberg argues that citizens should be able to use public websites to connect to each other
- Tao government: with my colleague Cristiano Codagnone we proposed the metaphor of the chinese symbol “Tao”. We recognize that private – community initiative is not a substitute of government: government has a subsidiary role to play to ensure that all citizens benefit from public services. On top of that, these are not alternative, it’s not a zero sum game. Just like the Yin and the Yang are necessary to each other, and permanently changing, government and civil society should both invest in providing services and continuously collaborating to innovate and provide better services and to address the complex societal challenges of our times. The idea has been taken up by the European Commission in its Orientation paper
- Government as a platform: the metaphor of Tim O’Reilly suggests that government should imitate what Facebook, Google Android, and the iPhone AppStore are doing: to become a platform for value-added initiatives by developers. This is a powerful metaphor: it is appealing to government as it refers to similar initiative in the private sector where a mutual gain is realized (for the platform and the developer). Secondly, it reminds me strongly to a classical theoretical notion that sees private/nonprofit initiative as the “extension ladder” of the public welfare state, which was first proposed in 1912 by the Webbs

In summary: just as social software is not about replacing human intelligence with software, but augmenting it, government 2.0 is not a matter of substituting government with bottom-up initiatives, but augmenting its innovativeness and its impact by letting third parties build on top of government data and services.

And this is the point I emphasize in my latest version of the Open Declaration, entitled “what we expect from public services 2.0“.

eups20

Digital and media literacy is key for public services 2.0

CROSS POSTING FROM THE OPEN DECLARATION BLOG

My manifesto (author “osimod”, title “second version”) has a specific priority on skills and education, which is missing in others. I also wrote here on the topic. In my opinion, public services 2.0 can happen only with educated citizens and civil servants. Why?

On the supply side, you need educated people to create web-based services: technically savy, but also entrepreneurial with strong communication skills. In other words, a blend of soft skills which comes from a strong education basis. Only people with this mix of skills will be able to generate and benefit from collective action. To put it bluntly, web developers are in a position to generate services and influence policy much more than normal citizens. On the other hand, people with these skills are now able to gain influence, regardless of their financial capacity.

But the importance of education is even higher on the demand side. Conversation and collaboration require strong analytical and communication skills: this is close to what the EU defines as “media literacy“. Using public services 2.0 requires more sophisticated critical skills, in particular for managing trust and reputation. Understanding if the comments on your hospital posted by users on PatientOpinion requires good analytical skills in order to understand if the information is relevant for you, if it is genuine or driven by personal interests. Using Twitter to look for suggestions and tips on childcare requires the capacity to formulate clear questions and to select the information received. Looking at the different visualisation provided for example by Maplight requires sophisticated analytical capacity.

This is true not only for individual citizens, but for private and public organisations as well. Civil servants need to be equipped with the skills to use web-based application in a creative way for solving daily problems. Familiarity with web2.0 tools and culture is necessary.

In other words, the lack of digital and media literacy poses serious risks of:

- more divide: only skilled people will be able to co-produce and to efficiently use these services. Citizens and organisations lacking digital and media literacy will effectively become second-class citizens.

- populism: open discussion on governments can easily turn destructive or based on prejudice. While transparency opens the way to better accountability, there is a permanent risk that information is used for opportunistic and populistic reasons. This can be avoided only by a well educated population.

- less efficient services: public services 2.0 rely on users in order to self-regulate the services and filter the content. A good critical mass of users is needed for this self-regulation to work effectively.

While this calls for increased investment in training on web 2.0, it is clear that the required skills are not mainly technological, but refer to general education. Without a good, universal education, providing critical skills and civic sense, public services 2.0 are unlikely to have a positive impact. However, much of this learning happens by-doing: therefore the continuous emergence of new projects and services is in itself already providing a learning experience.

In conclusion, education and training are a fundamental requirement for public services 2.0 to have a positive impact in terms of quality of services and social cohesion, and should be part of the manifesto.

eups20

Write your own public services 2.0 manifesto!

CROSS-POSTING FROM EUPS20.WORDPRESS.COM

As per previous post, we decided to split the declaration into a short manifesto and a long supporting programme.

We now ask you all to collaborate on the manifesto. We launched a few proposals on the mixedink platform. Please go there, read, rate, cut and mix in order to co-produce the best and most widely agreed manifesto.

Obviously, the more people we are, the better the content, the more likely we are to get the possibility to present this officially in Malmo!

eups20

public services 2.0 declaration: 3 days left for brainstorming

CROSS-POSTING FROM EUPS20.WORDPRESS.COM
We’re
finishing off the brainstorming phase of the open declaration. Please
lets make the final rush for ideas and comments. Tell us here what is more important to you, and why.

We already had good input and participation: 35 ideas, 75 identified participants and 400 votes submitted.

The more we are, the more likely it is we will get an opportunity to officially present our declaration at the EU ministerial conference on e-government.

After the deadline we will explain the next steps. You can follow all discussion on eups20 group.

eups20

EU consultation on innovation policy: struggling to be web2.0

I came across this consultation on innovation policy launched by the EU. It is interesting to look at what is web2 and what is not, and make some constructive criticisms.

Why it is web2:
- It aims to be cool: The title is “innovation unlimited”. The design is full of round edges and fancy bubbles. It has a high flying motto “reinvent Europe through innovation”.
- It calls for people contributions: “send us your proposal”.  It calls for “sharing ideas”.
- It aims to put innovation at the centre.
- It opens up a conversation before the final report is published (good)
- It has a Twitter account and you can share content on social networks

Why it is not web2:
- The web design is not nice, in the opening screen I only see the banner of EC and of the initiative, while the map is cut half-way.
- It is not clear what people are supposed to do. It calls for people ideas but it aims to discuss the ideas of the “panel”
- people’s ideas are not published but sent to the panel!!!
- it aims to build a new innovation plan. A new plan is not what we need, we need a new culture and a new way of doing things.
- it has a twitter account but doesnt have a hashtag to aggregate conversation by other people
- you can share its content on social networks but not aggregate content from social network

Let me be clear: I welcome the emphasis on innovation and the idea of opening up a dialogue. Still I think this does not go far enough: it embraces more the tools than the culture of web2.0. What do you think?