Alejandro@Oxford » e-government

Public computer games: the power of eeLearning (ee: electronic entertainment)

Alejandro — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:21:22 +0000

Last week, on January 29, I went to a talk by Anthony Lilley, chief executive of Magic Lantern productions and News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media at Oxford, on “Network media as a public space”. He talked about the current relevance of the new media in contrast with the “traditional” media like the TV and the radio, in relation with how much the state is investing in each. The TV is getting most of the funds, while the Internet is getting more and more audience.

One of the things he said called my attention: The state should invest in computer games. For they can be a great medium for learning. I couldn’t agree more – public computer games. Until now, only private companies have invested in them, inculcating values that are not necessarily related with a healthy democratic society, just for the sake of profit – the market rules. The state should invest money in making games that can teach values society wants to keep and promote.

There is a new company that is trying to do that, though from the alternative (some may say radical) side: Molleindustria. They have a game on McDonalds, another on religions and another on Catholic priests and pederasts. This company understands games as a way of transmitting values and ideas. Perhaps the public service should understand it the same way and put more attention and funding on this new media.

Links

Google UK politics new site

Alejandro — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 23:07:48 +0000

Google has opened a new UK politics site based on widgets. The people of mySociety have been asked to provide one of its widgets, and theirs is shown quite predominantly on the front page!

Gov 2.0 seminar in London or truly techie stuff

Alejandro — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:36:10 +0000

Today, the OII and Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) organized a seminar titled “Gov 2.0, or truly transformative government“. The subtitle of the conference defines it as “a parliamentary seminar looking at how Government can exploit the success of the contemporary Internet”. It was divided in two. The first session was dedicated to the more “traditional” view to e-government, that is, to big public projects and how to improve them, all the speakers were IT men of a certain generation (see picture): Prof. Martyn Thomas from Oxford University Computing Laboratory, Ross Anderson from Cambridge University Computer Laboratory and John Suffolk, Government Chief Information Officer. Their perspective was rather homogenous and, though they were talking about policy (thus politics) none of them was a political scientist or, for the matter, a social scientist. This is my main complain, they repeated several times how important people are (“it’s the people, stupid” one even paraphrased) and criticized ministers and policy-makers. I really missed a different perspective, which was in a way given by some in audience: one person said that one cannot expect to be two years developing a system without being bothered by the politicians (Ross Anderson’s demand), for the ministers have legitimate political concerns, like transparency; equally Tom Steinberg, the creator and director of mySociety ended the turn of questions with a very clever one: “Who decides what next?”, witty indeed. One person from the audience, to whom I spoke after the first part, did not share my concern, asking me what knowledge political scientist has that other people (like these IT guys (and like him)) don’t. I replied that it is not a question of knowledge, it is a question of perspective: a political scientist will put questions like transparency, privacy/human/political rights or equal accces at the front of any discussion about e-government, an engineer will not, for the latter, efficiency (and flow charts) is the priority.

Session two of the seminar was dedicated to a more radical view of e-government. The speakers were Tom Steinberg, director of mySociety, Jerry Fishenden, Microsoft’s UK lead technology advisor and William Heath, founder of Kable Ltd and moderator of Ideal Government. Besides being skeptical about the “radicality” of anyone coming from Microsoft, I really liked this second part. Tom and William have a very fresh perspective of e-government, and I reckoned that much can be learned from them. William stressed the importance of design ~~and of one single point of access~~ (for this correction see William’s comment below this post); while Tom advocated for small projects, “small is beautiful”, so “stop big projects!”, he said. He showed how small things can make a difference for citizens with the “world premiere” of a map that shows where someone can live in London according to the time he/she wants to spend commuting and money he/she wants (or can) spend in a house. I’d just like to voice a concern from someone in the audience. Public government works within a very stringent framework very much limited by legislation, in contrast to the “freedom” of the private sector, there is, thus, a difference that should be always take into account when judging their performance in achieving the goal of offering a service to the citizen. This is indeed true, however legislation could perfectly be changed if deemed appropriate, couldn’t it?

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Catalunya: 12 million euros for 4 more years of Microsoft

Alejandro — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 11:58:35 +0000

The Catalan government (Generalitat de Catalunya) agreed on December 18 to spend around 12 million euros during the next 4 years for Microsoft software/services (information in Catalan/Spanish). According to them, this represents savings of 3 million euros in relation to the previous contract with the company. Some of the contract conditions are:

Access to all available Microsoft technology with important price reductions. Also important reductions in the operation of information systems to automatize administrative tasks.
No commitment by the Generalitat to buy and no obligation of minimal purchase of resources or products.
Creation of an Centre of Excellence in the Centre de Telecomunicacions i Tecnologies de la Informació (CTTI) with experts from Microsoft for know-how and better practices for all departments in the government.
The creation of a service for software control and permanent support, together with a training programme for the Generalitat’s staff.
The purchase of Microsoft software and services will be by subscription.
Rights for the transmission of licenses between the different departments of the Generalitat.

At first sight, it seems like a good agreement, for there is no apparent obligation to buy Microsoft software or services. However, the fact of signing this agreement with just one company, which is the biggest provider of software in the world and has a near-monopoly of computer systems with its Windows makes it very difficult to believe that this is not de facto a contract to buy software and services from this company for four years. If the Generalitat is thinking seriously of saving money in the mid-long term, it should start thinking and planning the transfer to open source software. This software is free, the money then should be spent in installation, development, training and support: Installation of the Linux system and open source applications; development of applications tailored to the needs of the Catalan administration; training/recycling of the administration staff to the new system and applications; and support of the administration in the use of these open source applications. It is difficult to say how much this would cost, but I reckon in the mid-long term the cost will be much less than having Microsoft monopolizing our IT systems; furthermore open source systems are in many cases much more flexible than one-size-fit-all Microsoft software and services.

So I wonder if the Generalitat (or particularly the CTTI) is thinking of making this step. It might be useful to start evaluating the German experiences (federal and the land Rhineland-Palatinates) in this sense.

e-government and trust

Alejandro — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 15:59:09 +0000

The cc:eGov unit of the European Commission has warned governments in a report about trust problems related to services offered on-line. According to them, the new interface of e-government doesn’t offer the same of trust as “direct experience”. The report uses the example of the Dutch “e-citizen chart” as a way of bringing the citizens and the governments together to bring trust and security to these new services.
More info
Link to report