ICt for Empowerment and Participation

[Adrien Mangin]

I find this article about empowerment and ICT, and I think it could be fine to start talking on these topics.

http://www.opt-init.org/framework/pages/2.2.4.html

2.2.4 ICT for Empowerment and Participation

ICT can contribute to fostering empowerment and participation and making government processes more efficient and transparent by encouraging communication and information-sharing among people and organizations, and within government.
Using ICT, governments can improve the quality and responsiveness of the services they provide to their citizens as well as expand the reach and accessibility of services and public infrastructure. This is facilitated by e-government applications that provide services and information to citizens over the Internet and other communication networks. In the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, the government is introducing an experimental intranet computer network for government services and local information. This allows citizens to have faster and more transparent access to government services. For example, farmers can get copies of land titles for 10 cents that previously cost as much as US$100 from corrupt officials. Andhra Pradesh in India has also launched Internet-enabled integrated service centres providing access to different types of government services.

ICT connects individuals and local communities with information and resources beyond their geographic boundaries, encouraging information dissemination, information exchange and communication. Citizens are encouraged to participate in the democratic process through ICT mechanisms such as electronic forums and bulletin boards, which enable participation in public discussions. This is especially relevant for marginalized communities and groups such as women, youth and ethnic minorities: they can share and exchange information of mutual interest, strengthen their collective power and shape their own development solutions. A women's group in Mexico City, for example, used email to ask sympathizers in California to do research on the textile factory where they worked. When the women's jobs were threatened, they came to management armed with information on the company, its profits and its ownership to negotiate better conditions and more secure tenure.

Organizations in developing countries also find it increasingly feasible to participate in information-sharing that strengthens governance and collective power, allowing them to influence political and institutional decision-making processes. Trade unions, for example, have used the Internet as a campaigning tool to organize labour globally in the fight against exploitation. Global networks played a crucial role in helping unionized Guatemalan workers to join with other union groups and lobby governments and multilaterals to gain recognition and wage increases from Pepsi-Cola in the mid-1990s.

Ejemplo:

SANGONet

Application Model:

SANGONet is an electronic information and communications network for development and human rights workers in Southern Africa. It provides relevant information to people working on development issues by allowing them to communicate with each other on its web site (http://www.ngopulse.org/), and by building capacity in electronic communications within non-governmental, community-based, government and private sector organizations. SANGONet's priorities include open government, ICT, education, health, economy, labour, women, human rights and the environment. SANGONet is a member of the non-profit Association for Progressive Communications (APC).

Illustrative Impact:

• SANGONet empowers people and organizations to make decisions based on relevant information.

• NGOs and other organizations can communicate more efficiently and effectively using email software and services provided by SANGONet.

• NGOs, especially small to medium-sized organizations which face a lack of ICT skills, are taking advantage of SANGONet's low cost support services and training programs to improve their internal capabilities and operations.

Challenges:

The lack of reliable and affordable telecommunications and power infrastructure is still a barrier to encouraging widespread utilization of SANGONet's functions. In addition, although people and organizations can effectively use ICT to improve their information exchange and communications, strong leadership and management capabilities are required to translate information into coordinated action.
Source: http://www.ngopulse.org/

I think that it could be interesting to start talking about this document which is focused on ICT for Empowerment and Participation.

One of the main points is that the author focused its approach of the empowerment on the democratic process, which permits people to contact with the government’s administrations; and on possibilities that ICT offer to create global networks.

Regarding the participation of citizens in democratic process through ICT mechanism, we can ask us on the real weight of such services in developing countries, as there is a lack of internet infrastructures and of digital literacy, and so on: what is the real role and weight of e-government applications nowadays in such countries? Do they really implement the empowerment of citizens?

In my opinion, the participation in Global Networks depends on the same things.
It seems clear that global network helping to share information and to strengthen governance and collective power are playing a very important role in the empowerment of citizens.

In the Sangonet case, they say that “SANGONet empowers people and organizations to make decisions based on relevant information”. But, is the empowerment in the fact that Sangonet provides people information to make decisions, or is the empowerment in the fact that people “consult” this information to “make” decisions?

Is the “Empowerment” the only fact to give access to the information to people, or is there a need of other things such as the fact that people “use” this information if we want to talk about “Empowerment”?

If we take a look to the Empowerment definition, we can read: “Empowerment refers to increasing the spiritual, political, social or economic strength of individuals and communities. It often involves the empowered developing confidence in their own capacities” (Wikipedia).

If we take a look to Wikipedia, it seems that empowerment is a cocktail of “capacities” and “knowledge”. By the way, (still in the Wikipedia), we can find a list of capabilities that probably are part of the empowerment:

• Having decision-making power of one's own
• Having access to information and resources for taking proper decision
• Having a range of options from which you can make choices (not just yes/no, either/or.)
• Ability to exercise assertiveness in collective decision making
• Having positive thinking on the ability to make change
• Ability to learn skills for improving one's personal or group power.
• Ability to change others’ perceptions by democratic means.
• Involving in the growth process and changes that is never ending and self-initiated
• Increasing one's positive self-image and overcoming stigma
• Increasing one's ability in discreet thinking to sort out right and wrong

The Sangonet project responds clearly to the 2nd one. But it doesn’t seem that it responds to the other ones. So is the Sangonet project empowering citizens?

I think that the empowerment needs a holistic approach and so on, if we consider a project that doesn’t respond to a holistic approach, can we consider that it empowers people?

[Florian Sturm]

I think that a substantial thing ICTs can offer, is to provide people with an idea what they are capable of.

Tom Steinberg's projects on e-democracy (http://www.theyworkforyou.com/, http://www.writetothem.com/ - where information on politicians and statistics on what they voted for, which requests they answered to, ... are transparent) show in my opinion impressively, how publicly available, easily accessible information can shift the power balance to the former powerless.
The example of the women in Mexico City points in the same direction.

A key focus for ICT tools for empowerment and participation is therefore to simplify the whole process for the people. I also think that this is a good starting point for initiatives and projects, as small successes can motivate people to ask for more.
Thus, I think that a holistic approach for projects is not necessary.

[Adrien Mangin]

I am totally agree with you that to make information easily accessible is a great point for the empowerment.
Yet , Tom Steinberg's projects on e-democracy will not have the same weight in Africa that in Europe, for the simple fact that less people have access to internet, that there is less litteracy, etc.
What I mean is that if you make easier the access to the information through internet but you don't make easier the access to internet, you don't work on the litteracy of people, etc., can we consider that your project is empowering citizens?
Well, maybe I should say "how much" can we consider your project is empowering citizens ?

When I was saying that a holistic approach could be necesary, I meant that if you take all this elements in account, your project will "empower" more citizens.

For example, in the case of Tom Steinberg's projects, if we want to implement them in Africa, it would be more eficient if they would be accesible by mobile.

By the way, I think that other the thing that is very important, to know if a project is empowering people, is what people manage to obtain through such projects.
For example, if we consider Tom Steinberg's project "They work for you", is this project manage changes in the comportment of Deputies?

best,

Adrien

[Maria]

If we talk about information in web pages,I think that an important thing to check is the web accessibility, you can write the most useful information in your page, but they can be a lot of people that can't access to it because they have some kind of disability.

[Adrien Mangin]

Yes, I think it to. Accessibility is the first prerequisite. Most of the Internet applications provide a service that manage to permit people obtain somehting. By the way, the accessibility to the this service is a prerequisite and so accesibility to internet, web accessibility, digital litteracy are a prerequisite.

That's why, I think that we can evaluate if a project/service is empowering people just evaluating this one, but evaluating the degree of "empowerment" that this one provides (I am not sure it is the right word... ;-)) in function of the results that it manage.

[Florian Sturm]

of course accessibility is important and all the tools necessary to increase it are already there;
I think it's easy to set up an engine on every project which for example reads text and provides a telephone number for it, so that also people without computers can obtain the information;
also sms services can be a good substitute for an internet connection, just look at Nokia who now provide an email service via sms;
so in my opinion accessibility has a lot to do with the interfaces a service provides;

[Adrien Mangin]

Hi Florian,

And do you know other projects such as the ones of Mysociety that are working on empowering citizens and that it could be interesting to present there?

Thanks,

Adrien