Globalisation, Information Policy and Strategy
          Michael Blakemore, Brno, 24 November 2004
 Michael.blakemore@I-dra.org, michael.blakemore@durham.ac.uk
                              

                              
           The role of Government in Globalisation
The political mentality of `rule'
  Defining `territory' -- now you are Europeans
  The European `regulatory state'
  Assumptions about the knowledge and skills of citizens
  Social and economic mobility in global capitalism
  
`Science' and `technoscience' -- Technological governance
  `Mis-placed concretness'
  What are the `arrangements' or relationships between the
  social and the technical?
  
Who controls the `rules' of technology spaces?
  Lessig -- the code (e-commerce etc.)
  Interacting zones of information circulation and
  regulation
                              
                     Information Society
`Immanence' versus `Transcendence', to immanence
  (Change and uncertainty versus stability and certainty)

The `disinformed' information society (Overload)
                              
The network society promotes communication and circulation
of information
                              
Non-linear power
Flow-enhancing disintermediation -- displaces old embedded
intermediaries
Tendency to react by censoring (Saudi and photo-phones)

Hyperspeed expectations versus risk and informational damage
Coordinate space and virtual spaces
New languages of communication

                  The Geographic Dimension
Citizens and Businesses as Customers
  Who are they? (Identity)
  Where are they? (Location)
  What do they require? (Integration, Sharing, Rules and
  Legislation)

Citizens and Businesses as Partners
  What can they add for citizen services?
  What can they do that Government cannot?
  
Diluting and de-regulating government data monopolies

Emerging strategic tensions


             EU Public Sector Information (PSI)
PSI and the EU
  Green Paper
  Directive December 2003
  
"Public sector information is an important primary material
for digital content products and services and will become an
even more important content resource with the development of
wireless content services".

"ensure fair, proportionate and non-discriminatory
conditions for the re-use of such information".
                              
PSI should be available
  It is vital for economic activity and growth, and for
  democracy and accountability
  It has been paid for through taxation
  It is disparately held across government in multiple
  formats and structure
  Information often is a form of Departmental power, so
  information politics add turbulence
  
But the collection, documentation, enhancement,
dissemination and support all cost money

So, who pays?
  
                 Legislation and structures
Freedom of information
  But, highly constrained with caveats about security,
  secrecy, resource requirements and `public interest'.
  Restrictions -- to citizens?
  Post 9/11 `data scrubbing'
  
Data Protection
  Protecting the privacy and confidentiality of citizens
  who disclose their sensitive data to government
  But, also highly affects the detail of PSI that can be
  disclosed through rules of disclosure control
     The 2001 UK Census of Population
     
Universal Access and Human Rights

Much less clear identification of ethics and good practice
in the re-use of PSI, and what Government can say with PSI
....

                        Wider issues
Government and legislative
  Should there be an information ministry?
The paradox of privacy, anonymity, and surveillance
(panopticon)
                              
                    Progression in the EU
Delivering everything that we could not do before? Whatever
happened to:
  Information Systems
  Expert Systems
  Artificial Intelligence
  IT and ICT cost-benefits
Automation and electronic delivery
Benchmarking and global/regional presence
Reviewing uneven progress and understanding the role and
needs of citizens
Identifying the bilateral relationship between citizens and
government
                              



                    The turbulent context
Global and Glocal
  Identity management versus identity
  Trust and security
  
  Re-bordering space electronically (Techno-nationalism)
  `Overproducing' information
  The open market, free flows of human capital, and the
  need to monitor those flows
  
  Citizenship rights and obligations
  IT homogeneity and viral analogies (monocultures)

Forecasting technological and social change
  The magic bullet
  Information resistance (Cyberterrorism)
  Cybercrime (Hacking, ID fraud)
  
Non-linear outcomes of ICT use
  Inclusion and Exclusion: age, gender, education
  Turbulent outcomes -- Bedouin in Jordan
  Unevenly modulating unevenness
  Disintermediation versus remediation
  The pre-requisite of education and skills (IT Literacy)
                              
               Recent change of European focus
Civil Society with Active Citizenship, both inside and
outside the state -- complex identities

Complex citizenship and fluid identities, increasingly non-
space placed
  The global citizen in the global labour market, but why
  show any commitment to that society?
  Participatory Democracy
  Trust
  e-Voting
  Online consultation
  
The paradox of inclusion -- capitalism needs differences