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Technology For Citizen Empowerment and Human Rights

Great panel on Democracy and Voice: Technology For Citizen Empowerment and Human Rights from the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting earlier this month.

The session looked at the impact of digital information on social causes, government reforms, civil society, and the broader economy.

The discussion focused on how people all over the world are demanding the freedom that unfettered social media can provide. Recent news events - from the use of Twitter in Iran to Google's withdrawal from China - have demonstrated that many people now see access to information technology as a basic human right. As such, the global information commons raises serious questions, however, about politics, governance, access, privacy, intellectual property, and cultural change.

Watch live streaming video from cgi_plenary at livestream.com

Commitment Presenter:

Nicholas Kristof, Columnist, The New York Times

Participants:

  • Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor In Chief, The Huffington Post
  • Mohamed Ibrahim, Chairman, Mo Ibrahim Foundation
  • Ashton Kutcher, Co-Chair, Demi and Ashton Foundation Omid Memarian, Journalist, IPS News Agency
  • Pierre Omidyar, Founding Partner, Omidyar Network
  • Maria Otero, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, U.S. Department of State
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The Future of Government/Citizen Engagement

Interesting video from MIT's Center for Future Citiv Media -  The Future of Civic Engagement in a Broadband-Enabled World, a symposium hosted  cooperation with the Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Initiative (broadband.gov).

Moderator: Jerry Mechling, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Speakers:

  • Christopher Csikszentmihalyi, MIT Center for Future Civic Media
  • Nick Grossman, The Open Planning Project
  • Laurel Ruma, O'Reilly Media
  • John Wonderlich, The Sunlight Foundation

Related post from Andrea Dimaio on the issue of capturing knowledge that people have on specific issues and utilising and incorporating it into government to improve its effectiveness and efficiency.

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Developing Countries - Transparency through Technology

The citizen media training initiative of Global Voices Online recently opened their new Transparency website. The site's aim is to provide a resource  to map and evaluate technology projects promoting transparency, accountability, and civic engagement around the world - primarily outside Europe and North America.

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There are currently four case studies available documenting grassroots online technology projects. Each of the cases studies concentracts on either:

  • transparency of government information   
  • accountability of elected officials,
  • or civic engagement in the political process

Current projects include:

  • ADOTE UM VEREADOR - a site encouraging Brazilian citizens to blog about the work of their local elected officials in order to hold them accountable.

  • SITHI - a Cambodian human rights portal aiming to crowdsource and curate reports of human rights violations

  • MZALENDO - tracking the performance of Kenya's Parliament by tracking votes, publishing records, and providing analysis and context

  • VOTA INTELIGENTE - providing Chilean citizens with more information about their elected officials
  • ISHKI - a complaint brokerage which collects and organizes complaints from local citizens about the public and private sector 

The Open Government and Gov 2.0 movement is progressing steadily in Western Europe and North America. It is reported on extensively in the media, through blogs and various social networking sites. The situation outside of these advanced democracies, however, is less well understood and discussed. As such, the Global Voices site provides a necessary portal to highlight advances in democractic accountability and transparency in developing countries.

For more on this worthwhile initiative, visit http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org/.

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The Transformative effect of Web 2.0 on citizen engagement

In October 2009, the National Archives hosted the fifth annual McGowan Forum on Communication, Technology and Government. A panel of distinguished experts discussed the transfomative effect of Web 2.0 on the relationship between citizen and government.

They sought to answer the question: "Can Government 2.0 technologies build a new kind of participatory democracy?"

Moderated by Darrell M. West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, the discussion focused on how collaborative democracy can be designed.

Panelists included Beth Simone Noveck, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Mark H. Webbink, visiting professor of law, New York Law School, and executive director, Center for Patent Innovations; Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder, Public Knowledge; and Jason R. Baron, director of litigation, National Archives.

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