Torbjörn Fredriksson, UNCTAD’s Chief of ICT Analysis, explains the how good macro- and micro-level data and insight leads to adopting good policies, and highlights how a healthy e-business sector can make a significant contribution to more sustainable communities and economies.

In the area of ICT, what we really need a lot of is impact assessments – to understand what is working, what is not working and why… if government officials don’t have good data it’s very difficult to adopt good policies.

Torbjörn also discusses the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 10-year review, and highlights how collaborations between agencies and disciplines is critical to achieving the objectives of development agendas.

About Torbjörn Fredriksson

Torbjörn Fredriksson is Chief of the ICT Analysis Section of the Division on Technology and Logistics at the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He is among other things the lead author of the annual Information Economy Report, responsible for UNCTAD’s work on measuring the information economy and lead facilitator of the WSIS Action Line on e-Business.

Torbjörn joined UNCTAD in 2000 and was for eight years one of the principal authors of the World Investment Report. Before joining UNCTAD, he held positions at the Invest in Sweden Agency, the Swedish Ministry of Industry and Commerce the Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research in Stockholm. He is the author of several books and has published articles related to international trade and investment in such publications as the Journal of International Business Studies, International Journal of Industrial Organization and the Journal of World Investment.

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Episode links and resources

• UNCTAD website
• World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
• WSIS e-business action line

60-second snapshots

On the importance of measuring the information economy for governments:

On managing expectations about ICT as a tool for development:

On why e-business is important to community development and sustainability:

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The electronic government landscape is increasingly pointing towards a diffusion of power, and an increased role and voice for citizens in public decision-making.

Tomasz Janowski from the UNU-IIST Center for Electronic Governance discusses some of the global trends that he is observing: participatory democracy, the increased regulation of new service delivery channels and the need for leadership in ICT services, challenging the notion of what “whole of government” really means in practice.

With positions of CTO, Chief Knowledge Officer, Chief Innovation Officer emerging, we also see the Government CIO as a consolidating role speaking on behalf of government information technology to other functions of government, and also to the public.

Tomasz also shares some of the recent discussions and shared experiences emerging from the W3C e-Government interest group around the use of social media in Government.

About Dr Tomasz Janowski

Tomasz Janowski is a Senior Research Fellow at the United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology in Macao, where he founded and heads the Center for Electronic Governance. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, where he obtained PhD in Computer Science and Assistant Professor at the University of Gdansk, Poland, where he obtained MSc in Applied Mathematics. He also worked for software companies in Poland and the U.S.

Tomasz’s research focuses on Electronic Governance (EGOV) policy and practice including foundations, education, development frameworks, models and design, measurement, etc. He directs EGOV research, transfers research results into practical instruments, and applies such instruments in government policy and practice. Under his leadership, the EGOV center developed a capacity-based EGOV development framework EGOV.*; built instruments to support the use of this framework; applied the framework in Afghanistan (EGOV.AF), Cameroon (EGOV.CM) and Macao SAR (e-Macao); and contributed to EGOV awareness- and capacity-building in Argentina, Bahrain, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Ghana, India, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Palestine, Philippines, Tunisia, Uganda, Vietnam and other countries.

Tomasz is the co-founder and an international speaker at the  ICEGOV 2012 conference – hear his sneak preview (5 mins) of the conference here.

Feature image courtesy UNU

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Episode links and resources

• United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology and the Center for Electronic Governance
• The Cluetrain Manifesto
• W3C eGov interest group
• W3C eGov LinkedIn group

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Theresa Pardo is well known for her work leading the Center for Technology in Government (CTG). This discussion looks at public value and taking a portfolio approach to open government, as articulated through the CTG’s Public Value Assessment Tool.

In this interview, Theresa explores several dimensions of what it means for governments to authentically deliver public value. Her position that “engagement is not either/or… we need a more nuanced understanding of what we mean by engagement” makes great sense when we think about harnessing diverse perspectives and disciplines to better understand the value that open government can add. The Public Value Assessment Tool asks the questions that practitioners can use to create value-based portfolios of open government initiatives.

We think not so much in terms of measures… but helping government management and government leadership think about value in a way that is more broadly based than the bottom-line return-on-investment models… in government, we need to think beyond the bottom-line.

Theresa also discusses her belief that the next generation of open data will be more about creating community-oriented data resources – creating and presenting data in ways that are of use to specific communities.

The Center for Technology in Government at the University of Albany at the State University of New York are hosts of the 2012 ICEGOV international conference.

About Theresa Pardo

Theresa Pardo is the Director of the Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany at the State University of New York.

Theresa’s current portfolio includes the development of a public value assessment framework for U.S. federal government open government initiatives funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and the development of models of social and technical interactions in cross-boundary information sharing and integration as well as information technology enterprise governance. In addition to funding from NSF, Theresa’s research at CTG has been funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Library of Congress, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the United Nations and New York State and local government agencies, among others.

Theresa is a Research Associate Professor at the Rockefeller College of Public Administration and Policy and an affiliated faculty member of the College of Computing and Information at the University at Albany. She is one of the founding developers of the highly ranked Government Information Strategy and Management curriculum at Rockefeller College. The academic program focuses on the policy, management and technology dimensions of information and technology use in the design and delivery of government programs. In 2008, Theresa received the University at Albany’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

Theresa is also the co-chair of the ICEGOV 2012 conference – hear her sneak preview (5 mins) of the conference here.

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Episode links and resources

• Center for Technology in Government (CTG)
• CTG projects
  • A Public Value Analysis Tool for Open Government Planning
  • Opening Government: Modeling the Informational Relationships between Government and Society
  • Moldova – social media and open government
• Philly Rising Collaborative

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With the emergence of new trends like open government and open data, there is a perception by many that eGovernment is yesterday’s news, and has largely been completed.

In a candid conversation, Barbara-Chiara Ubaldi, head of the OECD’s eGovernment unit, explains that there is much work still to be done to bring eGovernment into the daily work of the public sector.

In the real world, policymakers responsible for individual areas still don’t talk to each other, don’t work together – so, we still haven’t reached that level of interoperability, integration and coordination which is indeed essential for the implementation of larger interests like open government, for instance.

Barbara also highlights the ways in which the OECD is starting to connect the dots between national eGovernment policymaking and practical implementation by both the public sector and civil society.

About Barbara-Chiara Ubaldi

Since October 2010, Barbara-Chiara Ubaldi has led the OECD E-Government Project within the Division for Public Sector Reform at the Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate.

Ms. Ubaldi has been serving the OECD as Policy Analyst since February 2009. In this capacity, she managed a number of thematic reviews on e-government and participated in several Public Governance Reviews, which include Denmark, Greece, Mexico, Italy, Estonia, Egypt, Spain and France. Ms. Ubaldi has been co-ordinating for the past three years the OECD work on e-government indicators and the analysis on the use of new technologies – such as cloud computing and mobile technology – to enhance public sector’s agility and mobility, as well as open government.

Prior to joining the OECD she worked for more than seven years as Programme Officer at the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York where she was responsible for the full scale management of technical cooperation programmes targeting e-government and ICT use in the public sector, and for developing the content of online self-assessment and capacity building tools in the area of e-government and knowledge management.

Ms. Ubaldi is also a speaker at the ICEGOV 2012 conference – hear her sneak preview (5 mins) of the conference here.

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Episode links and resources

• OECD eGovernment Unit
• OECD report on M-Government
• OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation

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Digital public sector recordkeeping is one of the unsung cornerstones in the open government and open data discussion.

Dr Anne Thurston talks about past and current challenges of digital recordkeeping and preservation for government – particularly in developing countries.  She also highlights how the open government movement holds opportunities for the public sector recordkeeping profession.

About Dr Anne Thurston

Anne Thurston has pioneered international solutions for managing public sector records that can be shared with developing nations. Between 1970 and 1980 she lived in Kenya where she conducted research before joining the staff of the Kenya National Archives. In 1980 she became a lecturer, later a Reader in International Records Studies at the School of Library, Archive and Information Studies, University College London. She established the International Records Management Trust in 1989 and continues to be its Director. In 1996 she left University College London to concentrate fully on the work of the Trust. In the 1990s, recognising the impact of the rapid changes in the use of information technology on the management of public sector records, she structured the Trust to define means of addressing the impact of these changes.

Dr Thurston was a member of the UK Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on Public Records from 1994 to 2000. She was awarded an OBE for services to public administration in Africa in 2000 and a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Records Management Society of the UK in 2007. She was awarded the Emmett Leahy Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Information and Records Management Profession in 2007.

Dr Thurston is also a speaker at the ICEGOV 2012 conference – hear her sneak preview (5 mins) of the conference here.

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Episode links and resources

• International Records Management Trust website

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The 54 countries of the Commonwealth of Nations represents more than 2 billion people across every region of the world and a vast diversity in development and capacity.

Professor Tim Unwin, well-known as UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, now heads up the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO). In this wide-ranging and provocative discussion, he explores the impact of ICT across diverse economies, the value of technology for governance and also provides an overview of the CTO’s work.

Prof. Unwin claims that, while it can change the relationship between citizens and the state, technology by itself doesn’t change very much.  It is how people use the technology that matters.  He also argues that social media’s role in participatory democracy may be over-hyped, and that while technology can accelerate change, it only does so for those who have not only access but also the literacy to use it, and that an over-focus on technology can in fact create a greater development divide.

If ICTs are to be used effectively by governments, all their people need to access them – otherwise, they’re going to lead to greater inequalities.

About Prof. Tim Unwin

Tim Unwin has been Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation since September 2011. He is also Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK, UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, and Emeritus Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. From 2001-2004 he led the UK Prime Minister’s Imfundo: Partnership for IT in Education initiative based within the Department for International Development (DFID), and from 2007 he was Director and then Senior Advisor (until 2011) to the World Economic Forum’s Partnerships for Education initiative with UNESCO. His recent work has concentrated  on the use of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), and in 2004 he created the ICT4D Collective at Royal Holloway, University of London, which is now one of the world’s leading centres for ICT4D research and teaching.

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Episode links and resources

• Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation
• CTO Strategic Plan (PDF)
• Tim Unwin’s blog
• The ICT4D Collective

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Join a discussion with Tariq Khokar, the World Bank’s Open Data Evangelist.

We chat  about how data is impacting development priorities, and how the World Bank is playing a leading role in providing open data for new applications and services.