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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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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Jenny Clark and David Kane from the UK’s National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) are bringing civil society to the open data table through their Voluntary Sector DataStore and associated initiatives.

Jenny and David talk about ‘dipping the toe in the water’ to bring together the data collected held and collected by voluntary and community organisations in the UK, and support civil society to contribute to and benefit from open data for the public sphere.

We had this idea that open data was the next big thing for the voluntary sector and possibly something that could really help organisations to change the way they run themsevles and the work they do… but we also knew the sector was starting from scratch.

About Jenny Clark

Jenny is the Research Manager for the NCVO and has managed NCVO’s quantitative research programme since 2008. Jenny has specialist skills in labour market analysis, survey design and data analysis and has written a number of user friendly research publications including the NCVO Almanac series.  Jenny has nine years research experience within a public policy department and holds an MSc with distinction in Advanced Social Research Methods and Statistics.

About David Kane

David Kane is a research officer, leading on the quantitative analysis of data for NCVO’s work on the size and scope of civil society, and is an author of the UK Civil Society Almanac 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012, the State and the Voluntary Sector and the UK Voluntary Sector Almanac 2007. David leads NCVO’s involvement in research to classify voluntary sector organisations and in open data.

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Episode links and resources

• NCVO website
• Voluntary Sector DataStore
• Jenny Clark’s blog
• David Kane’s blog
• London DataStore
• data.gov.uk

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• Tags: #opendata

The Sunlight Foundation brings together developers, journalists and citizens to explore issues of transparency and openness in the public sphere.

Sunlight’s Director of Policy John Wonderlich shares national and international perspectives on open government, where collaboration between government and civil society, and good decision-making about data are the next open government frontiers for public agencies.

John also highlights key learnings from their 2012 Transparency Camp as well as the Open Government Partnership meeting in Brazil.

A vision for open government has to be developed collaboratively or else it’s not open government – it’s going to turn into something else because there’s lots of different kinds of stakeholders. In a sense, it’s one of the broadest issues imaginable becuase anyone who works on any other kind of issue us going to have a stake in open government.

About John Wonderlich

John Wonderlich is the policy director for the Sunlight Foundation and one of the nation’s foremost advocates for open government. John spearheads Sunlight’s goal of changing the government by opening up key data sources and information to make government more accountable to citizens. He is one of the foremost authorities on transparency policy, from legislation and accountability in Congress to ethics and information policy in the executive branch.

John has spoken internationally on technology and transparency and has testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He has appeared on NPR, Fox News and C-SPAN, and his expertise has been cited by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media outlets..

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Episode links and resources

• Sunlight Foundation website and blog
• Transparency Camp
• Open Government Partnership
• Scout alerts initiative
• Reporting at Sunlight Foundation
• Influence Explorer
• Other Sunlight Foundation projects
• Blog post on the Missing Open Data Policy

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• Tags: #opengov #opendata #transparency