On invitation by the Electronic Governance Center and the e-Macao Program, I visited Macao for presentations and talks about cooperation on eGovernment projects with the United Nations University - International Institute for Software Technology  (UNU-IIST)

Seminar on CitizenVision 2.0 in e-Macao Program

Summary of presentation

Paper From Electronic Government to Collaborative Governance

Conference Website

Volgens het rapport “Vertrouwen in burgers” van de Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (WRR) dreigt de overheid de aansluiting te missen op een samenleving waarin burgers op velerlei wijze actief willen zijn. Ook de Raad voor het Openbaar Bestuur (ROB) kwam in “Vertrouwen op democratie” tot een vergelijkbare conclusie, namelijk dat de overheid te weinig gebruik maakt van de aanwezige kennis in de samenleving. Al eerder had onderzoek naar eParticipatie door Burgerlink en de Nationale Ombudsman uitgewezen dat de overheid kansen laat liggen: burgers willen best meedoen, mits ze serieus worden genomen.

De WRR vindt het zorgelijk dat weinig burgers zich aangesproken voelen door de huidige pogingen van de overheid om burgers te betrekken. De resultaten daarvan stellen dan ook teleur: er is sprake van weinig leren, het sluit niet aan bij de behoeften van burgers, een structurele inbedding ontbreekt. Vandaar dat de WRR een groot aantal aanbevelingen doet aan beleidsmakers om burgers te verleiden tot actieve betrokkenheid.

De vraag is of dat voldoende is. Het gevaar is niet denkbeeldig dat succes blijft afhangen van toevalligheden, zoals het doorzettingsvermogen van een burger of de ontvankelijkheid van een overheidsorganisatie. Waar het aan schort is een visie op de participatieve democratie, als aanvulling op de representatieve democratie.

De remedie van de WRR is: de overheid moet leren denken vanuit de burger en ruimte bieden voor tegenspel. Dat blijkt gemakkelijker gezegd dan gedaan. Daarvoor is namelijk wederzijds vertrouwen nodig. Dat vertrouwen ontstaat pas als men elkaars ambities en verwachtingen kent en honoreert.

Om een klantgestuurde ontwikkeling van de elektronische overheid te bevorderen, is destijds de BurgerServiceCode opgesteld. Deze kwaliteitsstandaard gaf normen voor de nieuwe verhoudingen. Voor de overgang van de ‘elektronische’ naar de ‘collaboratieve’ overheid waar we nu mee te maken hebben, is een herziene BurgerServiceCode nodig die nieuwe spelregels formuleert.

Volgens de WRR zijn actieve burgers wezenlijk zijn voor een levensvatbare democratie. Ze houden de overheid bij de les, vernieuwen de samenleving en zorgen voor draagvlak. Daarom moet de participatieve democratie als aanvulling op de representatieve een impuls krijgen. Een structurele inbedding van burgerparticipatie is eigenlijk het onafgemaakte deel van de Dualisering. Die modernisering van het (lokale) bestuur in het afgelopen decennium was gericht op de interne verhouding tussen college en raad. Nu is de externe tegenhanger aan bod: een nieuwe relatie overheid – burger. Het is hoog tijd voor een Burgervisie 2.0.

Matt Poelmans is geestelijk vader van de BurgerServiceCode en senior adviseur bij PBLQ (voorheen HEC)

Gepubliceerd in: InGovernment, 2 augustus 2012

Suppose you have a problem, what’s the best way to solve it? How about inviting a selected number of experts on the topic from all over the world, pay for their travel, lock them up in a former prison on an island, seduce them to present their views, facilitate that by excellent food, cleverly moderate the discussion, confront the solutions with the problems, integrate and merge different views, and you’ll end up with a deliverable in the form of a manual to solve your problem. Good for you and inspiring for all participants.

 This is precisely what the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR) did when they discovered that eParticipation at the local and regional level in Sweden needed a boost. Of course there are lots of pilots and experiments, but they felt that a consistent view on possibilities and challenges posed by new media was lacking. So they convened a 48 hour #eSummit about this topic on the island of Långholmen in Stockholm.

The eSummit started with 12 minutes statements by the experts about their core view. These covered Big data society, Co creation, Open government, Crowd sourcing, Participatory budgetting, Collaborative spatial planning, Empowerment by e-charters, Anti corruption & social accountability mechanisms, Business process redesign, and so on. Subsequently the experts worked in twos and fours to integrate their views. These were confronted with the expectations of the hosts as expressed by a “ginger group”.

After this the question arose whether or not Sweden actually does have a problem. Being one of the richest countries in the world, with an egalitarian society and high trust in government, one would hardly believe so. However, after some deliberations it was concluded that an ageing population, increasing expenditure and diminishing tax returns does require new approaches to reform the welfare state and its public sector.

eParticipation, meaning that government is willing to let civil society participate in its processes, can help. Even better is eCollaboration, which assumes a more equal relationship in interaction between government and society, when the latter takes the initiatieve. Like in many other countries, Swedish public administrations experiment with eParticipation, Social media and collaborative tools, but these remain fragmented. So the challenge is to put these together in a consistent framework and embed them in daily work.

Thus the experts started drafting an “eCollaboration Manifesto” consisting of a balanced set of ambitions, expectations, approaches and instruments for state-of-the-art citizen engagement. The first version contains integrated and consolidated suggestions for participative policymaking and public service delivery, to be further elaborated by experts and users. Next generation participation projects should combine public agenda setting, open data and collaborative decision making. This eCollaboration approach can be of help not only in the case of public sector reform, but also in other circumstances, like supporting austerity measures or fighting corruption.

The Swedish firm IKEA reinvented home furniture by going back to its core function and restyling it with utmost simplicity. The eCollaboration Manifesto is an IDEA like IKEA, and will provide a construction manual with eGovernance utensils Swedish Design.

From 22 – 24 April 2012, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) held a meeting in Dublin about “Promoting Good Governance and Combating Corruption in Support of Socio-Economic Development”. I was invited as a panellist for the Session “The key role of civil society towards developing comprehensive and effective anti-corruption approaches”.

My contribution was about the eCitizen Charter as a tool for citizen engagement and social accountability. The invitation was a follow up on two previous meetings organized last year about the same topic, held in Vienna (UNDESA) and Marrakesh (UNCAC).

This panel (photos courtesy OSCE), scheduled at the beginning of the second day, was moderated by Elaine Byrne, an Irish journalist and political scientist. She just this week published a book entitled “Political Corruption in Ireland 1922-2010″.

In my contribution I stressed the importance of clear “rules of engagement” between citizen and governmment. The eCitizen Charter provides a framework which empowers civil society. The use of social media has shown to be effective in fighting corruption, notably in the Arabic world. My plea for participative democracy as a necessary supplement to representative democracy was supported by other speakers later that day.

Other panellists covered topics like training of civil servants (Georg Grabenweger from the International Anti-Corruption Academy and Violetta Yan from the Kirgiz OSCE Academy), transparent procedures (Anne-Christine Wegener of Transparency International), anti money loundering action by banks (Roxana Cefan of Raiffaisen Bank International) and monitoring the UNCAC traty (Londa Esadze of UN Transnational Crime and Corruption Centre). The moderator could summarise that in anti-corruption not one size fits all, but civil society indeed cannot be left out as partner in a comprehensive approach.

The OSCE is an organization under the UN Charter created during the Cold War as a West-East forum, and has 57 participating states from Europe, the former Soviet Union, USA, Canada. The meeting was attended by some 250 representatives from states, academia, civil society, private sector and NGOs.

The first day was devoted to an overview of instruments such as international frameworks, legal instuments and monitoring mechanisms for which the states are responsible. Ppreventing corruption by promoting a culture of integrity, transparency and accountability was also given attention, as were regulatory reforms in public procurement and countering bribery. The rest of the conference covered topics like simplification of business relations, integrity of customs and border services, and identifying and recovering stolen assets.

The meeting, held in Dublin Castle was well organised by mr. Goran Svilanovič, Co-ordinatorof the OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities together with his colleagues Edelmira Campos Núñez and and Andrea Gredler. The background paper prepared by the OSCE secretariat convincingly argues the need for measures against corruption because of the econonomic costs and the losses in trust it causes. Corruption exits everywhere, but it does make a difference whether is has become a fact of life that is tolerated, or whether it is considered as an evil that should be erradicated.

This Dublin event actally was the Second Preparatory Meeting for the September 2012 OSCE Forum on “Promoting Security and Stability through Good Governance”. Because of the busy agenda, an approach that got less attention than it deserves was social media and internet. However, during the closing session both the host of the meeting, the Irish Minister of Justice , and the American Ambassador recommended a robust role by civil society in anticorruption measures as an item on the agenda at the Good Governance meeting later this year in Prague.

The eCitizenCharter is translated in 22 languages, to be found under Downloads

From 8 – 11 April the Bahrain International eGovernment Forum 2012 was held. On invitation by the eGovernment Authority (EGA) of Bahrain I attended the forum as a speaker. The venue was the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Manama, Bahrain’s capital. At the opening session of the forum, attended by the Prime Minster, the host country presented its new eGoverment strategy. Bahrain does comparatively well in the UN eReadiness ranking (number 36 out of 196) and is a leader in integrated online services provided through multichannels (actually number 10 of the world).

The UN eGovernment Survey 2012 apparently was used as selection criteria for the first panel session. Since the Republic of Korea is the world leader followed by the Netherlands, I was the second speaker after Deok Soo Park from Korea. In the same session Bill McCluggage of the UK and Hannes Astok of Estonia presented their countries’ strategies. In my presentation entitled “Citizen Centred eGovernment in the Netherlands” I explained our approach to citizen engagement, with the eCitizen Charter as an awareness tool. Moreover I set out why it’s time for a paradigm shift from eGoverment (technology) to Collaborative Governance (participation), which is necessary for citizen engagement to thrive and contribute to social accountablity.

During the rest of the forum a great number of international speakers presented views and cases on eGovernment and several trends and topicslike Social Media, eParticipation, Mobility, Open Data. There was overall agreement on the need for citizen centricity and inclusion. Many speakers covered this, notably Raul Zambrano of UNDP, Julia Glidden of 21c Consultancy UK, Kei Shimada of Japan, Chris Rourke of UserVision UK, Thomasz Janovsky of UN-IIST in Macao, Stefan Gehrke of Germany. The moderators Richard Kerby and Julia Glidden led stimulating discussions. Noteworthy I found Talal Abu Ghazalah’s speech in which he made a convincing case for the eCitizen and the urgency of education reform and free online learning in the Arabic world. One of the fringe meeting was devoted to legal aspects and privacy, with contributions from Ramazan Altinok of the Turkish Prime Minster’s Office, Nibal Idlebi of UNESCWA and Wojcieh Cellary of Poznan University. One other fringe meeting about social media organised by the Social Media Club of Bahrain was successfully overcrowded.

The forum provided an excellent opportunity to share knowledge and exchange views, and the social program gave the speakers a taste of the country. Memorable was the Royal reception of the speakers by the Crown Prince as acting King. Sincere thanks for a well organised forum and friendly hospitality are due to EGA’s CEO Mohammed Ali Al-Qaed and his Forum organizer Lamya Ebrahim Hasan.

In view of the political situation in Bahrain, I was pleasantly surprised by the open program and free discussions during the conference. Bahrain is criticised for its suppression last year of a revolt which looks similar to other Arabic Spring uprisings. The country is devided into a sunnite ruling class and shiite population majority. The help of Saudi Arabia for the government and the supposed influence of Iran on the opposition complicate the conflict. The present situation seems stable, after an independent Inquiry Commission recommended reforms.

Traveling to Bahrain, I reread Peter Mansfield’s “A History of the Middle East” to refresh my historical knowledge of the region where tradition and religion play another role than in the democratic and egalitarian country I live in.

On my way back I took a stopover in Dubai to see the future and visit the world’s tallest building: Burj Khalifa. That was the last missing on my track record of the top 5 buildings in the world, 4 of which I already saw as a speaker on international conferences: Twin Towers in NY, CN Tower in Toronto, Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and 101 in Taipei.

This Workshop explored how the engagement of citizens—and their organizations in civil society and the private sector—can contribute to improve public accountability in public service delivery and spending. The Workshop enhanced knowledge and built a shared understanding of what participatory institutions, approaches and tools can be adopted by countries to make public service delivery more effective, equitable, transparent, responsive and citizen-centric. This is of particular importance at this time, as the United Nations Members States have identified participatory approaches to the provision of public services as a useful course of action for countries in achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

The meeting was held from 12-13 July 2011 in the UN Headquarters in Vienna. I attended on special invitation by Roberto Vilarreal, chief of Management Development at UNDESA/UNPAN  and presented the eCitizenCharter as a tool for stimulating citizen engagement. His endorsement: “I reiterate my highest professional regard to you as an expert and consultant on eParticipation. I am of the opinion that your leadership and work in the Netherlands about the eCitizen Charter is the most refined and advanced experience with a practical empowering and results-oriented spirit that I have seen around the world in recent times, and that is why I hope that experience can be brought closer to the UN to assist other countries in expanding similarly the rights of their citizens to benefit from the rapid ongoing expansion of eGovernment services.”

Agenda

Presentation