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‘Governance-on-the-Go’, or GonGo: the citizen at the center of an IT-enabled governance breakthrough?
By Kaufmann | July 22, 2008 6 Comments »
I am now at the Fortune BrainstormTech, which aims to relate innovations in technology to larger world problems it can solve. The event just started, featuring fascinating evening panels with tech leaders (here). One of the sessions I will co-lead tomorrow, with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, is on governance. In this forthcoming interactive lab we will try to advance the discussion on the interface between ICT, governance and government. A contribution I will try to make is by distinguishing between e-government and m-governance, and to ask for ideas on how m-governance can be taken to the next stage.
For many years already, the IT revolution has brought about innovation supporting the modernization of the public sector, in industrialized and developing countries. The major advances took place in what is called e-government, namely electronic government, or the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) by government agencies in the provision of public services and in interacting with their constituencies.
This has been highly valuable. But e-government, focused on government services, has under-emphasized broader aspects of governance, particularly those where citizens and institutions outside of government play a key role. People have not been at the center of e-government, and e-government applications have often been static and immobile, relying on IT infrastructure which is out of reach for most locations and citizens in developing countries.
But the good news is that recently a dynamic IT-revolution has been afoot, placing the citizen center stage. It is m-governance, or ‘Governance-on-the-Go’ (GonGo), with the focus on (mobile) governance rather than only on government. ’GonGo’ is enabling open, fluid and interactive ways for people to relate with each other and with institutions, including civil society and NGOs, the private sector, media, parliaments, and also public institutions.
This allows IT to be embedded into the mobile citizen, thanks to the breakthrough synergy of various technologies. In particular, consider what a citizen can do as s/he goes about their day, thanks to the interaction between the cellphone, SMS text messaging (or MMS for pictures and video) and micro-blogging, such as Twitter. These have already empowered millions of highly mobile citizens everywhere to improve governance, democracy, and peace — and also in poor and remote corners of the world.
Some examples include the use of text-messaging during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the citizens protests in Philippines and Lebanon. Very recently, witness the role of of while micro-blogging, where Twitter enabled on-time reporting of China’s earthquake, in fact a full hour before CNN or other traditional media reported it, and even before the US Geological Site had news. Or the role of text message during Burma’s crackdown on the monks of Burma (Myanmar). And I have written before on the importance of blogging in Kenya, where m-governance has also been effectively used, with Ushahidi, Mashada, and BungeSMS, among others, informing and organizing citizens during and after the post-electoral crisis.
Mobility is essential, hence the power of placing at the citizen’s fingertips an affordable and accessible cell. In Africa for instance, for each 100 inhabitants, there are almost 30 mobile (and due to sharing of cell phones, subscribers the actual access is much larger than that), while there are only about 5 internet users, 3 fixed phone lines, and 0.2 broadband users (here for data).
Of course, infrastructure investments also need to continue so to provide more internet and PC access to citizens. But these need to become more accessible, mobile, and embedded into the person, thus converging with handhelds and cellphony, placing citizens and their mobile needs center stage so to help them further good governance.
Topics: Aid Effectiveness, Corruption, Rule of Law, Transparency, Voice and Human Rights | | 6 Comments
July 22nd, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Fortunately mobile solutions are becoming a widely accessible and not so expensive tool to improve governance in developing countries.
To the many examples already mentioned, I will add the case of Myanmar, where cellphones and the web played a significant role to show the world the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations that were followed by a military repression.
The article “Cell Phones, Web Spread News of Myanmar” elaborate pretty well on the topic. (http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3656364)
What is really striking is the fact that even when there were attempts by the government to cut the cellphone service, at the end it could not entirely control technology, leaving the door open for vibrant social groups that were trying to make a difference.
In a similar way, technology (in this case blogging) is giving voice to citizens in China. (see Huge New Wave of Blogging in China
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/23/business/bloggers.php).
In both cases, governance is being exercised in innovative ways, most of them instantly or on-the-go. Although technology is not enough to improve governance it seems to be an efficient tool when people are really to make a change.
July 24th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
“Mobilizing” Governance and Development
Submitted by Oleg Petrov (not verified) on Wed, 07/23/2008 – 17:17.
m-Governance is indeed quickly emerging as a new frontier of e-governance and as one of its most exciting aspects. It is part of a broader phenomenon of “mobilizing” development or using mobile technologies to enable better development results, including better governance.
In theory, many government services can be now made available on a 24x7x365 basis at any place in the world covered by mobile networks, which today means almost everywhere. According to an estimate by R. Chandrashekar, Additional Secretary (e-Gov), Government of India, approximately 50%–60% of government services in India can be delivered via mobile channel.
World Bank’s e-Development Thematic Group takes this opportunity very seriously and that’s why we organized several events on “mobile governance” and “mobile development” in the last 2 years.
More information, including many examples is available at our special web coverage on m-governance at: http://go.worldbank.org/7D28MGTQ70
July 24th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
The debate and comments about GonGo and m-governance are generating an interesting discussion. Another blog entry was posted by myself today at the Governance Matters Blog.
Please see http://governanceblog.worldbank.org/gongo-democracy-how-mobile-technology-changing-way-grassroots-organizations-monitor-elections
July 27th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
[...] with Daniel Kaufmann, the Director, Governance and Anti-Corruption World Bank Institute. In his post before the session, he distinguishes between e-government and m-government: …But e-government, focused on [...]
August 5th, 2008 at 12:03 am
This is a very interesting concept. It reminds me of a great book I read many years ago by Alvin Toffler, tittled “Third Wave”. In that book Mr. Toffler talks about how technology can be leveraged to curtail state tyranny. He gave the example of how the students in china use fax machines to get their messages out of china during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
But technology has fast evolved since then and the prospects are even better now.
August 19th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
I have been enjoying your Governance blog, especially the recent ones on Web 2.0 and governance on the go. You say that e-government has focused on the services aspect at the expense of the other aspects of governance. I completely agree. My feeling is e-government is focused on services to the exclusion of other, equally important aspects of governance because of the dominance of technology and technology experts in the field. For instance, a lot of the responses to your blog have not really responded to the points you are making regarding widening the scope of e-government, but to the promise of mobile technology. To extend the argument a bit, I would even add that work on governance has also ignored the recent trends of globalization and technology.
I don’t want to under-emphasize the importance of technology and its potential. We are lucky to live in an age which is seeing huge advances in technology. To use your words, it can “turn the world upside down”. But if we focus on the technology without thinking about other important aspects of good governance, our reform efforts will either fail or be less than completely effective. If our work on governance fails to take into account Web 2.0/3.0 with its resulting emergent communities then our models and our data will fail to capture the true dynamics of the situation we face today. In the same way, we cannot ignore the fact that traditional governance actors are being supplanted with non-state, collaborative entities fueled by the new Web. There is, therefore, a need for both sides to re-think their approach to global democratic governance as well as e-government (if we are to even continue calling it that). I will post a link on my CLAD paper on this subject when it is formally issued