Comments on: ‘Governance-on-the-Go’, or GonGo: the citizen at the center of an IT-enabled governance breakthrough?

By: Tanya Gupta

Tanya Gupta — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:40:01 +0000

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

By: Austin

Austin — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:03:21 +0000

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.

By: News » Twitter for Africa and Good Governance

News » Twitter for Africa and Good Governance — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:13:55 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Alfredo

Alfredo — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:02:43 +0000

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

By: Oleg Petrov

Oleg Petrov — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:57:50 +0000

“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 24×7x365 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

By: Alfredo

Alfredo — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:56:14 +0000

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.