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IT for Governing or for Governance?: From Hungary to Chile to Burma
By Kaufmann | April 1, 2008 3 Comments »
‘Governing’ or managing a country more efficiently used to be the preferred and top-down interpretation of the concept of governance in the past, as discussed in my previous posting, addressing myth # 3 – which challenged some of the ‘governorexics’ and ’governoskeptics’. Through a few illustrations, let me selectively showcase how a few IT-related innovations were put to use for past ‘governing’ objectives, and lets see how applications of IT did evolve alongside the broadening understanding of what constitutes good governance.
Fast rewind to half a century ago: Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, late 1950’s. From the recent memoirs of the highly influential Hungarian economist Janos Kornai we read how, fifty years ago, even as he was already abandoning communism, the advent of computing was applied to make central planning more ’scientific’. Linear programming techniques were used to find the optimal mix of inputs to produce output targets, first pioneered by Kantorovich in the Soviet Union, later to be adapted by Kornai and others (in the New York Review of Books, on Kornai’s ”By force of thought: Irregular Memoirs of an Intellectual Journey”).
Fast forward, 15 years later: Chile, 1973. Enter project Cybersyn, led by Stafford Beer, a Brit who tried to help Allende find IT variants of the Cuba and Soviet model, and who worked with a young IT team of Chileans. As reported in the New York Times, this is all now part of a museum exhibit beneath La Moneda, the presidential palace, where one can see ‘a Star Trek-like chair with controls in the armrests’ (here the Wikipedia picture of the control room 35 years ago).
Cybersyn envisaged for the “room to receive computer reports based on data flowing from telex machines connected to factories throughout the country. Managers were to sit in seven of the contoured chairs and make critical decisions about the reports displayed on projection screens….Allende remained committed to Cybersyn to the end. On Sept. 8, 1973, he gave orders to move the operations room to the presidential palace. But three days later the military took over…” (NYT, March 28th). Following the coup, Pinochet and his cadre were rather intrigued by this project.
Continue to fast forward, another 15 years later: Chile, 1988. It is the eve of the plebiscite organized by Pinochet to try and stay for another decade in power, confident at he will get the YES vote due to a recovering economy at that point. A group of concerned civil society leaders, academics, statisticians and IT-specialists get together. Their aim is to prepare an independent and reliable prediction of the final outcome of the plebiscite, to be ready shortly after the polls close that evening in October. Given the unreliability of exit polls, particularly among fearful citizens in any undemocratic setting, these Chilean experts were to rely instead on actual early returns from polling stations around the country to make their prediction. A special statistical model was constructed for this task, since there was no historical electoral data during the long Pinochet rule.
The IT-team and computer system were absconded in a secret location, and they had their own power generator, guarding against the possibility of their efforts being undermined by the authorities. By early evening that plebiscite day, they predicted a definitive win for the NO vote (to Pinochet’s perpetuation), which turned out to be within a half a percentage point of the actual NO count. While there appeared to have been plans afoot by Pinochet to tamper with the actual results of the plebiscite, he had to concede a few hours later. Shortly thereafter, democracy returned in Chile. This episode illustrates the power of IT, combined with smart statistics, to promote good governance in its more modern and bottom-up and version of the term…
Fast forwarding another twenty years, to this day: IT innovations continue to make a difference for broad-based governance and transparency; witness what text and picture messaging via cell phones during the Orange revolution in Ukraine and the Saphron uprising in Burma (Myanmar) accomplished, for example. The role of blogs in East Asia and Africa during the recent upheavals in Burma and Kenya provide rather potent illustrations as well.
Yet it appears that much more can still be done to exploit the full potential of IT for good governance broadly understood, complementing progress attained on IT initiatives for enhanced public sector effectiveness. For instance, adapted versions of the Chilean plebiscite approach (based on actual returns), could have helped in a number of recent flawed elections in Africa, and may be of use in some upcoming polls elsewhere. More generally, consider this untapped potential: if one googles ‘e-government’, it provides access to 10 times the amount of resources than if one searches for ’e-governance’. Full fledged blogging through SMS next, perhaps?
[Full disclosure: one of the architects of the statistical prediction effort during the 1988 Chilean plebiscite, Prof. Eduardo Engel, happens to be my cousin]
[PS: Aqui un blog entry en español]
Topics: Corruption, Measurement Frontiers, Rule of Law, Transparency, Voice and Human Rights | | 3 Comments
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Algo de este estilo permitió, en diciembre de 2007 en Venezuela, el semi-milagro de lograr que se reconozca el rechazo a las reformas constitucionales que habrían eternizado a Hugo Chávez en el poder.
La mala noticia es que con la “Ley Habilitante” que aprobó la Asamblea Nacional (conformado en su totalidad por chavistas) y que le permite gobernar por decreto durante 18 meses, más los enormes recursos económicos a su disposición, está intentando implementar sus reformas rechazadas por la fuerza. esperamos otro semi-milagro acompañado por algo de racionalidad de la oposición.
Te felicito por esta página.
April 4th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Regarding project Cybersys done during the early 70s by the socialist government of mister Allende, in my view it was not related with governance, the main objective was to model a centralized economy as is established on the left side of the politics. It was an experiment supported by an IT model.
Only one company was included on it before the military cup, it was Muebles Easton a furniture “privatised” company (expropriated).
As Allende’s government was “anti-imperialist” (you need to read it as anti USA) french mainframes were acquiried while main country data centers were based on IBM technology
Today a number of people that participated on the experiment is still alive, current senator Fernando Flores, Tomas Kohn current company advisor.
Also the reader should have clear, Staffor Beer was very close to the left side of the politics and his famous book “Brain of the Firm” was a model on early 70s for company modeling, now is part of the pre-history of business models. Too much complex.
Mr Beer died 5 -6 year ago and nobody on the business area wrote a note about him, only few lines on chilean newspapers informing he was one of the leaders of the experiment and of course on the Guardian as he was british.
July 15th, 2008 at 4:55 am
Hi.
I am Sunir Parikh from India. I am an MBA student and currently doing a research on e-governance programs in Eastern Europe as part of our public policy course.
I have been researching the topic from quite some time now. However, I have been able to find only generic information viz. initiatives fot citizen services etc. However, I am more interested in the changes that ahve taken place in the way of working of government. I want to know the developments that have taken place in the back-office application as part of the e-governance initiative, specifis systems that have been developed to enhance the working the government employees in eastern europian countries.
Can you please tell me from where can I get these information?
I am very desperate to get information.
Please help me in this.
Hope for your quick responce.
Thank you.