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THE RILEY REPORT – January 2003
from Thomas B. Riley (Tom@Rileyis.com)
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This month's report looks at the role that information is playing in creating
new environments and new potentialities for change.
There are now billions of web pages around the world stored in
corporations, government databanks, private web pages, newspaper
organizations, libraries and any method of storage we can conceive.
This article looks at why the organization and sharing of information,
in so many new formats, is changing the way we think and act as a society. This usage of information and the creation of knowledge on an
ongoing, 24 hours a day all year round, is generating new knowledge at rates
we have never experienced before in history.
We have moved into a new Renaissance Age and governments need new ways
to look at how they deal with their information holdings, and organize and
dispense the information to the public for the betterment and improvement of
society. It is becoming clear,
from various research data, that information and knowledge are the lynchpins
of successful e-government.
THE ROLE OF INFORMATION IN E-GOVERNMENT IMPLEMENTATION
The role of information in all areas
of the private sector and in government is now paramount for continued growth
and stability in our societies. Information
has become the lynchpin in the way we think, act and operate as a society.
The necessity of citizen participation in the evolving e-government
infrastructure will be accentuated as governments take their services more and
more online. Citizen
engagement, effective abilities to access government information, and to use
information as a tool in all aspects of one’s life, is important.
Recent research into e-government practices, applications, and successes
and failures of government web-sites illustrates six basic principles:
- Citizen
participation in the process of e-government will be inevitable if programs
are to succeed.
- E-democracy
is a growing trend amongst outside groups but most governments are still
very much struggling with the concept.
- E-governance
is changing the ways in which government does business with the public and,
in the process, is creating demand for some form of participation from the
citizen. This gives some
credence to the ongoing thinking that e-governance will eventually
incorporate some form of e-democracy.
- E-democracy
movements are founded on information precepts and engage in the sharing and
developing of knowledge.
- To
influence government policy, programs or policy evolution, the creation and
sharing of knowledge by governments to the public is going to become
mandatory.
- Information and knowledge sharing are now essential in an age that is creating worldwide change and spurring us into a new Renaissance.
However, for any of these premises to
take full hold in society it is increasingly important for governments to have
practical, effective, easily accessible and useable web-sites and other ITC
applications that give citizens access to the vast resources of information that
public sector organizations own. Information,
in all its manifestations and usages, is becoming the lifeblood of our societies
and our working and personal lives.
This new era of information evolution is now part of three important fields:
1. Information Management
2. Knowledge Management
3.
Change Management.
Information can now be distributed,
exchanged, formalized, used, and networked at speeds never before known.
While arguments might be made that much information is detritus and
really of no consequence or use, the fact is there are many using it in a
multitude of disciplines and in their daily lives.
Receiving daily spams into our email boxes creates cynicism and
disillusion about the potentiality of our new technologies.
Colleagues and friends sending us papers, articles, interesting urls,
news clips, discussions, and on and on, creates frustration in many and a sense
of overwhelming incomprehension as to how to channel all this information.
Yet, as information escalates and
appears to be getting out of hand, due to the sheer enormity of it all, hundreds
of software tools are emerging to better take control of the deluge.
Online columnists, people who run their own blogs, information management
specialists, knowledge management prophets, touting the organizing of
information into knowledge, are not simply random and chaotic changes but rather
a symptom of the change itself. We
have moved from the Information Age to a new age we have yet to fully define.
This coming age is making it difficult for e-government specialists and
government officials who have to implement it, because there is not enough
understanding yet of the nature of information and the impact it is having, as a
new future and a new culture are being created.
There is a potentiality for change now
at work, which we have not witnessed since the emergence of the Gutenberg
Galaxy. The creation of the
printing press resulted in the spreading of information and knowledge, which led
to a Renaissance of ideas about society, eventually resulting in the demise of
the divine rights of kings, the leap into the Industrial Age, saw the emergence
of enlightened democracy, and then the evolution of human rights,
accountability, and transparency mechanisms in many countries of the world and
which continue to take hold. Looked
at from the perspective of history it is easy to understand that this evolution
occurred over the past four centuries. Part
of the reason for this slow evolution was the distances in the past.
Ideas traveled, but they did so slowly for many reasons, one of which was
the distances to transport people, information, knowledge and ideas.
As transportation improved and the time between distances was shortened,
ideas and creativity escalated. The
twentieth century was, in many respects, the age of transportation because it
brought globalization (which in terms of trade emerged in the 17th,
18th and 19th centuries) to a new phase.
Mass transportation of the late twentieth century connected the world,
spread ideas faster and farther, and has assisted in the spread of civil
societies. The economic and social
issues of poverty have not subsided but certainly the spread of knowledge has
increased.
Now information is shared
instantaneously for those who have the means to take part in this transfer.
Now with new technologies we are facing another phenomenon.
Speed. This escalation of
the sharing of information globally in a constant movement of information and
within short bursts of time and distance is creating a new potentiality – the
acceleration of the expectations of the mind and the potential to create new
pools of knowledge in instantaneous and real time environments.
Many scientific labs, research organizations in corporations, academics,
and government officials, share on a continuous basis, and not simply by the
attaching of documents by email, sending emails or engaging in online chats.
More, much more, than this is occurring.
Research and idea development are
proceeding in continuous and instantaneous flows. Networks of communities of interest allow non-stop flows of
work and generation of discussions, research and conclusions.
For example, someone at Harvard, in a chemistry lab, could be working on
a formula that has been created as a 3D image.
This could be sent to a colleague in Japan who would look at it, do an
analysis and make comments (while the colleague in America is out of the lab or
sleeping). When the colleague in
America comes back to the lab he continues the work from the new point onwards.
Thus research such as this is now going on all over the planet and never
stops. This allows the acceleration
of research findings and creates knowledge faster, which has an overall benefit
for society. There are thousands of examples of this happening in the
network of communities of the world. Engagement
is at all levels of society from the profound to the trivial (and who’s to say
which is which?) We live amidst a
non-stop invisible current of change. It
is the phenomenon of the new technologies that is creating an environment which
was not possible even a few short years ago.
We are now into a new Renaissance.
This is the Renaissance that is bringing new forms of thinking and
acting. We are creating a connected
world of information, knowledge and ideas.
People of the world are now engaged, through cyberspace, in ways never
before envisioned. Dialogue,
whether it be about politics, about entertainment, about a particular group’s
interest, about family, or any issue of the day are non-stop.
One might argue that this is simply a new “elephant” labouring to
produce the proverbial “mouse”. In
fact, what is being created are new potentialities of the mind.
Change is always difficult to perceive as so many of us think through
ideologies of the past (in this case, the past is literally two minutes after
you read this, as the rate of change is accelerating so rapidly) or through
preconceived notions that we evolve as we pass through our lives.
As our world was so different from a
mere 25 years ago, we will not recognize it 25 years from now.
We are on the cusp of a new world. If
the 15th and 16th centuries were about the exploring and
opening up of the planet, the late 20th and early 21st
centuries are about the exploration of the new terra incognita of the
mind and the shift that is taking place in the mind.
It is this impulse of universal change
that makes Information Management, Knowledge Management and Change Management so
important. E-government is running
into glitches and problems of implementation around the world.
The success rate varies from country to country.
It is important that any government, at whatever economic or political
level, take cognizance of the fact that we are in a period of a tsunami of
change. It is a worldwide phenomenon.
This is all about acceleration of the
mind – the joining up of information and knowledge faster than the speed of
light. This creates exponential
growth, sets the climate for originality and the birth of new ideas.
This time-distance and potentiality is, literally, an acceleration of the
way we think – it is the literal adaptation of our minds into a new frontier.
We, in this time, are experiencing not only a new Renaissance but a leap
in evolution of the human species. Evidence
is all around us when we look, even in a shallow way, at the rate of change that
has occurred in the past three decades in politics (much cynicism, while at the
same time the growth of an e-democracy movement), the sciences, medicine (the
development of a host of new drugs, the retardation of some diseases,
discoveries in DNA, stem cell research and now, possibly, cloning),
entertainment which has evolved into pirating of music and movies as an
acceptable way of life, and the multitude of other changes that apply to all
aspects of society and our lives.
It is difficult to be in government
today facing all these changes. Traditional
approaches to politics and public administration continue to work at many levels
of government and society. But the
nature of information has changed and it is now important that governments
around the world, at whatever level, begin to change their attitudes and
practices in regards to their information resources. Governments have always been considered to be the
largest library in any jurisdiction because of the enormity of their information
holdings. Perhaps the Internet is
now the largest library in the world given the billions of web pages, joined up
chat rooms, newsgroups, listservs, etc. Many
innovative individuals and creative groups are seeking to create pathways to
knowledge and understanding through the use of new technologies and the
Internet. It now behooves
government to develop tools to use their information resources, lying in the
nooks and crannies of their agencies, to contribute to, and reinforce, the rapid
evolution of knowledge that is taking place at this point in our history.
Information and knowledge are the lynchpins of successful e-governments. The significance of the growth of ICTs, new technologies, the Internet and the rapid deployment of information and creation of information is the “potential” for change these phenomena are creating. The importance of these developments, and the potential for change they bring, make it necessary for us to be on guard about the incursions on our information and privacy rights that are now occurring. The heat of the moment is creating the potential for society to step back. Strong information rights, enshrined or improved in law, is the essential for the full potential of progress and change to be met.
ANNOUNCEMENT:
There will be a one-day seminar and training session, in Ottawa on April 11, 2003, on Change Management and Information Democracy, where these issues will be further discussed and explored. For full details go to:
http://www.rileyis.com/seminars/index.html
Thomas Riley is available for consultations, preparation of reports, presenting workshops or delivering speeches at conferences and seminars on e-government, e-governance and e-democracy. Please contact me at the email address below for further details.
Thomas B. Riley
Executive Director and Chair
Commonwealth Centre for Electronic Governance
http://www.electronicgov.net
Visiting Professor, University of Glasgow
Riley Information Services.
http://www.rileyis.com
Tom@Rileyis.com