ABSTRACT

The anger against corruption in India has led to many new experiments at fighting it and technology is increasingly a part of such experiments – be it in the form of large e-governance projects or a small grassroots mobilization. Some of these initiatives have led to substantial improvement in performance whereas others remain highly contested. In this talk, Vivek will discuss a few experiments by governments and by civil society and the debate around impact of technology in fighting corruption.

SPEAKER BIO

I joined the Liberation Technology Program as the Manager in February 2011 after completing my Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Prior to this, I worked with campaigns on various socio-economic rights in India, including the right to food, education and the right to information. Based on these experiences I have written (and co-authored) extensively on issues surrounding the right to food, including Notes from the right to food campaign: people's movement for the right to food (2003), Rights based approach and human development: An introduction (2008), Gender and the right to food: A critical re-examination (2006), Food Policy and Social Movements: Reflections on the Right to Food Campaign in India (2007).

In working with these campaigns, I realized the widespread disparities in the provision of basic public services in India. This led me examine how Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state, developed extensive commitment to providing such services to all its residents in my doctoral dissertation. Oxford University Press will shortly publish my book based on the dissertation entitled, "Delivering services effectively: Tamil Nadu and Beyond".

As a full-time activist, I also experimented with various IT platforms to make the campaigns effective. This interest brought me to the Liberation Technology Program at Stanford. I am currently leading a research project entitled "Combating corruption with mobile phones" that is in currently on a pilot mode in 5 states of India.

ABSTRACT

How can and how should we govern a global resource like the online space? How can stakeholders (governments, businesses and civil society) participate on equal footing and “in their respective roles”? And how can democratic values inform all governance practices, when the constituency is potentially everybody, most decisions are highly complex and interdependent and when the shared resource is a conglomerate of private and public assets? These are the questions scholars and practitioners in the internet governance field explore and experiment with since the UN World Summit of the Information Society in 2003 brought internet governance to the attention of diplomates and governments around the world. In this seminar Max Senges will review the historic development of internet governance as well as discuss current challenges and opportunities in building an effective governance ecosystem for the transnational digital space.

SPEAKER BIO

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More recently he has published “Internet Governance as our shared responsibility” and “Ensuring that Forum Follows Function” in “The Roadmap for Institutional Improvements to the Global Internet Governance Ecosystem” jointly with Vint Cerf, Patrick Ryan and Rick Whitt.

Senges holds a PhD in philosophy from the Information and Knowledge Society Program at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) in Barcelona as well as a Masters in Business Information Systems from the University of Applied Sciences Wildau (Berlin).

ABSTRACT

Mr. Price will discuss finding from the recent publication Citizen Participation and Technology: An NDI Study, which was initiated in the wake of the recent, rapid rise in the use of digital technology among citizens and civil society organizations offers the possibility of strengthening citizens’ voice in politics, carving out new political space for activism and promoting more government accountability. It is clear that these technologies are increasingly complementing citizens’ political participation, changing interrelationships between citizens, organizations, and public institutions, and expanding notions of political behavior and participation. NDI understands how to identify and support the types of citizen participation that contribute to democratization, but the exact role and results of technology use in this process are less clear. The rising use of technology to increase citizens’ access to information and provide avenues of communication to public officials in hopes that this will transform how politics is practiced seems driven by apparently underlying, yet largely untested, assumptions about technology’s ability to increase the quantity, quality, and democratizing influence of citizen participation. Despite the exuberance for new technologies, there is not enough data available on the impacts they have had on the political processes and institutions they are intended to influence in emerging democracies. This creates additional challenges in designing and implementing programs.

SPEAKER BIO

Koebel Price is NDI’s Senior Advisor for Citizen Participation. He has 20 years’ experience in leading programs that promote transparency and accountability in government, citizen participation and civil society development, political party strengthening and free and fair elections. Mr. Price has worked in over 30 countries, served as chief of party for U.S. government-funded programs in the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa and managed the democracy and governance portfolios of international development organizations. Domestically, he has served as a Political and Legislative Director with the Minnesota AFL-CIO, part of America’s largest trade union confederation. Prior to that, he was trained in community organizing at the Midwest Academy and led grassroots advocacy campaigns for issue – based civil society organizations. In his current role, he supports NDI’s civil society strengthening efforts globally, providing strategies, tools, techniques and training to NDI’s staff members and partner organizations to support and strengthen citizen organizing and political activism in new and emerging democracies. Mr. Price authored the recent publication Citizen Participation and Technology: An NDI Study, which examines the role technologies are playing in democratization programs

ABSTRACT
We are familiar with "information technology" and with “liberation technology" but perhaps still need to ask ourselves to what extent information and liberation make natural partners. This primarily theoretical talk will explore why it is tempting to champion information and its technologies in the cause of liberation, yet why it may also be problematic.

SPEAKER BIO
Paul Duguid is an adjunct full professor at the School of Information at Berkeley. In recent years he has also held visiting positions at Queen Mary, University of London, Copenhagen Business School, the École Polytechnique in Paris. In the 1990s, he was a consultant to senior management at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). While there he was co-author of The Social Life of Information with John Seely Brown, the director of PARC. Recent work has focused on the multiple conceptions of information and confusions they can give rise to.

ABSTRACT

Collective intelligence is channeled to journalism by crowdsourcing and co-creation. While the crowd contributes to the journalistic process with its knowledge, the crowd also challenges journalistic norms and ideals. In her talk, Dr. Aitamurto shows how collective intelligence impacts knowledge search in journalism, alters power structures in society, and functions as a basis for value creation.

SPEAKER BIO

Dr. Tanja Aitamurto is a Brown Fellow and the Deputy Director at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at the School of Engineering at Stanford, as well as a Liberation Technology alumna. Her research focuses on the applications of collective intelligence in journalism, governance, and new product design in media innovations. She is the author of the book "Crowdsourcing for Democracy: New Era in Policy-Making", and she has published in New Media & Society, Digital Journalism and Design Issues.