[open-government] On Now Day 3 - Aspen FOCAS 2012, Towards Open and Innovative Governance - Watch Live Now!

Wed Aug 8 15:19:04 UTC 2012

Final reports and more ... for the next few hours.

http://www.aspeninstitute.tv
https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23FOCAS12

From: Charlie Firestone <aspencs at aspeninstitute.org>
Date: Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 10:12 AM
Subject: Nuggets from Aspen FOCAS 2012, Towards Open and Innovative
Governance - Watch Live Now!

Video of FOCAS 2012, Towards Open and Innovative Governance, is now
online and you can catch Day 3 LIVE right now at
www.aspeninstitute.tv. Also, don’t miss out on the #FOCAS12  twitter
stream, a lively backchannel on innovating digital governance and
fostering transparency.

A few highlights so far:

Toomas Hendrik Ilves is the President of Estonia, which was recently
ranked number one in the world for internet freedom by the
organization Freedom House. How did this former Soviet state achieve
this rating? Estonia’s tech-savvy President explained:

“E-governance does not mean putting a 1040 taxation form into HTML.
You have to redo things. You have to make it for the user.  You have
to stop thinking in terms of 19th Century bureaucratic rules where
everything is on paper. That ends up meaning redesigning government
and how you interact with people.”  Watch on Livestream.

Macon Phillips, Director of Digital Strategy at the White House, says
that to get citizens more engaged in government, information needs to
be presented in more meaningful ways:

“In a day and age when people can Google 'education' and 'Obama' and
the White House site comes up pretty high in the search results, we
have a responsibility to make sure that the content people find is
actually stuff that they can understand and not just fact sheets and
press releases." Watch on Livestream.

Juliana Rotich co-founded Ushahidi, a web-based reporting platform
that uses crowdsourced data to create visual maps of real-time
information in crisis situations. Through its hard work and global
network, Ushahidi has saved tens of thousands of lives. Rotich knows
the importance of sharing data, but she wonders about identity,
privacy and ownership:

 “There needs to be a shift in thinking about personal data. … If I
own my data, then what are the incentives for me to share that data
with the city so that it can truly be a smart city? … The government
needs to perhaps lead in terms of saying ‘you own your own data’ and
‘this is how we can engage with you giving us data and for you to get
relevant information back’ … But it has to be a trust relationship
where I’m opting in.” Watch this on Livestream.

Reed Hundt was chairman of the FCC during the emergence of Internet as
a commercial platform. Hundt embraced the new medium and was the first
to the give the Commission an online presence.  Now, Hundt questions
whether big data and the capability to individualize information are
the next big things for e-government:

“When we talk about government services and combine it with the power
of technology and the power of big data, we’re on the edge of being
able to have government deliver a suite of services to people that is
so impactful of every part of their life that it beggars imagination.”
Watch this on Livestream.

Jeff Gomez is an expert in global transmedia storytelling. He traces
the roots of movements like the Arab Spring to narratives, and
believes that without these narratives, citizens won’t engage in a new
world of digital governance. What is needed, in his mind, is a new
breed of storyteller who is technically savvy and can work across
platforms (i.e. young people). Gomez explains what he calls Transmedia
2.0:

“There is a method for sifting through mountains of data and deriving
the information that we need to build an infrastructure around which
can be wrapped compelling narrative.  Around the skeleton, we can
create interactive stories; we are capable of inspiring with popular
storytelling. And popular storytelling, we have seen, can mobilize
entire populations.” Watch this on Livestream.

Watch FOCAS 2012 at www.aspeninstitute.tv.

Learn more at http://as.pn/focas12  and be sure to follow us on Twitter @aspencs

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