[open-government] Projects on Open Gov, Transparency and RTI

Tue Jan 15 17:19:43 UTC 2013

Call for Papers and Projects
THE RIGHT TO INFORMATION AND TRANSPARENCY IN THE DIGITAL AGE: POLICY, TOOLS
AND PRACTICES Workshop organized by Liberation Technology Program at
Stanford University, United States, 11.-12. March, 2013

Access to information has become one of the most promising tools to combat
corruption, increase people’s participation in (self) governance and thus,
to strengthen democracy. Since the 1960s there has been a steady progress
in the number of countries that have legislated access to information laws,
and over eighty countries have such laws today. There have also been
several social developments and innovations which embrace access to
information, such as open constitution reform process in Iceland, open
innovation challenges by the United States government, participatory
budgeting processes in Germany, Finland and Canada and social audits in
India, just to mention few.
As a parallel development, the open data movement is evolving in several
countries, pushed forward by both civil society and governments, and
incentivized by the global Open Government Partnership network. These
practices are supported by open innovation and open design strategies,
which the public sector is increasingly adopting. These open and
participatory practices give tools for citizens to monitor governments, to
hold them accountable, and to practice agency in the public sphere. The
right to information and transparency movements can be considerably
strengthened by creative use of information technologies – but realizing
this potential requires us to revisit the design of RTI policies, tools and
practices to update them to serve citizens in the digital age. In
re-evaluating the tools for accountability, we should be mindful that
increased use of accountability technologies suggests re-articulations of
the power structures in modern societies, including new forms of social
control, new spaces for public deliberation and new conceptualizations of
participation in democracy.

The workshop will convene both practitioners and academics to discuss their
work in the area and to examine the theoretical and practical implications
of these phenomena. We seek to bring together people engaged in law,
policy, social movements, administration, technology, design and the use of
technology for accessing information. We propose to go well beyond the
issue of accessing information by looking at the use of technology to
record, store, process and disseminate public information, and to create
interactive spaces in the public sphere so that the full potential of ICT
for transparency can be realized. We welcome submissions focusing on
intersection of technology, the right to information and participatory
practices, which enhance transparency, including, but are not limited to,
the following areas:

* 1. Technology for transparency
-* What are the design improvements and practices to improve digital tools
that are used to record, store, process and disseminate information to
empower right to information activists? How can, for instance, open design
practices enhance transparency, access to information and participatory
practices?
- How do social movements use technology, and can technology be empowering
for the poor and the marginalized or will/is it be a tool for the
privileged?
- What are the emerging power structures in digital democracy, and what is
the role of technology in mediating and distributing power?
*2. Open data, open knowledge and open access*
- What is the role of open data ecosystem in the right to information
movement? What are the tools, practices and policies to encourage the use
of open data? - How do open knowledge, open access and open science
practices serve transparency in society?
* 3. Open innovation and transparency*
- How does open innovation support transparency in governance, and
strengthen right to information?
*4. Legal and policy considerations in the use of technology for right to
information:*
- What are the current limitations of right to information laws established
based in the pre-digital age, and what kinds of legal changes are desirable
in the digital age?
- What are the legal challenges to accessing information in digital format?
- What are the laws that prepare the context in which the right to
information is exercised, and how should they change in the digital age?
For example, how should public records laws and the system of recording and
managing public information adapt to play a supportive role, and what are
the best practices in public record management systems that will enable the
effective use of technology by RTI activists?
- What are the challenges involved in using technology to make
corporations, civil society organizations and other non-government
organizations transparent?
*5. Role of media and journalism in transparency *
- How do journalists use data to monitor governments? What are the
challenges in using data for monitoring and reporting as it stands today?
- What kinds of tools, data formats or practices could enrich data driven
journalism.
* 6. Digital tools for transparency* - How can maps help citizens hold
their governments accountable? How should information be designed such that
government activities can be mapped? - How could public agencies use videos
and photographs to record their activities, and how can the citizen use
such information effectively?
- How do citizens use modern surveillance and other monitoring practices
for transparency?
- How can satellites be used to monitor governments?
- How can mobile phones be used to record and access information
- Can better visualization of data make a difference for the right to
information movement?
- What is the role of crowdsourcing and co-creation in combatting
corruption?
*Take action!*
Submit a paper The deadline for submissions is 18th of January, 2013.
Accepted presenters will be informed by February 1st, 2013. The form of
submission is either full paper (maximum 25 pages) or extended abstract (6
pages). The submissions should be sent to the following email address:
vivekdse+rti at gmail.com.
*Participate in the online community*
You can share your knowledge about RTI related matters in our online
community here. <http://rtitechnology.ideascale.com/>
*Sign up for the conference*
You can sign up for the conference and upload your submission
here.<http://www.stanford.edu/group/libtech/cgi-bin/rtitech/>You can
also participate as an observer, without submitting a project or a
paper.
*Logistics*
The workshop will be organized at Stanford University in March 11-12, 2013.
The workshop is being organized by the Program on Liberation Technology at
Stanford University, an interdisciplinary program at the intersection of
political science, computer science and design engineering. There is no fee
for participating in the conference, and participants are expected to make
their own travel and lodging arrangements.
*More information*
For more information, please contact Tanja Aitamurto at
tanjaa at stanford.eduor Vivek Srinivasan at
vivekdse at stanford.edu.

-- 
www.tanjaaitamurto.com

Studying the Open X at Stanford: crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, open
innovation, open data.
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