Brazil and E-Government. People Week!

Whoops, I wrote everything over the week, but just didn’t feel good posting it. I really need to get better at doing this but I felt I needed to look at reddit/4chan/youtube a little bit more to see both sides of human interaction and anonymity. The topic this week I was going to call “People Week”, but I guess now it is people day! I’ll be taking comments and replying when I can throughout the coming week, and hope that I can possibly spur discussion from those reading. Well lets get on with the show.

Also been heavily sick all this week, but that isn't going to stop me!

To start, I figured I should observe this week’s readings in my web 2.0 course to compare to a government’s booming e-government system. This being the use of web 2.0 technologies to promote professional discourse AND practice. In Dennen’s (2011) paper involving twitter use during a professional conference, engagement though shallow was shown to be promoted and create a connection to the conference and its information. As a survivor of the Chicago weather at MPSA (Midwest Political Science Association) this year, the extensive use of social media tools kept me in the loop of what to check out and where to go, as well as helping me run into specific members of the community, which I found really helpful. BUT, back to the topic, how does this professional discourse at a conference relate to discourse in government?

Well in this research it was found that discourse patterns using replies and retweets even in discourse needed “increased awareness” of phrases (hashtags) and accessibility to fully function. It also helped in creating information “networks” to citizens not previously in the loop, allowing for more interest of non-attendees who were not previous networked with attendees from this study (Dennen, 2011).

Now, when it comes to government, one of the major realizations with public administration and appreciation of the field comes from the respect given to it. This “Public Service Motivation” is a rather old topic, stemming all the way back to the founding days of America under George Washington who wanted to create a “Liberal Education” (not the same liberal you are thinking of), as it would create appreciation of the community and those around them as well as a respect to the service of government, possibly enriching those to join in the process of governmental affairs and democracy, or “Public Service Motivation” (Cook and Klay, 2014).

Putting this all together from this week’s class and then continuing with “people week” I figured to look into the case of Brazil. From 2000 to now, Brazil has faced a revolution in the practices and uses of e-government technology compared to a lot of countries, with it they provide more data and information to the public, allow for requests for public services, and registration and online services. But when it comes to “active” participation, what I find unique is its embrace of discussion spaces via forums, and free speech areas for complaints (Mello, 2012). “Wikipedia-style legislation”, or the use of social media with offline legislative events (Ferenstein,2010), reach out and create forums for all citizens to partake in as well as those in the political arena. The end result is an online town hall where when a “wiki style consensus” is reached, can become a concrete proposal to representatives (Ferenstein, 2010).

This is just one of many ways, which Brazil is trying to experiment and push for more web 2.0 applications, and those curious about these advances, can only appreciate the testing ground Brazil has tried to become for the people.

Sources:

Dennen, V. P. (2011). CONVERSATIONS ON THE HASHTAG: Does Conference Twitter User Promote Professional Discourse? IADIS International Conference e-Society, pp. 75-82.

Ferenstien, G. (2010, September 14). How Brazil is Blazing a Trail for Electronic Democracy. Retrieved from Mashable: http://mashable.com/2017/05/02/surgical-simulator-teaching-doctors-to-operate/

Klay, E., & Cook, S. A. (n.d.). George Washington's Precedents: The Legacy of the American Republic's Founding Public Administrator. Administration and Society, 1-22.

Mello, J. (2012, June 26). E-governance in Brazil. Retrieved from the brazil business: http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/e-governance-in-brazil

Week 1 Recap

Well this was a rather fast paced week for me, 3 blogs in one day! I promise it will not happen like this normally. But when you have to set up a class for 60 students and answer first day questions every single day for the first week, you tend to forget what else is happening around you.

But seriously, I love them all and I will cherish them as the best students. BEST STUDENTS.

This week focused on the introduction to web 2.0 and what it exactly is, the producer and consumer or prodsumer (hope I am saying this right), work to create and enjoy content from the devices due to connections of the people using the service. Web 2.0 is a great technology not just for the public sector (I just happen to be a strange person with a huge fixation on how the IRS is such a cool place), but the private and business sectors as well. We have seen applications of it all around us, in some increasingly amazing ways (such as Summer Games Done Quick, which benefits doctors without borders, which HEY YOU SHOULD CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE). What interested web 2.0 is just how easy any user can get on and share, and create some amazing content, some of it which shaped some our early internet culture (lolcat saturdays, rules of the internet, the rise of e-sports, and so on and so on). But the functionalities of social media, the honeycomb that Kietzman and Hermkens(2011) bring up stating the different ways web 2.0 can be used (presence, relationships, identity, sharing, conversations, reputation, and groups) is becoming more and more melded together. Facebook, once known for its relationships and conversations, now takes from other web 2.0 services such as instagram and the now defunct vine to create and share user created content. Sites like etsy, originally for just user created products by hand, have now expanded to communities within the selling services and now include business involvement. Small sites such as 4chan...well it is still 4chan. BUT there are so many ways on how web 2.0 services touch our fingertips and how we can enjoy learning from it.

Recently from content creation of another, I learned through a mix of instructables, a website dedicated for community sharing of how to build your own cool things, and lifehacker, a social media site showing cool ways to improve things on the cheap, taught me how to build an ARCADE CONTROLLER OUT OF IKEA PARTS! I know right? how would that even work? I don't know how to build wood stuff...but heck I build computers like the back of my hand so....I did it through Q&A with those who made it in the past and well....

My SO freaked when I gave them this as a present...and this is as far as "personal relationship sharing" will I go for this class.

In this instance I WAS A PRODUSER, or "an enabling of all participants to be users as much as producers of information and knowledge" (Bruns, 2011). This is only a start for me in what I want to do. It opened me up to a new community which I now appreciate as a hobby, and has connected me to "retro gamers", "twitch streamers", and "Pinball enthusiasts", all of which are just several examples of what I want to do "For fun" now. Web 2.0 isn't only for hobbies or charities, and has so many other practical services in both the private and government industries. Companies like Arby's interact with social media every day, posting pop culture references with their containers.

Seriously, awesome (Arby's, 2017)

Governments have been latching onto web 2.0 services now, hosting town halls, and using it for so many applications that have to be appreciated by both government fanatics and the common citizens. The future of 2.0 and just how fully interactive it can be is a great topic of discussion, and when technologies do come, what can we do with it? Virtual reality is finally at the forefront, there have been VR concerts already, and interactions with those participants in those concerts! The usage of VR is still raw, but when we can fully interact and learn how to prodsumers of some creations to technical to just read or watch on a video, how far can we go? 

Well that is my blogs for the week, for now I got to get ready for the next big thing as a governmental scholar, aka my appreciation of the best holiday in the United States, Happy 4th of July!

Still the best president of all time in my heart.

Web 2.0 - Modernization of Government

Now as a scholar of Public Administration, when it comes to issues of management, transparency, and service delivery, we in the public field have to work in an even more crucial way compared to our private counterparts. This being that unlike the field of private services, we in the public sector must be transparent and foster cooperation to provide administrative ethical treatment. If we do not work hand in hand with our citizens, issues such as NIMBY (Not in my backyard) may form. This is our worst fear. If NIMBY were to arise due to lack of belief towards our respective constituents, vice versa once they realize their voices aren't truly being heard, pure chaos, dissatisfaction, and failure to implement or execute towards the goal can falter.

This is Marlins Ballpark in Miami...which I am putting here for totally no apparent reason whatsoever..

Web 2.0 in fact can help us towards this continuing push for modernization of government through becoming more hospitable and transparent with our constituents be it local, state, or federal. Dr. Ai-Mei Chang and Dr. P.K. Kannan wrote a great report for the IBM center for The Business of Government further focusing on the needs of web 2.0 in government, and what exactly is happening for the fruition of it to even appear! These being (Chang, Mei; Kannan, P.K., 2008):

• Government needs to meet citizens where they are online.
• Citizens are willing to interact with government agencies online.
• The role of intermediaries (3rd party businesses, contractors) will increase
• Government will need to rethink content and service design
• Government will have to find ways to embed authority in its web-based services
• Some citizens are concerned about equal access
• Citizens trust the government with personal data but not for service efficiency
• Government will need to measure the effectiveness of its web 2.0 initiatives

The journal goes on to recommend several ways that the government can properly address these issues, and I highly recommend a read or skim of it if you really want to learn a lot more about web 2.0 penetration in government and the possible issues it faces (which I may talk about at a later time, such as the "Second-Class Citizen" problem). 

So, are we moving towards it? yes and no. State and Local governments have been embracing web 2.0 services as far back as simple 411 FAQ sites, allowing for user input on problems or comments. Though some cities such as Miami Dade, Denver, and counties and states such as New York, Fairfax, VA, and Texas have truly been engaged in pushing web 2.0 technologies, even winning awards from the Public Technology Institute(PTI) for their services (Heaton, Brian, 2011). They reached out in civic engagement, accountability, transparency, mobile applications, economic development and much more to receive these recognitions, yet there are many places that can be improved upon. A case study in the UK found that while web 2.0 was used for citizen engagement, it was not used for other internal purposes such as intra-organizational business-related activities, and that the usage for employees was rather limited, as social media may be blocked (Sivarajah, Uthayasankar, 2015). This is a dilemma when observing  web 2.0 in government. How much discretion do we truly have in implementing it as administrators, and ethically running it due to its broad reaches and easy to obtain information?

Each day, more precedent is being made and some countries are in fact beacons when it comes to services, shockingly one of them being the South American country of Brazil, which I will get into in a future blog. The US compared to the EU and South American countries such as Brazil have a far way to go in general (of course some states and cities are bearing the flag of web 2.0 administrative modernization).


Sources:

Chang, A.-M., & Kannan, P. (2008). Leveraging Web 2.0 in Government. IBM Center for The Business of Government.

Heaton, B. (2011, May 24). 17 States and Local Governments Honored for Web 2.0 and Social Media. Retrieved from Government Technology: http://www.govtech.com/e-government/Governments-Honored-Web-20-and-Social-Media-.html

Sivarajah, U., Irani, Z., & Weerakkody, V. (2015). Evaluating the use and impact of Web 2.0 technologies in local government. Government Information Quarterly, 473-487.

Web 2.0 In Government! Wait...we use that?

As a professor for the PAD3003 class -Public Administration in Society course here for Florida State. The first thing I ask my students is:

"How do you interact with public administrators?"

Usually it turns into jokes on the horrors of the local DMV, or how certain Florida House Reps and Senators don't respond to emails, but a couple are a little more aware of their surroundings and say they are currently talking with one right now (as teachers are in fact administrators working for the state! At least at FSU and other publicly funded schools...). 

At that point, i'd ask them is it only in person? To which, being undergrads I get blank stares (as they are all probably on Facebook). Administration, at least to the form we think it is, is usually in person. When we go to our clerk's office, when we complain over 411 (on the phone, not the web, which is web 2.0), that our power is still out after Hurricane Hermine (12 days!), and so on. BUT, interactivity with administration and government is handled digitally...in fact a lot of it is over the world wide web. 

Normal reaction

Now...Huh? But all I do is go on twitter/facebook/amazon/reddit/etc... What do you mean I interact with administration over the web!?

Yes, you may not see it often, or even think about it when you do. But you as a citizen sometimes involuntarily become a contributor and receiver of e-government services within your city/state/country. 

From the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, and their focus on prospective technological studies, funding has been used to examine just the increasing usage of web 2.0 for governmental service and how do they function. In this research they address that "web 2.0 is relevant in the public and private sectors and have already been applied in multiple governmental areas" (Osimo, 2008). From here just a couple of the usages are as follows from the study:

And that's just a few

Now whoa whoa whoa... Back office and Front office domains? Yeah, now you might be thinking okay I can possibly see some things like that working for me, but just how much? Well when it comes to front office domains, you can actively see quite a lot! Virtual town halls, such as what you may have seen on CNN using "skype or facebook" to talk to senators and house representatives, sometimes that has gained in popularity from both sides of the aisle over the past decade (Libit, 2009) have gained massive appeal on what you would normally think interaction is! But even on a local level, how do most of us pay our utility bills? That e-tally program? Well, that is just as much a governmental web 2.0 program as a town hall. That little app or program on your website collects information for us in the "Back office domains" to know when issues are happening, from that knowledge management of programs and an active front office domain (reporting power outages on it, creating a crowd-sourced map of outages). It is also used to pay our bills for utility and give us information on when events in Tallahassee are happening (seriously if you use the app, it is quite interesting!).

Web 2.0 is a whole new avenue (in electronic age at least) for governments to truly create and gain content from those interacting with them, modernizing their respective government. I hope to go into it a lot more with technological examples. But first I will talk about why governments should go to web 2.0 if they haven't already.

Sources:

Libit, D. (2009, August 6). Virtual town halls gaining popularity. Retrieved from Politico : http://www.politico.com/story/2009/08/virtual-town-halls-gaining-popularity-025844

Osimo, D. (2008). Web 2.0 in Government: Why and How. Luxembourg: European Communities.

And it begins

Hello! and welcome to my blog! My name is Jonathan Lubin, and I am a PhD student in Public Administration aka why the country functions most of the time. I am taking this web 2.0 class to learn a lot more about the great innovations of user interactions due to expanding technology, and how exactly should we as administrators really look at the activities of our constituents and find ways to also use them for better collaboration between government and people.

I hope to touch upon a number of things, such as our e-government systems in place and internationally, usage of politician and constituent interactions, and unfortunately(or fortunately if you are interested in this kind of thing):

Yeah yeah, but I hope to have a  serious discussion about it.

So yet again, Welcome to my blog and I hope you enjoy the ride!