Control de inventarios

NGO MEDIATION IN THE “INFORMATION SOCIETY”

Introduction

Chapter 2 noted that even though state officials claimed responsibility for, and control over, the “information society” project in Turkey, this project was not led solely by the state. The current and the following chapter attend to the information society project as envisioned and enacted by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Turkey. Both chapters focus on the activities of the NGO Habitat Center for Development and Governance (Habitat

Kalkınma ve Yönetişim Derneği, HKYD), which worked on social transformation by implementing digital literacy and community empowerment programs. HKYD worked on two fronts: free or low-cost skills training in information and communication technology (ICT), ranging from basic digital literacy courses to vocational training for “network experts”; and self-governance at the local level through participatory community councils. According to the NGO, these two fronts were connected because ICT skills training people would increase their abilities to participate in communal self-governance and to impact local and national policy-making.

HKYD mediated between global ICT companies, supranational institutions such as the United Nation (UN), and local populations. HKYD’s skills trainings were part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs that revolved around the use of “ICT for

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development” (ICT4D). (I will use the acronyms “CSR ICT4D” to refer to these programs, reflecting the fact that they were a composite of corporate governance agendas as well as NGO visions of social change and development.) While HKYD arranged volunteer trainers, ICT companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, and Vodafone provided software and what they called “knowledge” (by which they meant some kind of expertise in ICT skills training, data management, or ICT-based communal self-organization). The community empowerment programs were part of a collaboration with the UN’s Local Agenda 21 (LA-21) project. The LA-21 project targeted “the development of a new ‘local governance’ model in Turkey whereby public institutions, local authorities and civil society organizations are forming the triangle of the local-decision making processes” (Emrealp, 2011: 6). HKYD described LA-21 as a democratization project that “reflects a decentralized approach based on collaboration and communication between equal partners. The project’s basic decision-making and

executive mechanisms at the local level are the stakeholders organized under City Councils.” The mediation between different governance actors and scales by HKYD took place through a multi-stakeholder governance model. This model, also named network governance, comprises “interdependent yet autonomous actors engaged in institutionalized processes of public governance based on negotiated interactions and joint decision making” (Sørensen & Torfing). This chapter, in conjunction with the next chapter, asks in what ways the NGO-led “information society” project, which was enacted through multi-stakeholder network

governance, generated new sites and forms of governmental control as well as political authority articulated as “participation.” NGO-led governance was promoted as a move toward decentralization of political authority and empowerment of local, self-organizing communities. However, rather than taking the rise of NGO-led governance as a move toward

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democratization per se, I explore how its practices produced particular socio-technical organizations involving new modes of control as well as particular political possibilities. The current chapter argues that CSR ICT4D tended to reinforce capitalist accumulation and governmental control by inhibiting politicization of Turkey’s course of development, including the implementation of the so-called “information society.” The following chapter, Chapter 4, argue that this inhibition—or depoliticization of social and technological

development—stands in sharp contrast to what NGO-led governance promised at the local level: governance experiments in support of “skilled” and “participatory” communities that would be able to co-determine local and national affairs. Running through Chapters 3 and 4 is the theme of the contradictory combination of practices of governmental control and invocations of participatory politics. I analyze and map the socio-technical and spatialized organizations that underlie the contradictory approaches to governance inherent in the NGO- led “information society” project.

First, this chapter explains how the ICT-led information society project differed from the state-led project (see Chapter 2) and, indeed, how it sought to undermine some of the latter’s key elements. I point to an informational-technical discourse that informed a

particular political imagination of networking. By appealing to new principles and models of governance—which presumably were “networked,” “participatory,” and “horizontal” —this discourse invoked local communities as social entities that enjoyed political authority. While the state constructed the informational realm supported by ICT as a national territory, HKYD and other ICT NGOs working on the so-called information society claimed this realm as a global space of connectivity and networked exchange between global and local, but not necessarily national, actors.

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The following section looks at the practices enacting the “network governance” model and explores what I argue is the contradiction between HKYD’s political promise of local self-governance and the ways in which it introduced ICT companies as governmental actors. Although the NGO advocated for the political authority of self-governing local communities, it simultaneously participated in governance mechanisms that instituted ICT companies as key governance actors. Through what I call a “politics of transparency,” which constructed relations of transparency and accountability, hence supervision and control, with regard to companies and corporate investors but not people receiving CSR programs, the HKYD governance networks enabled ICT companies to decide what constituted “societal good” as well as manage the course of Turkey’s development trajectories. Meanwhile, local populations had no say in these matters and were subjected to governmental regimes.

Third, I argue that besides governmental control, CSR ICT4D facilitated information- capitalist control by stimulating dependencies on proprietary software. I note that CSR ICT4D programs enacted particular “skill geographies.” These geographies emanate from spatialized strategies that enact globally varying degrees of connectivity and that allow particular groups and individuals varying degrees of engagement with, and control over, ICTs and the trajectories of technological development.

Finally, I discuss the “values of volunteerism,” where I argue that CSR ICT4D projects operated on the basis of volunteerism and networked exchange among communities. While open to information-capitalist exploitation, these elements of CSR ICT4D’s operation also introduced potential challenges to, and disruptions of, the logics of information

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Decentralization: the Global and the Local

During a personal interview, HKYD Chair Başak Saral told me about the NGO’s history. It was founded in response to the lingering effects of political repression in the wake of the military coup of 1980. The junta that ruled country between 1980 and 1983 banned the right to associate, forbade the civil society activities as well as the formation of political parties. The prohibitions and restrictions hit youth movements especially hard, since the constitution drafted by the junta approached the youth as a potential threat to the nation. As Ms. Saral said, after the laws changed and the political atmosphere somewhat relaxed, the NGO had to “build the organization of youth from scratch.” 43

Through its partnership with the UN, HKYD maintained an agenda of state reform by decentralizing governance

mechanisms and platforms. Following the UN’s Habitat II Summit in Istanbul in 1996, the UN’s LA-21 program was adapted to Turkey. LA-21’s civil platforms, the City Councils, gathered civil society institutions; un-organized citizens; special councils addressing the concerns of particular segments of the population such as youth, women, and the disabled; and working groups addressing particular topics of interest. HKYD mediated and translated between “local” and “global” actors and scales. While “local actors” included these self- governing local communities as well as Turkish NGOs, the “global actors” were ICT

companies and supranational governance institutions. In 2011, HKYD had partnerships with Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, and Visa. Further partnerships existed with the United Nations

Development Program (UNDP), United Cities and Local Governments Middle East and West Africa Section (UCLA-MEWA), the Turkish Ministry of Development, Unicef, and a series of Turkish NGOs. HKYD was a member or partner of several international platforms,

including the UN Economic and Social Council, UN-HABITAT Best Application Committee,

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Telecenter European Network of Information Centers, TOBB Young Entrepreneurs Committee, and WALD, the World Local Governance and Democracy Academy.

HKYD worked on two fronts: free or low-cost skills training in information and communication technology (ICT); and self-governance at the local level through

participatory community councils. For the NGO, the two fronts were related. ICTs were tools to reach democratic participation of young people and empower them. Ms. Saral called the NGO’s approach to the ICT sector “rights-based.” She said, “IT is a tool for us. It is not the target, but it’s a tool to reach democratic participation of young people.” Information rights had a special place among HKYD’s other agenda points because the NGO saw ICT-

supported access to information as the basis of awareness about any other kind of right or struggle for social change. An HKYD project website advocated the right to information and to attaining ICT skills for youth and other groups “in accordance with their needs” [kişilerin internet ihtiyacları doğrultusunda]. The project website further invoked rights to content and applications that are user-friendly [elverişli] for diverse users, including illiterate people, as well as the importance of a multi-lingual internet.44

This emphasis on rights was also reflected in my interview with Eda, an HKYD volunteer “master trainer” who trained volunteer instructors for the ICT skills trainings. She told me that these trainings had to do with rights because by knowing how to navigate information sources, people would be able to get to know their rights:

The reason why we started the computer training courses is the fact that using a computer is the easiest way to reach new information. I google everything [original in English]. By using a computer [participants] can learn about all of their rights in the shortest period of time, because information changes really quickly.45

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See http://www.bilenlerbilmeyenlerebilgisayarogretiyor.net/tr/Page.asp?id=94 , accessed on June 15, 2012.

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In this statement, being “connected” and “informed” includes being informed about rights and hence being an aware and participatory citizen.

In addition to stimulating ICT use, the NGO also spread information-technical

discourses in order to describe and legitimize political imaginations of networking (see Barry, 2001). While HKYD pointed to the relevance of ICT access and skills, the NGO mobilized a discourse of “networking.” This discourse informed a governance model and political

imagination in which participatory, local communities were central. Discourses of networking were relevant especially in relation to City Councils, the civil platforms

established under the LA-21 project by HKYD and the UN. These councils were portrayed as information and communication platforms. By law, the councils were entitled to receive assistance from the municipalities, ranging from facilities for meetings to budget support. Municipal assemblies were also required by law to consider the recommendations made by the councils regarding local matters. However, the guidebook for these councils, The City (Citizens’) Council: As a Participatory-democratic Governance Model Developed in Turkey

(Emrealp, 2011), stated: “It is becoming increasing[ly] recognized and acknowledged that the real strength of the City Council is not associated with having a legal personality, but come[s] from the synergy of its constituents via joining forces to constitute a ‘common wisdom’ that embraces the whole city.” Key to the mechanisms of this governance model were

“networking, communication and collaboration within and amongst the City Councils” supported by “technical know how” (8). In the process, decentralizing and participatory processes made use of “the unlimited opportunities provided by information and

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democracy’” (39). The book presented community websites as “basic tools in promoting and strengthening the networking, communication and collaboration within and amongst the City Councils” (57) and for sharing experiences and “best practices.”

In a personal interview, Sadun Emrealp, who was an advisor to HKYD, the LA-21 project coordinator employed by the UN, and author of the abovementioned guidebook, said that the LA-21 Program encouraged cities to establish their own “networks,” consisting of working groups and councils. He emphasized: “There is no center in our organization, everything is done at the local level and only reporting to the UN is done from here.” He further noted that LA-21 rejected any kind of forced institutionalization of organizational structures: “We are not going around like ‘you should do this or that kind of thing.’ When we first started out, we didn’t have any plans for establishing city councils or similar

mechanisms.”46

Demonstrating the experimental, “bottom-up” character of LA-21, Mr. Emrealp’s account rendered open questions, for which he did not provide definite answers, about how to start participatory communities and stimulate direct democracy.

Part of HKYD’s LA-21 “good governance” training that I observed during my field research a slideshow entitled, “Lobbyism Education.” As the slideshow emphasized, direct democracy differed from representative democracy. In the latter governance model, an overarching body [üst organ], the state, was legally assigned the role of exercising government on behalf of constituencies. Instead of representative democracy, the City Councils, as platforms of self-government, promoted the principles of “ownership” over one’s city, “active participation,” and “cooperation toward solutions.” The goal was further to form a “common intellect” [ortak akıl] that would incorporate all stakeholders, young and old, organized and not. In references to the “common intellect,” “information sharing,”

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“participation,” and “horizontal” organization, information-technology discourse resurfaced and conveyed an imagination of political authority.47

The political imagination of networking was articulated to mechanisms of horizontal accountability. During the interview, Mr. Emrealp argued that direct democracy had to do with networked relations of accountability, starting with the production of knowledge:

Accountability is not only upwards but downwards and sideways also. All groups should be accountable not only to their superiors but to the people at large. And mechanisms should be developed; they should not just say “we are transparent” et

cetera but really put their accounts on the internet, shar[ing] them with the people, mak[ing] information accessible and understandable by the people. These kinds of steps should be taken in order for networks to function. [They should not just be] sending emails to employ each other, but to get essential information for decision- making processes. […] A lot of the participation is made through complicated mechanisms of networks. But each constituent should have a stake in networking, not just getting information, but also discussing and converting this information to valuable knowledge.48

I will return to Mr. Emrealp’s description of transparency in the next section in order to analyze the mechanisms of “transparent” governance practices. For now, I want to note that HKYD’s discourses on networking were articulated to “good governance” principles advocated by several ICT NGOs. The cited guidebook by Mr. Emrealp promoted

transparency, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence, arguing that each of these principles “contribute to the development of ‘more democratic governance’” (13). HKYD’s discourses complemented the discourses by other prominent ICT NGOs working on the transformation toward the information society. These discourses, which again deployed information-technical discourse to compose a political imagination, challenged the state’s construction of the ICT-supported informational realm (see Chapter 2). I will argue that they

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See http://www.ulusalgenclikparlamentosu.net/dokumantasyon/ulusal-genclik-parlamentosu/sunumlar.html.

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claimed the informational realm as a global sphere of connectivity and exchange between

global and local actors, eclipsing the role of national actors. In this NGO-led information society project, HKYD mediated between these local and global actors. By assigning political authority to the “local community,” the NGO also legitimized its own role as a mediator between global and local actors.

Governing Global Connectivity

As mentioned in Chapter 2, three prominent non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the Informatics Foundation of Turkey (Türkiye Bilişim Vakfı, TBV), the Informatics

Association of Turkey (Türkiye Bilişim Derneği, TBD), and the Informatics Industry

Association of Turkey, (Türkiye Bilişim Sanayicileri Derneği, TÜBİSAD) published a report

on Turkey’s e-transformation. Opposing what the ICT NGOs identified as state centralism, the report argued that effective planning required the input of all relevant parties. These parties included the ICT NGOs themselves as they were institutions that represented the local ICT sector and worked on the information society project in Turkey. The report assured that the “e-transformation strategy” could not be implemented “unless active participation and governance are accepted both as governing principles and as indispensable components of the strategy.” In the ICT NGOs’ discourses, the inevitability of technological development toward global networks is concomitant with necessary failure of state-centered governance. As the TBV Board Chairman argued in the foreword to the White Book (vi), “Since [the] Internet has a decentralized, global, and limitless structure, […] modern States cannot regulate the problems arising from [the] Internet effectively by themselves.” He added that for that reason, “States must change their traditional way of thinking.” Discursively and

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materially, these ICT NGOs challenged the state’s construction of the ICT-supported informational realm as a national territory by framing this realm as a global space. This globality had to do with associations between “networking” or network governance and smooth connectivity and flow of information, interoperability, and multi-scalar organization.

ICT NGOs introduced a discourse of networking that undermined state-centered governance by pointing to the supposedly fundamental incompatibility between “the state” and the emerging global realities of ICT-supported networks. One fervent advocate of a new model of governance, Özgür Uçkan, mobilized information-technology discourses to

describe and legitimize political imaginations of networked governance models (see Barry, 2001). A professor of Knowledge, Network Economy and Information Management at the private university Istanbul Bilgi, Uçkan advised both TBV and TBD. According to him, the transformation toward an information society would involve social and cultural capital, namely the capabilities of individuals, institutions, and society overall (Uçkan, 2009: 25, 26). His critique was that the state’s information society project did not enact such a fundamental transformation. Uçkan (16) conjured up the image of the state as an industrial, and thereby “outdated,” machine: the state conceived e-government “as a mechanical modernization project.” Switching to information-technical discourse, Uçkan advocated “policy

convergence” and “interactivity” as governance principles. According to him (9), governance following such principles had no center but relied on horizontal coordination: “The new administrative paradigm of the ‘Information Age’ is decentralized, multilayered,