PULPA DE FRUTAS NO TRADICIONALES

While information technology appears to offer considerable potential to increase the efficiency of public administration, improve service delivery and enhance democracy, there is no assurance that these benefits will be realised. Many concerns have been voiced about the potential social costs of ICT applications. Three areas of concern are examined in this section:

■ the potential for increasing social exclusion;

■ the dangers of creating the Orwellian Big Brother state; and

■ the fear that ICT developments will fuel the consumer society at the

expense of the democratic polity.

Social exclusion

There are concerns that ICT developments in public governance will further widen the gap between the information technology ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Citizens have different needs and abilities when it comes to government service delivery and the use of technology. Electronic delivery could result in less equitable access to public services for some, despite the promise of the technology to improve access. Some call this the ‘digital divide’.

Pilot tests show, on one hand, that a broad range of citizens can easily adapt to electronic delivery (Crowe, 1998; Taylor, 1998). On the other hand, such participation may be hampered by major barriers such as the lack of financial resources, training, equipment, facilitators and institutional support. Computer networking, for example, could help deliver services to small businesses in the inner city or to rural craftspeople. These business com- munities could use the technology to their competitive advantage, but to do this, they need access to equipment and more cost-effective and efficient networks, a minimal amount of training and a supportive environment. Support, in this case, means persons and institutions who can encourage technology innovation and transfer, increase understanding about ‘how to use the system’, and provide some transitional assistance until these entrepreneurs can go it alone. There is evidence that vicarious learning constitutes a key aspect of such change (Leonard-Barton, 1995). Failure to attend to these needs and opportunities runs the risk that benefits from electronic service delivery would flow more to the suburban, more affluent and educated segments of society. This could widen the gap between the information technology ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ (Brin, 1998).

The loss of rural/regional services is well documented, and some com- munities have risen to this challenge in innovative ways. Governments in all spheres will need to work with, and monitor, pilot programs to develop detailed guidance for agency information technology planning and budgeting

on electronic delivery. Some ways of developing community ICT infrastructure are set out in Exhibit 10.3.

Big Brother is watching you

ICTs have enabled governments to amass unprecedented amounts of infor- mation about citizens, which they are able to share with a wide variety of agencies. The potential for this information to be used in an invidious form of social control has been highlighted by those foretelling of the possibility of the Orwellian nightmare of the Big Brother state (Van de Donk and Tops, 1992; Van de Donk et al., 1995). Governments have generally been slow to react to such changes. Most protection policies either predate the electronic era or reflect the time when centralised mainframe computers dominated and telecommunications meant the ‘plain old telephone service’. During the 1980s,

The involvement of the local community infrastructure can greatly facilitate electronic service delivery. The infrastructure, as defined here, includes people and organisations experienced in helping to meet the needs of local citizens and/or in training and assisting citizens in using information technology.

■ Schools, libraries, community centres, town halls and hospitals offer some of the most highly leveraged opportunities because these locations are typically heavily used and well respected, and provide a multiplier effect for technology investments.

■ At the local level, technologies and locations suitable for multiple users offer the greatest return on investment.

■ Local high schools frequently serve this purpose in small towns and rural areas.

■ Educational institutions in general—whether high schools, community col- leges or universities—are very interested in using information technology, tend to be more familiar with the technology than the community-at-large, and are well suited to the training needs likely to be associated with major electronic delivery initiatives.

■ Schools and hospitals already benefit from ongoing federal and state com- puter, distance learning and telemedicine programs.

■ Various voluntary, self-help, and information response and referral organisations are already plugged into the local community, and some receive funding from federal and state social service programs.

■ Small business innovation centres and economic development councils play similar roles for the local business community, typically with partial federal and state funding.

■ The key is to find synergies between these and the many other government programs that collectively can provide the building blocks for electronic service delivery.

Source: United States Office of Technology Assessment, 1993.

EXHIBIT 10.3

Leveraging community IT infrastructure

governments modestly updated some of the basic information policy statutes (on privacy, security, electronic surveillance and information management, for example) to reflect early to mid-1980s’ technology and applications. The ongoing transition to ever-greater levels of agency automation and, most recently, electronic service delivery will create tensions between new appli- cations and the old policy frameworks (Schmidt, 1998). There is an increasing need to update statutes on privacy, security, records management and archiving, procurement, open government and freedom of information, among other matters of concern (Diffie and Landau, 1998).

Consumerism versus democracy

There is an ongoing debate about the extent to which ICT applications are delivering democratic gain or democratic deficit. One of the key questions is whether as public managers become more knowledgeable about consumer preferences, via systems that capture actual consumption, the traditional role of the elected politician begins to reduce. Is the information age confirming what many critics of public management have argued for many years, that management values override democratic values (Taylor, 1999)? There are no easy answers to such a question. It is, however, important to avoid arguments that presume the technology determines a particular outcome. ICTs of them- selves deliver neither more nor less democracy. It is up to governments to consider the ways in which this technology might be applied and, in so doing, to consider what forms of democracy they are aiming to deliver. This requires governments to give more consideration to ICT strategies than has hitherto been the case.