Year 2005… Somewhere in the world… : Some personal e-problems….

I wake up in the morning, and my first concern is to check my emails… before to go to bed… I also check emails… I spend most of my time in front of a computer, writing or speaking to someone, no matter the time and including week ends….early in the morning, conference call with China, late in the night conference call with USA… fortunately there is Skype…. Most of my time I’m on a plane traveling to a conference or a meeting, one day in Sri Lanka, the day after in South Africa… I live more in airport lounges than in my “home”… despite I am homeless, being Italian, working in Switzerland, with my girlfriend from Morocco and living in Spain… Therefore, my girlfriend left me… and so I decided I needed a break and I went to Brasil…

Discovering the “kitesurf approach”

There, after traveling through the North East I ended up in a small village on the beach, similar to a “paradise”… and in paradise, I discovered, there is no Internet connection apparently… At the beginning I was of course anxious, I needed to check my email even if I was on holyday, at least once a day.. “where is the closest Internet café ?” “Oh, just 50 km from here....” Then, I discovered the kitesurf, and its “approach”… where perception of time and efficiency is relative.. depending more on wind capacity than bytes… often you have to wait hours to have the right wind, and so you realize that the urgency of replying to email can be very relative… you also realize (even if you already know that), that many people don’t even know what is Internet is and nevertheless are happy…

I also realized that I am part of a generation that is at the borderline between the pre-Internet generation and the Internet generation… when I was a kid there was no Internet, and I was happy anyway… The first time I used a computer I was already a teenager, and the first time I sent an email I was more than 18 years old… Nowadays, kids in the smallest rich part of the world are already computer-dependent or “addict” at 10 years old, have all new technologies but, a recent survey showed that for the first time life expectancy in western countries will be shorter than in the past… On the other side, the majority of the world has no access to Internet and new technologies, and it is struggling to survive! But we are in the “Information Economy or Knowledge Society”, no matter how we call it… it is a new era, where Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have the potential to change (and are already doing so) our lifestyle and quality of life…

The disruptive impact of ICTs.. Information vs Knowledge and the role of “e”…

…but are we sure that ICTs are changing our life for the better? (definitely it was not my case for example, becoming a slave of the computer in the Internet era…) And if we are not so sure, why should we invade the countries that have not yet “discovered” the disruptive impact of ICTs just invoking the positivist role of ICTs, and the potential of ICTs for development, while we are not sure we are really developing, maybe regressing? I know, now I can be easily criticized. Are you arguing of a new “e-Colonialism”? Or “are you really meaning that ICTs do not have the potential to bring about changes and development?” And so on… Of course not, but I want to stress the risks beside the opportunities of introducing ICTs in different contexts. The development of e-Government and e-Governance (will be back on this..) in fact takes place in a very
specific environment and contextual pressure which we must understand and learn, in order to steer it at best. This overall change can be identified as manifold, although producing a composed impact on our lifestyle, level of wealth and relationships, inter-regionally and inter-nationally speaking. What is important about ICTs is their capacity of improving the communication among people: that is defined as the quintessence of human society. In fact, human beings have always used communication to inform, learn, define concepts and viewpoints, deliberate and reach agreements, in private and public life. The electronic features of modern ICTs can be put into this timeless communication process and benefit from doing so. In this respect, ICTs either as a tool or structural productivity lever, support both ordinary communication and innovation networking environments; they also, along the way, modify lifestyles, organizational boundaries and institutional adaptation capabilities. They help solve problems but also feed divides of various natures. They are supposed to define a new social paradigm, the Information Society, a world of promises, still to a large extent to be verified. The e-world developed in this context. Internet was the tool that on top of already existing computing instruments and applications changed it all. Private initiatives came first, pioneering sectors being the banks, tourism, aviation, the military, then as somehow like post Internet bubble remedy, but for sure in the continuation of messianic announcements by Al Gore and Martin Bangemann in the early
nineties, State-supported efforts to develop converging strategies emerged, in OECD countries first, before expanding as standard program or at least expectation in all countries, regions, municipalities of the world.

But, access to information, while an important component of acquiring knowledge, does not in itself constitute learning. Information is not knowledge neither competence. As a matter of fact, information access and sharing, as well as expert data handling, necessitates a lot of knowledge. Information is not the first stage towards neither the pre-condition of knowledge, it is quite the opposite. In the same perspective, the increase of participation in the usage of ICTs is no automatic and linear step towards a deep, effective, sustainable or democratic evidence. On the contrary, one has to stress that to carry out a collective learning of some significance through ICTs, more horizontal processes, empowerment and trial and error linked with
experience sharing must somehow take place “upstream” or at least considered quite early in an ICT-based project to constitute a democratic enhancement chance.

e-Governance as a methodology and philosophical approach for managing the e-World

A lot of people have already said that the role of ICTs as a tool for development must be underlined, rather than as a goal in itself. Using ICTs can help achieve development goals; and this is particular true in relation to modernizing Government operations and reforming Governance frameworks in general, especially in countries where bad bureaucracy is the rule and the need to respond to changing pressures resulting from globalization, fiscal demands, evolving societies and citizens’ expectations is becoming unavoidable. But the Internet, e-Government, e-learning, etc., do not lead in a straightforward manner to better chances and awareness among practitioners. e-Governance thus stresses the importance of the “how” things are done rather than what is done, the learning residing much more in the causality chain than the other way
around. Altogether, in particular if mishandled, wrongly put into perspective, or simply shortsightedly tied with short-term, low impact efficiency goals of substituting actual processes with digital equivalent without any further reflection of the organization, ICTs may not be always necessarily profitable, nor e-Government in all cases, lead to betterment of administration performance or servicing to the citizen; it can even worsen working condition of people and thus quality of life...

Society is not harmonious and just saying that e-Governance, like governance is about the transactional aspect of inter-actor life would not account for the complexity of what really takes place, it is also confrontational. Stakeholders have to muddle their way through even when they are not fundamentally friends, inter-industry-wise and interlevel-wise. This is why e-Governance can be seen as the expression of a “dynamic tension” between institutional frameworks and rapid-technological changes. But there is although a basic asymmetry between the two side of the coin that define e-Governance (governance with and of ICTs): with means basically “bureautic”, web-based and connective type of technologies and applications or rather said mediation-supportive technologies and applications; meanwhile governance of ICTs means dealing in terms of innovation and regulation with all the technologies of the Information society (from tele-surveillance to GPS, through transport telematics and virtual community management applications, just to mention a few).

Year 2006… Somewhere in the world… learning from the kitesurf..….a better use of ICTs

e-Governance is also a knowledge creation and management practice, but at the same time it is a learning process and, as such, in my personal “learning journey” I discovered that for kitesurfing you need competence and combined efforts and learning patterns, first in observing, understanding the risks and the security rules, and then trying and identify each time what are the appropriate instruments to sail with the specific weather and sea conditions. In doing so it is important to share knowledge and despite it is an individual sport, it is more productive and safe when it is practiced with a group of friends. So, if we apply the “kitesurf approach”, as I call it, to solving all the problems related to the world and the new problems
generated by the e-World, there is a need for new competence, leadership and combined efforts and
learning patterns, first in projects, experiments, knowledge sharing and benchmarking.

But considering that any complex issue will bring quickly complex issues to deal with, it is also required to develop new and effective knowledge management mechanisms and neo-institutional skills. In fact, while I am now back with my girlfriend, since I have rationalized my way of working and life (I can work from wherever I am, fortunately there is Skype, and I have learnt how to manage the ICTs as the sail in the kitesurf… and it is not the sail or the ICTs that are managing me….), the institutional frameworks in which we are working and living are not ready for this e-work and the mobile way of life that ICTs can facilitate. This thus creates enormous tensions and inefficiencies that we must address and solve, to live in a better world and develop a real knowledge society inclusive and fun…. where the aim is not just to digitize everything just
for the sake of it, rather using and governing ICTs to enable development and knowledge.

References:

- Executive Master in e-Governance at EPFL, a continuous “learning journey” around the Governance
“with and of” ICTs. (http://egov.epfl.ch/)
- Finger Matthias, Misuraca Gianluca, Rossel Pierre, “Governance with and of ICTs: the need for new
institutional design in a changing world”, egov magazine, Volume II – Issue 5, May 2006,
- Misuraca Gianluca, “e-Governance in Africa, from theory to action: a practical-oriented research and
case studies on ICTs for Local Governance”, Africa World Press, 2006, (forthcoming)
- Okpaku Joseph, “E-Culture, Human Culture and In-Between: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st
Century Digital World - An Address to the ITU Conference on Creating New Leaders for E-Culture”,
Coventry, UK, August, 2001
- Osorio C., “Public Ends by Digital Means: Some Thoughts for Creating Public Value”, National Science
Foundation, Digital Government Workshop, White Paper 2002.
- Rossel Pierre, Finger Matthias, Misuraca Gianluca, “Assessing and steering mobile e-Government
options: findings and indication proposals”, ECEG, 2006
- Rossel Pierre, Misuraca Gianluca, “Triggering the governance perspective of e-Government projects:
beyond mere digitization of administration services; or the Change I to Change II shift issue”,
Lausanne, CDM-EPFL Working Paper, 2006 (forthcoming)