Ideals of Openness, transparency Vs confidentaility, secrecy
There is great effect of privacy / individual rights on true e-Government implementations. As always, the core goals of e-Governance initiatives are to bring about openness and transparency in governance. In many different ways global governments strive to be transparent and thus be more approachable and open in its dealings with citizens.
Individual rights such as privacy has great impact on e-Government systems usage. The Privacy Act of 1974 and its wide usage in interpreting privacy rights has always put US government in a very cautious situation to be extra careful when dealing with vast amounts of citizen data (personal, health etc) that is collected via e-Government systems. The more open and transparent the e-Government systems want to be, the more the systems are vulnerable to privacy threats (the article on creation of FEHBP database is a very recent example for this tensed situation). Private and confidential information about citizens such as personally identifiable information and health information need to be protected and should not be open to public. At the same this information need to be made available to the required individuals within 30 days of grant of request. Thus, the privacy issue is a double edged sword that has close contact with ideals of openness and transparency.
There are many issues surrounding protecting national security and there is sufficient information that is considered part of national defense and safety. Examples of VA issue when millions of VA employees records where leaked, cyber-warfare conducted by various groups that leads to constant hacking of national information structures and unauthenticated usage & exposure of national security related data is a grave threat to national security. The document describing National Protection Plan and its implications was of great interest to me (reading it in its entirety) as it highlights the tension that we go through as related to how open and transparent we should be at the same time protecting our national information infrastructures and systems from security threats. The protection plan is just a plan; federal government still has to arrive at clear action oriented plan as to control the information creation, manipulation, storage and exchange between government systems and agencies, between agencies and citizens and between government and citizens (and / or global citizens).
Obama is indeed targeting establishing open, transparent, participatory and collaborative e-Government setup, but is putting privacy, confidentiality, secrecy and security at risk – unless there is concrete action plans to protect privacy and security. This situation leads us to the truth that – ideals of openness and transparency, on the one hand, and confidentiality and secrecy on the other are not mutually exclusive.
Bibliography
1. U.S. Senate (Feb, 2000), Cyber Attacks: The National Protection Plan and its Privacy Implications, S. Hrg. 106-889, http://www.loc.gov/law/find/hearings/pdf/00076638986.pdf. (Accessed 10/20/2010)
2. U.S. President, Open Government Initiative, http://www.whitehouse.gov/open. (Accessed 10/20/2010)
3. Rosenberg, A. (March, 2010) “Employee health database could net major cost savings, OPM report says”, Government Executive, http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0310/033010ar2.htm?oref=rellink. (Accessed 10/21/2010)
4. OMB (2006) Memorandum M-06-15, Safeguarding Personally Identifiable Information, http://www.cio.gov/Documents/Safeguarding_Personally_Identifiable_Information.pdf. (Accessed 10/21/2010)
5. Long, E. (10/05/2010) “FEHBP database raises privacy concerns”, nextgov, http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20101005_2133.php. (Accessed 10/21/2010)
6. Federal Trade Commission (June 1998) Privacy Online: A Report to Congress, http://www.ftc.gov/reports/privacy3/toc.shtm. (Accessed 10/21/2010)
7. Department of Justice (2010), Overview of the Privacy Act of 1974, http://www.justice.gov/opcl/1974privacyact-overview.htm. (Accessed 10/21/2010)
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Is there a conflict between the support of individual rights and the use of e-government for transformational purposes? Why or why not?
Based on my reflection on E-Governance reference materials and experience, I am concluding that e-government initiatives cannot be truly transformational unless the socio-political environment is favorable and open-minded to bring about highly participatory democracy with high level of citizen involvement through innovative technology usage. Two forces are in play that hinders transformation – narrow mindedness of political powers to establish highly interactive e-government mediums and/or the citizen’s lack of exposure to a particular medium of innovative technology due to its unavailability or fear of attack towards his individual rights of privacy and security. The first force factor is very obvious in the way almost all government setups works. Effect of individual rights on supporting /hindering e-government transformation is rather not very obvious – but could be easily analyzed and a decision point can be reached.
The issue of conflict comes into picture when socio-political setups transform into the 4th stage of ‘Interactive Democracy’ as West coins the ultimate and desired stage of e-government setup. In this stage of e-government setup, there would be high level interaction where lot of personal feedbacks, opinion and other personal information is being exchanged, stored, processed and analyzed that has high potential of being accounted for in variety of decision within the administrative processes. This raises huge privacy and security concerns for common citizens – their personal information being trapped in isles of information systems. Only way to gain confidence in promoting the usage towards transformation would be to implement means to protect privacy and security during information exchange. Again, this would happen only if political system truly focuses on transformation.
Another dimension of individual rights issue is availability of technology for all common citizens to access the e-government services – commonly called digital divide. The more the transformation without proper citizen exposure to technology, the greater would be the digital divide and its effect on this particular dimension of individual right. Political systems should take steps to reduce these divisions and make the public receptive to the new technology so that transformation would have some meaning.
Analyzing the above two dimensions of individual rights, usage of e-government for transformational purposes seems to conflict with individual rights of privacy/security AND right to be exposed to latest technology. The conflict appears to be present not due to voicing citizens, but due to the lack of implementation of appropriate steps at administrative level to handle privacy/security concerns and to reduce digital divide.
Bibliography:
1. West D. M. (2005). Digital Government – Technology and public sector performance. Princeton University Press.
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True Transformation – Is it ever possible in e-government setup?
This is an interesting and very scholastic topic to share and discuss. The basic question being raised is – Are e-government initiatives capable to bring about transformation within the ecosystem (citizens, government agencies and all public administration setup) that it functions and serves? To answer the question, we really need to define what ‘transformation’ are we talking about. From current readings and past, the level of transformation that we are looking at can be defined as – bring a major change in the way citizens interact with the government in such way that all interactions are highly participatory, collaborative, transparent and leading to participatory democracy through interactive models of technology (viz. Internet and Broadband). This transformation does not happen on a rapid basis, but is gradual (secular change as West puts it) and we are potentially in the childhood stages of this transformation through G2C interactive services, but as we see, there are several factors that restrict this transformation and shift the path towards true participatory democracy.
Now, once we have defined what transformation is in e-government context, we need to analyze if transformation in e-government is really meaningful or can be achieved or is there even need to focus on transformational nature of e-government initiatives. The reason behind this concern is the mere fact that technology is shaped by socio-political and economic factors that govern the government and social setup. No matter how innovative the technology is, it is not useful enough to be transformational in nature, unless the e-government ecosystem is free from these inherent constraints to realize the true benefits of technology. One could say financial constraints is the major hurdle for transformation, but apart from this, the main reason for this resistance towards transformational change in political or government system is the mere fear among political/administrative people that their actions will be held accountable if e-government services are made transformational through its virtue of being 100% interactive and responsive with its citizens. Another factor is citizens being masked out of usage/reception of positive usage of a major technology due to battle for power by technology companies and/or digital divide.
The above reasoning of why true transformation (linking back to definition in first paragraph) is hindered in delivering e-government services, I am forced to agree to the fact that e-government initiatives cannot be transformational unless the basic socio-political setup is open minded and is willing to pave way for transformation. Rohr’s point that public administrators should use their discretionary powers to balance their power with individual rights, still holds in most of the government setups and administrators are not so open minded to reach that level of open interaction with its citizens. This is true from what we saw in above paragraph and thus, government initiatives are truly ‘models of limited than transformation change’.
Bibliography:
1. Rohr J. A. (1986). To Run a Constitution – The Legitimacy of the Administrative State. Chapters 1-4, 9-11. University Press of Kansas
2. West D. M. (2005). Digital Government – Technology and public sector performance. Princeton University Press.
3. Shar A.R., Toporkoff S. (2008). Public Technology Institure & ITEMS Internationa
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Will Rohr’s secular writings about Government change in the present?
If Rohr would have written his book in the present year, it would have a clear shift from the focus on defining what a perfect public administrative function is (which focused on employees themselves) to defining how a public administration be made more fruitful in satisfying the original essence of Constitution to bring about effective administration through active citizen (not just the employees, but all common citizens) collaboration and involvement. There would be clear impact of current high tech and collaborative technology on his view points on how administrative functions may be shared and collaboratively functioned to bring about transparent governance.
Rather than concentrating on separation of powers or mingling of powers or executive leadership and its center of power, he would have focused on issues of how to link citizens more freely to government information sources and its functions to reduce federal bureaucracy and make governance more open, not vested within lobbyists or specific parties within government. He would thus have been able to more clearly expose what does ‘for the people’ actual means in this technology era.
Bibliography:
1. Rohr J. A. (1986). To Run a Constitution – The Legitimacy of the Administrative State. Chapters 1-4, 9-11. University Press of Kansas
2. Ed. By Lathrop D., Ruma L. (2010). Open Government – Collaboration, Transparency and Participation in Practice. Chapters 3-6. O’Reilly Media Inc.
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Did the state of technology generally available when the scholarly authors wrote affect the topics on which they wrote and their assumptions about government?
This reading materials as listed in the Bibliography, sets the stage for deeply analyzing the origins of the most long lasting government setup of the world and how does one appreciate Lincoln’s far reaching vision of – ‘a government of the people, by the people, for the people’ – as related to various points of time when a literature is written. Both Rohr and others (as in Open Government) are addressing the same theme – How to bring about effective public administration through a governing body that cares about citizen involvement in its decision making and effective government-information assimilation.
However, if we closely examine the stage setting, analysis and conclusion of each chapter in Rohr and Open Government, it is clear that, apart from the sharing the above common theme, they clearly are affected by the technology settings that was available to them which apparently molded their thinking process and analysis.
Lets take the case of Rohr’s ‘To Run a constitution’. This was written during mid of eighties when Internet was just about to take its birth and government information systems (as mainframe systems and other tightly coupled client server systems written in C, C++ etc) were reaching their mid ages with the focus of improving the administrative process. There was no scope large scale collaboration and citizen involvement at that time. This fact underlies the reason why Rohr took the most academic approach to define what a perfect administration is and linking it to the Constitutional setup that its framers dreamed of and how it was shaped into a form that existed during mid eighties. The era from 1930 to 1985, marked the gradual establishment of the ‘modern administrative state of the New Deal’ without much focus on free, collaborative citizen involvement as it might have possible through Internet and the like. Hence, Rohr’s point of view of citizen involvement is centered around the administrative employees themselves and how they ‘fulfill aspirations of citizenship i.e –to be ruled and be ruled’.
In contrast, when we look at the diverse chapters written by Malamud, Noveck, Dierking and Robinson et. Al, there is clear diversion to a totally new dimension of energetic involvement of citizens – not necessarily the administrative employees – but the common layman citizens themselves. Malamud stresses on the importance of how government documents, meetings etc need to be made so transparent and accessible to the general public so that they can have active participation in government-information assimilation and thus truly reflect the theme of ‘for the people’. Noveck on the other hand highlights the very important aspect of open and collaborative democracy where all citizens take active role in various administrative initiatives – all made possible through collaborative websites in the Gov 2.0 and Web 2.0 era. She drives the point clear that closed decision making grounds as which existed during the mid eighties is a failure that results from poor information distribution and management.
Dierking’s chapter was very interesting as it draws the distinction between best government software pattern and its anti-pattern and also distinction between an ideal object oriented government class model and a destructive blob (stove types that existed during late eighties and early nineties) model. He makes the point clear that the current trend towards open government and effective citizen to government collaboration could be made possible only through an efficient software design model that is highly cohesive and less tightly coupled. Chapter by Robinson et. al concludes the state of the art e-Government that is going on currently which has a great impact from the collaborative technologies such as advanced data mining, Web 2.0, Mashups, APIs etc that offers wide opportunities for the common citizen to connect and collaborate with government systems.
As seen above analysis, we can conclude that Rohr’s line of thought was greatly affected by the closed decision making models of the late eighties (whose drawbacks as linked to by Noveck in her chapter) that focused on actual administration and its efficacy, but less focus on common citizen collaboration which might have been otherwise possible through more advanced technology. Whereas all ‘Open Government’ authors were greatly influenced by advanced technology and systems that has already paved the way to open and collaborative government which is in its mid ages, slowly stepping toward more robust and open collaborative architecture bringing citizens more closer to the government.
Bibliography:
1. Rohr J. A. (1986). To Run a Constitution – The Legitimacy of the Administrative State. Chapters 1-4, 9-11. University Press of Kansas
2. Ed. By Lathrop D., Ruma L. (2010). Open Government – Collaboration, Transparency and Participation in Practice. Chapters 3-6. O’Reilly Media Inc.
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What measures need to be taken to make sure that offshore outsourcing does not adversely affect American jobs?
Offshore outsourcing is a highly debated topic. It would be nice if we reflect on the reasons that has lead to offshore outsourcing -
1. Highly skilled workforce for cheap labor – As Matt, pointed in his post, most of the developing countries offers education that is highly specialized and with focus on international job economy. Difference in dollars and x currency, leads to a favorable situation for companies
2. Current restrictions and huge backlogs in H1Bs and job based Green Cards – If U.S. doesn’t take necessary steps to provide more opportunities for the highly-skilled workforce to migrate into U.S., companies will continue to outsource.
3. Inadequate number of high-tech workers in U.S. – Research shows that there is about 190,000 unfilled IT jobs in the US today due to a shortage of qualified high-tech workers. Companies resort to outsourcing to fill in immediate gaps in HR.
Now looking at possible recommendations to remedy the situation of U.S. economy getting affected, the following steps may be taken -
1. Focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) based education – As the article indicates, children should be encouraged to pursue these fields right from their school education. Provide more funding and scholarships to students who pursue these career paths. This will eventually lead to increased pool of highly skilled workers at reasonable rates.
2. Increase the number of immigrant job visas which will reduce outsourcing for skilled labor.
3. Establish legislative measures to regulate outsourcing so that companies are required to fill in certain percentage of U.S. natives, if sufficient skills are available.
My point on shortage of skilled workers was based on close examination of this report from Office of Technology Policy, the Federal agency working to maximize technology’s contribution to America’s economic growth. Hope that makes some sense.
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Where should cyberlaw enforcement be centered?
I appreciate the study conducted by UCSD that it provides some striking insights into operation of scam engines and their origin stations. Based on this research, policies should be devised to regulate ISPs not to provide services for hosting such websites. Enforcing this policy cannot be done from a centralized location. Why don’t we share the knowledge to other research Universities across the world and create action plan to conduct mass study across the world? Thoughts?
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How pervasive is phishing, and what actions have the authorities taken to eliminate it?
Antiphishing.org links us to various useful means to counter phishing. skimming through the website, here are two things that interested me -
1. The phishing and crime-ware map, which shows world-wide distribution.
2. GAIN technology from InternetPerils which claims highly effective ways to monitor internet traffic using efficient data pattern analysis. Good tool that can be considered for usage by FBI data-fusion efforts.
Phishing on Myspace as this article -MySpace phishing scam targets music fans – exposes how far this has gone. The attack is done by circulating spam email to gather credit card information. What makes the situation worse is that the method used in these attacks is simple and doesn’t involve much programming efforts.
Provision to monitor credit info is also a good idea. I have a concern though regarding accessing one’s credit score more often to tracks malicious activities. Would it lead to lowering of the credit score. I have this option to monitor my credit score on my bank account. I have noticed that my credit got reduced when I used to check my credit info more often. Am I doing something wrong here?
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Should the US recognize criminal law sanctions from other countries when those countries accuse US citizens of violating the other country’s laws?
Cyber-Crime and its big brother – “Cyber-warfare”, have so conquered the ever expanding and versatile cyberspace that we need to establish new international polices and regulations which will enable easy coordinated crime-fighting between nations. Its not about questioning who is accusing who, rather the grave situation here to find am amicable solution for international peace keeping. I personally think that CSIA is formed with this intention and that all nations should support it, including U.S.
As we have seen in the previous lectures and discussions, Internet crimes and the policies that regulate it are insufficient until we create policies that has a global reach. Major areas of concerns are again privacy and national jurisdictions.
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USA Patriot Act and Data mining
I think its the USA PATRIOT Act that gives the right to do this kind of data mining. This actually amended a handful of other Acts such as -
- Wiretap Statute (Title III):
- Electronic Communications Privacy Act
- Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
- Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
- Family Education Rights and Privacy Act
- Pen Register and Trap and Trace Statute
- Money Laundering Act
- Immigration and Nationality Act
- Money Laundering Control Act
- Bank Secrecy Act
- Right to Financial Privacy Act
- Fair Credit Reporting Act
This is as per USA PATRIOT Act as reflected upon in the article – The USA PATRIOT Act
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