Author of machiavelli.net, proud father of three, interested in shaping network society. Welcome to my blog.Public Policy for Network Society: The Politics of Technology Policy
On April 11/12 we are organizing a conference in Monterrey, Mexico that aims to put technology policy square in the middle of the public policy debate in Mexico (Harvard Kennedy School, EGAP, CIAPEM). http://www.ppfornetworksociety.org/
Here is my argument that is valid not only for Mexico, but for any country today:
Technology policy is one of the most important issues for government. However even today, decisions about technology policy that shape our economies and societies are made by non-political civil servants, often influenced by vendors that want to sell a service or product.
By openly putting strategic (almost philosophical) questions onto the table, the conference aims to establish technology policy making in the core of the Mexican public policy debate. We aim to either achieve consensus on the questions or at least sharpen the respective arguments and put that down in a document that will be accessible to the interested public on our website.
Our focus lies on technology education, the makeup of the institutional ecology of the network political economy, public value creation in government 2.0, and the networked public sphere.
The guiding questions of the conference are:
Education
How do we prepare Mexican students for a networked world? Do we follow the closed enciclomedia route? Do we go OLPC? One (networked) computer per student, classroom, school? Do we allow user-generated content?
Open Source
What is the role of the state in fostering open source ecosystems? What is the link between government and open source? Open source and open content?
Government 2.0
How is government changing through XML, user generated content, peer interactions, social software? How is the public sphere changing?
Transparency and Privacy
Do technologies like SISI enhance access to information? Can we assure privacy and data protection? What are the tradeoffs? How does it impact corruption?
Part of the conference will be peer produced, there is a wiki on the website and we plan to write up our findings/disagreements. So do join us, if you want an invitation, send an email to Nestor (nestorgr@gmail.com), you need a code for the registration on the website.
