Opening Government
Opening Government

Author: John Wanna

Publisher: ANU Press

Published: 2018-04-23

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1760461946

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Transparency and citizen engagement remain essential to good government and sound public policy. Indeed, they may well be the key to restoring trust in government itself, currently at an all-time low in Australia. It is ironic, then, that this has occurred at a time when the technological potential for information dissemination and interaction has never been greater. Opening Government: Transparency and Engagement in the Information Age explores new horizons and scenarios for better governance in the context of the new information age, focusing on the potentials and pitfalls for governments (and governance more broadly) operating in the new, information-rich environment. Its contributors, a range of international and Australian governance academics and practitioners, ask what are the challenges to our governing traditions and practices in the new information age, and where can better outcomes be expected using future technologies. They explore the fundamental ambiguities extant in opening up government, with governments intending to become far more transparent in providing information and in information sharing, but also more motivated to engage with other data sources, data systems and social technologies.

Surveillance, Transparency, and Democracy
Surveillance, Transparency, and Democracy

Author: Akhlaque Haque

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2015-08-31

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 0817318771

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In this well-informed yet anxious age, public administrators have constructed vast cisterns that collect and interpret a meteoric shower of facts. In Surveillance, Transparency, and Democracy, Akhlaque Haque demonstrates that this pervasive use and increasing dependence on information technology (IT) enables sophisticated and well-intentioned public services that nevertheless risk deforming public policy decision-making. Haque sees the contradiction at the core of a public that seeks services that require a level of data collection that triggers fears of a tyrannical police state. Haque begins by explaining that information has become a vital resource, offering a theoretical framework for its analysis. He then shows that an organization's information-gathering skill is reflected in its IT sophistication, but warns that successful IT strategies can by stunted by symbolic but shallow gestures such as the appointment of a "Chief Information Officer." He further outlines how the dependence on IT can create a reflex for IT solutions that fail to reflect the values of the citizenry they're intended to serve. Haque posits that IT's potential as a tool for human development depends on how civil servants and citizens actively engage in identifying desired outcomes, map IT solutions to those outcomes, and routinize the applications of those solutions. This leads to his call for the development of entrepreneurs who generate innovative solutions to critical human needs and problems. In his powerful summary, Haque recaps possible answers to the question: "What is the best way a public institution can apply technology to improving the human condition?" Haque masterfully flexes between crisp logical arguments and a deep empathy for human values. He finds apt metaphors that bring multifaceted scenarios into clear focus for experts and laymen alike. Engrossing, challenging, and important, Surveillance, Transparency, and Democracy is essential reading for both policy makers as well as the great majority of readers and citizens engaged in contemporary arguments about the role of government, public health and security, individual privacy, data collection, and surveillance.

Surveillance, Transparency, and Democracy
Surveillance, Transparency, and Democracy

Author: Akhlaque Haque

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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"In this well-informed yet anxious age, public administrators have constructed vast cisterns that collect and interpret a meteoric shower of facts. In Surveillance, Transparency, and Democracy, Akhlaque Haque demonstrates that this pervasive use and increasing dependence on information technology (IT) enables sophisticated and well-intentioned public services that nevertheless risk deforming public policy decision-making. Haque sees the contradiction at the core of a public that seeks services that require a level of data collection that triggers fears of a tyrannical police state. Haque begins by explaining that information has become a vital resource, offering a theoretical framework for its analysis. .

The Transparency Society
The Transparency Society

Author: Byung-Chul Han

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2015-08-19

Total Pages: 71

ISBN-13: 080479751X

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Transparency is the order of the day. It is a term, a slogan, that dominates public discourse about corruption and freedom of information. Considered crucial to democracy, it touches our political and economic lives as well as our private lives. Anyone can obtain information about anything. Everything—and everyone—has become transparent: unveiled or exposed by the apparatuses that exert a kind of collective control over the post-capitalist world. Yet, transparency has a dark side that, ironically, has everything to do with a lack of mystery, shadow, and nuance. Behind the apparent accessibility of knowledge lies the disappearance of privacy, homogenization, and the collapse of trust. The anxiety to accumulate ever more information does not necessarily produce more knowledge or faith. Technology creates the illusion of total containment and the constant monitoring of information, but what we lack is adequate interpretation of the information. In this manifesto, Byung-Chul Han denounces transparency as a false ideal, the strongest and most pernicious of our contemporary mythologies.

Transparent Governance in an Age of Abundance
Transparent Governance in an Age of Abundance

Author: Juan Cruz Vieyra

Publisher: Inter-American Development Bank

Published: 2014-10-31

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 159782187X

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During the last decade, the Latin American and Caribbean region has experienced unprecedented natural resources abundance. This book highlights how transparency can help realize the benefits and reduce negative externalities associated with the extractive industries in the region. A central message is that high-quality and well-managed information is critical to ensure the transparent and effective governance of the sector. The insights from experiences in the region can help policymakers design and implement effective regulatory reforms and adopt international standards that contribute to this goal. This is particularly important at a time when the recent boom experienced by extractives in the region may be coming to an end.

Transparency in Global Change
Transparency in Global Change

Author: Burkart Holzner

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 2010-06-15

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9780822972877

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Transparency in Global Change examines the quest for information exchange in an increasingly international, open society. Recent transformations in governments and cultures have brought about a surge in the pursuit of knowledge in areas of law, trade, professions, investment, education, and medical practice—among others. Technological advancements in communications, led by the United States, and public access to information fuel the phenomenon of transparency. This rise in transparency parallels a diminution of secrecy—though, as Burkart and Leslie Holzner point out, secrecy continues to exist on many levels. Based on current events and historical references in literature and the social sciences, Transparency in Global Change focuses on the turning points of information cultures, such as scandals, that lead to pressure for transparency. Moreover, the Holzners illuminate byproducts of transparency—debate, insight, and impetus for change, as transparency exposes the moral corruptions of dictatorship, empire, and inequity.

Troubling Transparency
Troubling Transparency

Author: David E. Pozen

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-08-07

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0231545800

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Today, transparency is a widely heralded value, and the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is often held up as one of the transparency movement’s canonical achievements. Yet while many view the law as a powerful tool for journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens to pursue the public good, FOIA is beset by massive backlogs, and corporations and the powerful have become adept at using it for their own interests. Close observers of laws like FOIA have begun to question whether these laws interfere with good governance, display a deleterious anti-public-sector bias, or are otherwise inadequate for the twenty-first century’s challenges. Troubling Transparency brings together leading scholars from different disciplines to analyze freedom of information policies in the United States and abroad—how they are working, how they are failing, and how they might be improved. Contributors investigate the creation of FOIA; its day-to-day uses and limitations for the news media and for corporate and citizen requesters; its impact on government agencies; its global influence; recent alternatives to the FOIA model raised by the emergence of “open data” and other approaches to transparency; and the theoretical underpinnings of FOIA and the right to know. In addition to examining the mixed legacy and effectiveness of FOIA, contributors debate how best to move forward to improve access to information and government functioning. Neither romanticizing FOIA nor downplaying its real and symbolic achievements, Troubling Transparency is a timely and comprehensive consideration of laws such as FOIA and the larger project of open government, with wide-ranging lessons for journalism, law, government, and civil society.

The Ethics of Information
The Ethics of Information

Author: Luciano Floridi

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2013-10

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 0199641323

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Luciano Floridi develops the first ethical framework for dealing with the new challenges posed by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). He establishes the conceptual foundations of Information Ethics by exploring important metatheoretical and introductory issues, and answering key theoretical questions of great philosophical interest.

The Digital Person
The Digital Person

Author: Daniel J Solove

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0814740375

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Daniel Solove presents a startling revelation of how digital dossiers are created, usually without the knowledge of the subject, & argues that we must rethink our understanding of what privacy is & what it means in the digital age before addressing the need to reform the laws that regulate it.