Collaborative Working Environments for egovernment.

Transcription

1 Collaborative Working Environments for egovernment. A case study on the use of wikis for ecollaboration in Ecuador Proposal for the Bachelor Thesis By Nathalie Spicher Goma Rechthalten nathalie.spicher@unifr.ch University Fribourg Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences Submitted to Prof. Dr. Andreas Meier And Dr. Luis Fernando Terán Tamayo Fribourg, 16 th of June

2 Table of Content Brief Introduction... 3 Background and statement of the problem... 4 Research Questions... 5 General Research Question... 5 Research Question for the Case Study Código Ingenios... 5 Study design... 6 Study population and sampling... 6 Data collection methods and instruments... 6 Mechanisms to assure the quality of the study... 7 Study period... 7 Study period at Senescyt... 8 Participants in the study... 8 Resources required for the study, including budget... 9 References and Bibliography

3 BRIEF INTRODUCTION The general topic in this thesis will talk about Collaborative Working Environments (CWE) on egovernment. The government is trying more and more the simplification and the execution of information, communication and exchanging process between the governmental institutions and citizens. One level of egovernment describes the participation where an advanced and a responsible society is decisive. The use of wiki tool is one part of ecollaboration that is based in the participation level. 1 This thesis will analyze a specific case study in Ecuador that is using a wiki tool to enhance citizen s participation in the creation of an organic law. Ecuador is a small country in South America where the people are mandatory to vote in referendums and elections. 2 The political system of Ecuador is a representative democracy and the government is divided into three branches. The executive branch with the president as the chef of this branch, the legislative branch with the parliament and the judicative branch which is independent from the two other branches. 3 Actually there exist a possibility for the citizen to propose initiatives for referendums. However this includes a long process of collecting signatures, acceptance from the constitutional court, etc. All those specific requirements have to be done in a certain period of time. The population cannot really participate in the generation of new laws. It is mostly the National Assembly and the executive that comes up with proposal of new laws and the final decision is not on the hand of the resident. Citizens cannot give their own input or come up with an idea themselves. The secretariat of High Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (Senescyt) came up with a project based on this problem. They want that the population can actively participate in the generation of new proposals for laws that has to be discussed in the National Assembly and eventually accepted or rejected. 4 The expectations of a project like the one from Senescyt is that the population can be included in the demission-making process. It is very important that every citizen can collaborate and participate actively in politics of the country. Therefore everyone needs to have access to Internet and needs to know as well how to use a computer to be able to include their ideas in projects and proposals. 1 [Meier 2009] Meier, Andreas: edemocracy & egovernment, Entwicklungsstufen einer demokratischen Wissensgesellschaft. Springer Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg 2009, pp ( ) 3 ( ) 4 ( ) 3

4 There are a number of different problems that such project has to face like: there will be always people who are losing out of this situation, manipulation of the final outputs has to be avoided in order to keep the trust from citizens, no citizens should be left behind (digital divide), among other know issues of wiki tools. It is very important to see that everyone is able to put down his ideas. BACKGROUND AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The project Código Orgánico de Economía Social del Conocimiento e Innovación (Ingenios) 5 proposed by Senescyt is taking part in the section of participation under ecollaboration. Wiki tools as part of Collaborative Working Environments (CWE) and in this project the people are using this tool to write down their ideas to be included in a new organic law, to be proposed to the National Assembly. As it is known from Wiki tools, every user can easily edit the already existing content and can link information to it. On egovernment, Wiki tools can be useful for cooperative work, to motivate citizens for co-working and for sharing knowledge skills. As well everybody can access the project reports and documents. In the case study presented in this thesis, we would analyze the reasons why Senescyt has decided to use the wiki tool and how they faced the different issues and limitations that are known in the use of this type of collaborative environments. For instance, it is very hard to guarantee authorship of individual text passages or ideas because everybody can edit or even delete what they prefer. How to guaranty the quality, etc. How the role management was designed? For example, a user can input his idea, delete or edit, an administrator can access to the older versions of the content and updates it and eventually a lawyer is taking charge of all the legal things and will put the proposal of the law at the end together to have it legitimately correct. How to know when the final decision is reached? What steps have to be followed that the entry in a wiki tool becomes actually a law? How to reach eempowerment from eparticipation? eparticipation defines the involvement of citizens in public projects. The population is able to interact in big communication channels to develop bases for decision-making. Therefore they have a higher capability in working collaboratively to improve participation. 5 ( ) 4

5 In eempowerment the citizens have even more power as in eparticipation. They are consulting information from the government and have their own power to decide. 6 One already existing output of this project is that the government has to create a law that internet access is a right for everyone. That means that the citizen of Ecuador have to have a place where they can freely access to the Internet. With this law the government is pushing the population to live more and more behind a screen. This can have positive impacts because everybody has a free access to education as the internet is packed with information. Therefore the percentage of the educated people would increase. However the negative impact is that people would interact less personally with others. 7 The output of the thesis will propose solutions for the different problems Senescyt is encountering with the use of wiki tool for the generation of a new law (based on the research on CWE), statistical data of usage of the tool and analysis of results. RESEARCH QUESTIONS General Research Question What are the different approaches of CWE? How can CWE help on the decision-making process on egov? How can eempowerment be reached on eparticipation? Research Question for the Case Study Código Ingenios How did the project start? What is the main objective? How is the population taking advantage of this project? What kind of technological aspects are used? 6 [Terán 2014] Terán Tamayo, Luis Fernando: Smart Participation, a Fuzzy-Based Recommender System for Political Community-Building. Springer International Publishing, Switzerland 2014, pp ( ) 5

6 Why did Senescyt decide to use the wiki tool? What kind of problem or resistance did Senescyt face during the development? Which kind of problem still exist on the side? How can the project support the research? How does the role management look like? Who has access to do what? STUDY DESIGN The Study design of this thesis is descriptive. Since data from internal resources will be collected and will be analyzed. The variable won t be identified as the project is already running. This thesis is not being written to explain the cause of this project. It just wants to give an input in some aspects. STUDY POPULATION AND SAMPLING As the project is already finished, it will be interesting to analyze which kind of cluster of people took part of it and if this set of citizens could represent the population. DATA COLLECTION METHODS AND INSTRUMENTS It is planned to make an internship at Senescyt to collect internal data. Different meetings will be conducted to acquire the required information to answer the research questions in previous section as well as to have access to the wiki tool. It is necessarily to interview a small group of citizens to understand what they think about this project, if they understand how to participate and if they ever want to try to make an impact. Therefore there is a questionnaire required which will be already prepared in advance. 6

7 MECHANISMS TO ASSURE THE QUALITY OF THE STUDY The quality of the study can be assured if it is possible to avoid all the disruptive factor as fake accounts or manipulation of the output proposal. It is very important that the validity is given, it means that the correct part of the internal data is measured in relation to the research questions. STUDY PERIOD 1 st Milestone 2 nd Milestone 3 rd Milestone 4 th Milestone 5 th Milestone Literatury Research Prework for Ecuador Data Collection for the Research Questions Evaluation and Interpretation of the Data Collection Compose the Thesis Discussing the Thesis with the Supervisors Revise the Thesis Release the Thesis Due Date: 9th of July 2015 Due Date: 24th of July 2015 Due Date: End of September 2015 Due Date: End of January 2016 Due Date: End of March

8 STUDY PERIOD AT SENESCYT 13 th of July 2015 Meeting the responsible people at Senescyt, installing the working place 14 th of July 2015 Starting with the first research question: How did the project start? What is the main objective? 15 th of July 2015 Continuing with data selection and with the research question: What kind of technological aspects are used? Why did Senescyt decide to use the wiki tool? 16 th of July 2015 How does the role management look like in the existing wiki tool? Who has access to do what? 17 th of July 2015 Continuing to select internal data 20 th of July 2015 How is the population taking advantage of this project? Discussing with a colleague from Senescyt about the already prepared questionnaire. 21 th of July 2015 Question some users about their opinion 22 th of July 2015 Continuing with the data selection: What kind of problem or resistance did Senescyt face during the development? Which kind of problem still exist on the side? 23 th of July 2015 How can the project support research? 24 th of July 2015 Final meeting PARTICIPANTS IN THE STUDY One part of the participants will be the staff from the secretariat of High Education, Science, Technology and Innovation who will be offering to use their internal data to make some analysis. Other participants are the users of the wiki solution. The final result of the thesis will give a different perspective to the project and it might give some new interesting inputs for Senescyt. 8

9 RESOURCES REQUIRED FOR THE STUDY, INCLUDING BUDGET The resources required are data information, interactions and meetings with colleagues from the secretariat of High Education, Science, Technology and Innovation. In the budget there is included: the flight from Switzerland to Quito and the staying in Ecuador. 9

10 REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY [Meier 2009] Meier, Andreas: edemocracy & egovernment, Entwicklungsstufen einer demokratischen Wissensgesellschaft. Springer Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg [Terán 2014] Terán Tamayo, Luis Fernando: Smart Participation, a Fuzzy-Based Recommender System for Political Community-Building. Springer International Publishing, Switzerland [Asghari 2005] Asghari, Reza: E-Government in der Praxis Leitfaden für Politik und Verwaltung. Software & Support Verlag GmbH, [Leuf, Cunningham 2001] Leuf B, Cunningham W.: The Wiki Way Quick Collaboration on the Web. Addison-Wesley Longmann Publishing Co. Inc. Boston USA [Wikipedia 2015] Wikipedia: Politics of Ecuador, available: accessed 13 th June 2015 [Halberstadt 2015] Halberstadt, Jason: Ecuador Government Overview & History, available: accessed 13 th June 2015 [Senescyt 2015] Senescyt: Ecuador ama la vida, available: accessed 13 th June 2015 [My Daily Alerts 2015] My Daily Alerts: Potisive & Negative Effects of Technology on Our Lives, available: accessed 14 th June 2015 [Senescyt 2015] Senescyt: Código Orgánico de Economía Social del Conocimiento e Innovación: accessed 16 th June