Digital Government Governance Models

Raul Zambrano e-governance, Governance, ICTD Leave a comment

Governments should fully understand the scope and reach of the various Digital Government (DG) institutional functions, described in my previous post, and their proper sequencing before they embark on comprehensive digital transformation processes. The policy units’ actual institutional location leading DG processes should be the result of the analysis of the various functions, not the starting point. Indeed, countries have deployed a wide variety of institutional arrangements while designing and implementing DG. A one size fits all approach is thus out of the question. Similarly, copying and pasting institutional design from DG lead countries or nations within similar development stages will tend to fail. Context is thus essential.

Equally important here is the distinction between policy

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Digital Government Revisited – III

Raul Zambrano e-governance, Governance, Human Development, ICTD, Open Government 1 Comment

Institutions matter, more so for the development and implementation of Digital Government (DG), whose core target is public institutions’ transformation. On the one hand, public institutions should have an array of capacities to ensure public investments in digital technologies are effectively managed from beginning to end. In many low-income countries, such capabilities are exiguous or conspicuously absent. On the other, digital technologies are a means to foster public entities’ responsiveness and effectiveness, thus increasing their overall capacity to deliver established legal mandates.  Juggling these two seemingly contradictory propositions in sustained fashion is one of the core challenges governments face when designing and deploying DG, especially in the Global South, where state capacity

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Digital Government Revisited – II

Raul Zambrano e-governance, Human Development, ICTD, Inequality Leave a comment

Since the early 1980s, Governments have taken a bad rap. Menacing fingerpointing from most quarters ended up on a consensus that loudly declared them personas non-gratas. The 2009 Global Financial Crisis started to turn the tide. At the time, governments once again came to the rescue of capitalism, unveiling gigantic financial packages to prevent critical financial institutions’ failure. Once the recovery started a few years later, Governments took the back seat once more, backed by universal austerity policies that, in hindsight, did more damage than anything else – especially in terms of income and wealth inequality.

The ongoing pandemic has once again demanded the strong intervention of Governments. However, this time around, the crisis is impacting most, if not all, sectors, in addition

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Digital Government Revisited

Raul Zambrano e-governance, Human Development, ICTD 1 Comment

Overview

Running on the coattails of electronic commerce, Digital Government (DG) first saw the light of day over 20 years. Initially christen as electronic government or e-government, it has since experienced multiple name changes, ranging from e-governance and transformational government to intelligent and smart government. Nowadays, the field seems to be enjoying its run as DG. Regardless of its actual denomination, DG’s indisputable mandate is to transform public institutions via the strategic deployment of digital technologies – the emphasis placed on transformation, not technologies.Such digital transformation must modernize the public sector, thereby leading to increased overall institutional capacity, enhanced provision of public goods, services, and information, and the promotion

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Contentious Politics in the AI Age

Raul Zambrano Artificial Intelligence, Economics, Governance, Human Development, ICTD, Inequality Leave a comment

Initially touted as revolutionary and progressive in the 1990s, the lightening evolution of digital technologies, running on the coattails of continuous innovation, has been accompanied by the rise of both extreme socio-economic inequalities and loud and widespread populism, nationalism and overt racism. Many countries are undergoing de-democratization processes undergirded by very resilient neoliberalism, while claim-making by conservative political actors has gained considerable ground in the always contentious political arena.

The unexpected and devastating pandemic triggered by the accelerated spread of the SARS-COV-2 virus has put into evidence the real constraints of a now aging and highly monopolistic digital sector. While information and communication tools and platforms are indeed

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Covid19: A “Swedish” Model?

Raul Zambrano Economics, Human Development, Open Data Leave a comment

Having been trashed for the last forty years or so, Governments have unexpectedly taken back center stage thanks to the Covid19 pandemic. The virus does not need a passport to travel around the world, nor any tough immigration legislation has managed to prevent it from freely crossing national borders. No country will be spared seems to be its harsh mandate, in a world where technology and globalization permeate most human interactions. Highly contagious, the only way known today to decelerate its spread is by minimizing direct human contact. In the absence of a global governance mechanism, only national governments can take effective action.

When China first opted to completely shut down Wuhan earlier in the year, the usual suspects immediately criticized the action as “authoritarian” and

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Deadly COVID19

Raul Zambrano Human Development, MyTake Leave a comment

Over a week ago, a mainstream media news outlet published an article (behind a paywall) suggesting that the disease caused by the SARS–CoV-2 virus, COVID19, was not as deadly as initially thought. The article cited the results of a non-peer review study completed by a Stanford-led team seemingly showing that the number of people infected in one California county was over 55 times higher than initially assumed. Using COVID19 immunity tests to check the actual population infected, the study went on to conclude that the county disease death or fatality rate was around 0.17 percent. By the way, such a rate is still 70 percent higher than the overall U.S. flu mortality rate for the 2018-2019 season of 0.10 percent.

The study was certainly not welcome by experts and statisticians due to glaring

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Innovation in the Public Sector

Raul Zambrano e-governance, Governance, Human Development, ICTD, Inequality, Social Innovation Leave a comment

I. Introduction

For the last 30 years, relentless technological innovation has seemingly conquered most, if not all, corners of the world. While in its early stages, the focus was on infrastructure and social networks, the latest phase has set its eyes on core productive and financial processes that will undoubtedly have profound socio-economic and environmental impact across the board. Rapidly adapting to the emerging global context is the clarion call for most countries if they want to remain relevant and competitive at the global level.

Many developing countries find themselves in a unique situation. For starters, most innovations and technologies hold a foreign passport and thus need to first travel and then be adopted and adapted to the national context. Having local capacities  –

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Natural Disasters and Carbon Concentration

Raul Zambrano Climate Change, Economics, Human Development Leave a comment

In 1988, the Brussels-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) launched the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) with the idea of promoting national and international humanitarian support to countries and regions affected by such events. Having a structured set of global data on the subject can also help policy and decisionmakers develop more comprehensive preparedness plans, properly assess vulnerabilities and facilitate on the ground interventions based on previous experiences.

Disaster data included in EM-DAT must fulfill at least one of the following conditions. 1. 10 or more people dead.  2. 100 or more people affected. 3. A declaration of a state of emergency. And 4. A call for international assistance. Data coverage starts in 1900 and covers 230 countries and

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AI and Development

Raul Zambrano ICTD Leave a comment

The current long wave of digital innovation has finally broken the last bastion of socio-economic resistance. While early advances transformed communications infrastructure and enhanced consumer interactions, the resurgence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and all its relatives, alongside new technologies such as blockchains, have rattled seemingly immovable sectors of the economy thus opening the door for the global disruption of productive and financial processes. Not surprisingly, observers and pundits have quickly agreed on a label for such disruption, the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) that could have a profound impact on countries, institutions and people. No stone will remain untouched, such is the warning.

AI in the Global South

Countries in the Global South find themselves in a peculiar

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