Enhancing good governance and economic freedom of the Arab countries

in the digital era

Prof. Andrzej KondratowiczSWPS University and American Studies Center, University of Warsaw, Poland

prepared for 9th Economic Freedom of the Arab World Conference

Landmark Amman Hotel, Amman, Jordan, November 18-19, 2014 1

Intro

I will not talk about some far-fetched theory

but about some practicalities

i.e. things that Arab (and other) societies can do

to improve their EF (Economic Freedom)

and GG (Good Governance)

As we will see, from among the AW (Arab World),

Jordan and Tunisia (also neighboring Turkey) have alreadyembarked on the process of implementing the practicalities I want to talk about. But WHAT ARE THEY?

2

The purpose

• My comments will be devoted to some issues connected with information flows in the modern society (which I refer to as ‘digitization’) that are vital to EF & GG of the polity.

• The major theme will be: what characteristics should information (and the “documents” that are “information carriers”) have, in order to fulfill the promise of higherEF, efficient government, as well as the open and democratic society.

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An important digression

• One of the aspects of EF that the EFN has not explored verydeeply so far, seems to be information access and, moregenerally, information flows in the society.

• There is a large quantitative and qualitative informationassymetry between the government and the privateproducers/consumers (or the gov’t and society)

• Better info flows (gov’tsociety and societygov’t) couldreduce this assymetry and contribute to higher EF (as measured by the EFI) in a number of ways that I will not enumerate here for the lack of time)

4

Full agenda vs. limited agenda

1. What is digitizing / digitization? Narrow & broad definitions

2. Good Govenance [GG] and its aspects

3. How digitization influences GG

4. Digitization as a tool for interaction between the Gov’t and society

5. Good practices of the open government: digitization quality

6. Civil society and participation in the digital era

5

Full agenda vs. limited agenda

1. What is digitizing / digitization? Narrow & broad definitions

2. Good Govenance [GG] and its aspects

3. How digitization influences GG

4. Digitization as a tool for interaction between the Gov’t and society

5. Good practices of the open government: digitization quality

6. Civil society and participation in the digital era

6

Open Government Data Definition: The 8 Principles of Open Government Data

• Government data shall be considered open if the data are made public in a way that complies with the principles below (see next slide)

• Compliance with the principles must be reviewable.

– A contact person must be designated to respond to people trying to use the data.

– A contact person must be designated to respond to complaints about violations of the principles.

– An administrative or judicial court must have the jurisdiction to review whether the agency has applied these principles appropriately.

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The 8 Principles of Open Government Data

• 1. Data Must Be Complete

• 2. Data Must Be Primary

• 3. Data Must Be Timely

• 4. Data Must Be Accessible

• 5. Data Must Be Machine-processable

• 6. Access Must Be Non-Discriminatory

• 7. Data Formats Must Be Non-Proprietary

• 8. Data Must Be License-free

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Principles 1 - 2 of Open Government Data

• 1. Data Must Be Complete

- All public data are made available. - Data are electronically stored information or recordings,

including but not limited to documents, databases, transcripts, and audio/visual recordings.

- Public data are data that are not subject to valid privacy, security or privilege limitations, as governed by other statutes.

• 2. Data Must Be Primary

Data are published as collected at the source, with the finest possible level of granularity, not in aggregate or modified forms.

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Principles 3 - 5 of Open Government Data

• 3. Data Must Be Timely

Data are made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.

• 4. Data Must Be Accessible

Data are available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes.

• 5. Data Must Be Machine processable

Data are reasonably structured to allow automated processing of it. 10

Principles 6 - 8 of Open Government Data

• 6. Access Must Be Non-DiscriminatoryData are available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.

• 7. Data Formats Must Be Non-ProprietaryData are available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.

• 8. Data Must Be License-free- Data are not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark

or trade secret regulation. - Reasonable privacy, security and privilege restrictions may

be allowed as governed by other statutes. 11

Jim Harper (2011) condesed those 8 principles into 4:

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1. authoritative sourcing

2. availability

3. machine-discoverability

4. machine–readability

A SIMPLE CONCLUSION

The above requirements vis-à-visdigital documents and their flows seem quitesimple, reasonable and obvious -- yet, they are far from being implemented.

We, the peoples, have to fight for theirimplementation not only as a matter of principles, but because they can grosslyimprove EF, GG, and our well-being.

Kondratowicz 13

Open Government Partnership Participating CountriesOGP was launched in 2011 to provide an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable,

and responsive to citizens. OGP has grown from 8 countries to the 65 participating countries

Kondratowicz 14

the END

15.kondratowicz@swps.edu.pl