You are young, ambitious, and (or) have great knowledge how to shape the future of government? Or just a great idea how to do so? Then come, participate in the 2nd "Beyond Bureaucracy" workshop at the CeDEM Conference 2016 (Mai 18-20, Krems, Austria)!
It's about goying beyond what human kind had so far in terms of governing societies. About going beyond electing representatives every couple of years, who then stear the vast bureaucratic machinery which we perceive as "the state". It's about how ICTs enable humanity to fundamentally restructure the government of the public domain.
Think about it for a while: we're the first generation in human civilization, which has available a ripe set of ICTs. Never ever in human history before we could interact in a way we can do nowadays. Besides: ICTs have reached a level of maturity and penetration in the last ten years, which enables us to go truly beyond approaches we have seen so far.
In the last few decades we have seen radical transformation in telecommunications, in transport, logistics, credit transfer, navigation, etc., etc. But we haven't yet seen transformation in the government of public matters. Well, sure, we saw things like online tax returns, e-voting, open data. But, let's be frank - that's only using ICTs to imitate old principles of government, it's not beyond bureaucracy.
e-Government has been driven by myths [1], and was found to be unsustainable [2]. Activities in this field did not deliver an alternative to traditional concepts so far (maybe they never will?). Can these findings be explored further?
Can dislocated (potentially very large) groups of people make decisions about common assets or common matters, which do not need to be interpreted by institutions? Or is it unavoidable to delegate decision-making to institutions (like parliaments, government agencies, ...)?
How can a society self-organize its common budget (taxes etc.)? Are institutions to collect, govern, and redistribute public assets absolutely necessary or can exaction be done self-organized?
Can core public-domain institutions (e.g. police, etc.) be realized without central institutions? How can a society dynamically self-organize its public sector institutions / projects / programmes and bind them directly to collaborative decision making?
What are the challenges of the electronic identity? How can we overcome them to reach a system that will provide sustainable global identification for centuries to come?
Governance co-production needs standardized IT tools, methods, and standards to bring us a step further. Can *you* contribute to this?
Drop us a mail and tell us: what do you want to communicate, how do you want to communicate it, and why what you want to communicate is important.
You want to present a poster? Give a talk? Hold a lecture? Let us know, we'll do our best to squeeze it in.** We'll come back to you almost immediately, promised!
(Don't forget to tell us who you are and what you've done so far!!!)
We have limited travel support for BB'16 participants from Asian EPU member organizations available - contact us for details!
*) BB16 is part of the CeDEM'16, hence T&Cs apply, such as registration fees, etc. Please check the CeDEM conference website for details. If your contribution is to be published in the proceedings, the conference deadline (Jan 10th 2016) applies!
**) As long as we see it has value for the theme of the event!