This conference brings together experts with diverse approaches to governance and the Internet in different continents.

The Internet is a global phenomenon, but the response to the Internet varies with the social, economic, cultural and political context. However, most that is written about the Internet concentrates on a few advanced industrial societies, and especially the United States. Yet with the number of Internet users in America now so high, the growth points in the next few years will occur in radically different contexts, ranging from Russia and South Africa to China, with radical implications for the relationship of the Internet to governance.

Governance has multiple meanings: it can refer to bureaucratic activities of government; to the processes, opaque or open, by which government does or does not deliver services to citizens; to the responsiveness of government to citizen demands for entitlements; and to public accountability through elections, the media, NGOs or transnational pressures. Context differs not only between well off and developing countries, but also between countries that are high or low on democratization or/and corruption indicators.

This conference will bring together experts with diverse approaches to governance and the Internet in different continents. Concepts will encourage generalization across national and continental boundaries; contextual knowledge will encourage qualifications about the circumstances and the extent to which generalizations are globally applicable or institutions and practices of governments impose limitations on the use of new technology.

Agenda for Thursday 8 January

Time

Session

14:00

Registration at the Department of Politics and International Relations

14:15

Opening by Professor William Dutton

14:30

Richard Rose: Thoughts on Governance and the Internet in a Space-Time Context

Jerzy Szeremeta: The DotGov Bubble: How to Restructure the E-Government Sector?

16:00

Coffee

16:15

Ernest Wilson III: A Bottom Up View of Internet Governance

17:45

Reception at the Department of Politics (Common Room)
Agenda for Friday 9 January

Time

Session

09:30

Richard Heeks: eGovernment as a Carrier of Context

Ivar Tallo: Openness as a Precondition of Interactive Governance: the Nordic Example

10:45

Coffee

11:00

Randolph Kluver: Using the Internet to Promote Control within Government: the Internet’s Challenge to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party

12:00

Lunch at Balliol College Dining Hall

13:45

Donatella DellaPorta and Lorenzo Mosca: Global-Net for Global Movements? A network of networks for a movement of movements

Ignace Snellen: Top Down and Street Level Bureaucracy: From Weber to the Internet

15:15

Coffee

15:30

Herbert Kubicek and Hilmar Westholm: The Back Office Dimension of E-Governance

Helen Margetts: Obstacles and Achievements in e-Government in Britain

21:30

Conference Dinner at Balliol College (ask at the Porter’s Lodge for the OII Dinner in the Old Common Room)
Agenda for Saturday 10 January

Time

Session

09:30

Alexandre Trechsel and Marcus Maenz: Obstacles to Electronic Integration of Social Security Data

Arre Zuurmond: The Internet for Interorganizational Information Infrastructures

10:45

Coffee

11:00

Concluding session