Policy, Information, and Technology – An OII Policy Forum

About

The policy forum is being organized by the OII in collaboration with the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), an academic think tank that advises the Dutch government on long term strategic issues for government policy. The Council is attached to the Prime Minister’s department but has an independent status engrained in law, as such it chooses the topics on which it advises itself.

One of the topics the Council is currently working on is the changing relationship between government and its citizens in light of the increased use of modern ICT in government policy and society in general. How does the use of various new technologies, and more specifically, the information flows that result from this use, influence this relation? And what kind of responsibilities does this entail for government, either in relation to the use of ICT’s by government and government agencies itself or in relation to the use of ICT in society? This research project, which is being led by Prof. Corien Prins, will result in a report presented to the Dutch Government in December 2010.

The WRR project group will discuss its preliminary findings with a small group of, primarily, UK experts on various aspects of ICT and the information society. As the report aims to focus on the broad theme of government responsibility the Council considers it an asset to discuss these matters with researchers from a country that deals with many of the same issues, has a long tradition of research in this area and yet is bound to have different perspectives on both empirical developments as well as policies.

The aim of the forum then, is to discuss the general argument of the draft report and three more specific themes of the report. These themes are ‘Identity and Identity Management’, ‘Surveillance Society and Issues’ and ‘Government Responsibility for the Societal Use of ICT.