Vecam

Public consultation mechanisms and the creation of monitoring committees

2002-10-04T13:36:05Z

Orientation of proposal

 Set up permanent consultation mechanisms to formulate new policies and new programmes via consultation with the public through parliamentary commissions and ad hoc workgroups in which all the major social actors (government, business, civil society) are represented on an equal basis.

 Support development and maintain permanent monitoring by institutions in partnerships with public and private research institutes, to monitor the progression of requirements for technology, education and content.

 Support setting up observatories of practices and relevant experiments as a function of the different sectors in which community networks are active (rural communities, young persons, women, handicapped persons, etc.).

 Adopt a communication strategy aimed at setting up permanent structures to diffuse information and make the public aware of the different services available to it, different modes of participation and more generally the major stakes in play in the information society.

The creation of an interface between civic and social actors active in ICTs, public technological research and development and engineers

2002-10-04T13:34:27Z

Orientation of proposal

A permanent workspace should be set up to create an interface between the scientific community and community and social actors to ensure that the former are aware of social demands vis-à-vis ICTs.

This space should bring together :
scientists working to develop future information technologies ;
civic and social actors that use information technologies, and the inventors of new uses ;
sociologists and ergonomic designers capable of synthesising these new practices and helping to formulate demands to be satisfied by these scientists and technology in general.

Likewise, twinning agreements could be made between research centres and community networks.

Context

The strategic development options taken by public research and development institutes (for example, CNRS, INRIA, CNET, in France, the European framework programme for research and development, the National Science Foundation in the United States, etc.) and the actors that link the public and private sectors in the development of these technologies only take into account the needs of companies and the market. This can be explained by the brief given to them by the ministries having responsibility for them and also by the composition of their management boards, none of which include representatives from the community and social Internet sector. Failing the possibility of sitting on the management boards of these bodies, permanent workspaces should permit scientists and industrial companies to become more sensitive to the problems they simply ignore most of the time. They should also become more aware of social expectations while community and social actors would be obliged to formulate their demands as a function of technological progress. Certain organised groups, such as the handicapped, succeed in doing just this.

Experience has shown that these civic and social actors :
contribute new uses and contents that can lead to technological developments ;
but they are limited by technologies that do not satisfy their expectations (e.g. immigrant communities that require oral rather than written vectors of communication).

Setting up an observatory of ITC policy and the interface between actors

2002-10-04T13:32:19Z

Orientation of proposal

Setting up "interface" structures would permit better coordination between the actors of the non-profit sector and European and national authorities. The aim is to imagine new types of structure and places, forming a network of networks to permit free discussion with the public authorities.

These new structures coordinated as networks in different European countries should constitute :
an observatory of social uses ;
a centre of analysis and forward studies on the societal impacts of ICTs ;
consulting services and expertise for public decision making. Their tasks could be linked around the following actions :
the collection and exchange of practices to develop the social and civic uses of these technologies ;
in-depth reflection on the impacts of these technologies on citizenship, culture, employment, exclusion, the environment, health, education, work, money, consumption, public services, etc. ;
evaluate in terms of ease of use (interface ergonomics, cognitive simplicity, online help, the pertinence of functions, specific configurations, etc.) of ICTs intended for social purposes ;
publish, diffuse and debate the conclusions of these research topics since the empowerment of the community in this area requires knowledge and awareness of the decisive nature of the choices to be made, and of the power of action on these choices ;

 Transpose the lessons thus acquired in policies, taking care to integrate the latter at European scale, since certain issues dealt with by national governments are now covered by European policy.

Context

The approach taken by governments is still too bureaucratic and insufficiently political with respect to ICTs. They forget that it is necessary to think of the society we want to create at the same time as dealing with the technological stakes, since it is not only a question of regulating the diffusion and use of these technologies but also of conceiving a new dimension of technical progress capable of interacting with a new society, a new perception of the world and another general culture. The potential societal impacts of ICTs go far beyond the reach of the regulations needed for the development of Internet applications. What is more, we know little of these impacts in most cases, and we too often forget that it is up to politicians to orient both the design and use of technologies and not simply adapt a regulatory and legal framework to stem their perverse effects.

An open network of this type, designed at European scale, would make up for this lack of vision on the relationships between technologies and society and fuel political reflection on the practices contributed by the actors of the non-profit sector. Organisations and other actors in the social economy reach a highly representative section of the population (45% of the French population over 15 years old belongs to an organisation) and generates a considerable revenue. Consequently, they represent a very efficient mechanism of transmission.

The creation of indicators of the social impact of ICTs by actors in the non-profit sector

2002-10-04T13:29:41Z

Orientation of proposal

The creation of indicators based on multidisciplinary work (sociology anthropology, cognitive sciences, etc.) would permit measuring the effective changes brought about by the introduction of ICTs (the transformation of teacher/learner relationships, power in the company, administration, etc.).

Context

Whereas the public authorities do not always systematically formulate indicators to measure the ecological, social impacts, etc. of technological and scientific developments, the non-profit sector should formulate its own indicators immediately in order to measure the social impact of ICTs.