10-04-00

DAY FIVE: EQUALITY, PRIVACY - AND MICROSOFT

On the final day of Boosting the Net Economy 2000, the Portuguese Minister for Science and Technology Jose Mariano Gago - currently overseeing key policy decisions as part of Portugal's Presidency of the EU - offered a vision for a flourishing information society.

"A European Action Plan for the development of the Information Society will be a key step to build the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy capable of sustainable growth, with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion", he said.

"This shift to a digital, knowledge-based economy should also be capable of improving citizens' quality of life and the environment. The European Council's conclusions [at a recent summit in Lisbon] stressed the importance of the adaptation of education and training systems both to the demands of the knowledge society and to the need for an improved level and quality of employment; and the need to equip every citizen with the skills needed to live and work in this new information society to prevent information exclusion."

Meanwhile Ikatri Meynar Sihombing, Assistant Vice President of Bank Panin in Indonesia, said governments worldwide - in the developing and the developed world - were failing to grasp the opportunities to use technology to aid development of poorer regions.

"In Indonesia the government so far has not built or started building a strong environment, especially at this current moment where we are just facing a turmoil in economy and still working hard to survive, despite the fact that technology development could be tools to help growth."

With the lack of a lead from the government, he said the private sector had been trying to work out its own solutions.

Cynthia Waddell, Disability Rights Compliance Officer for the City of San Jose, California, said one of the core problems within government is the lack of public policy makers who understand technology.

"Unless we understand that the choice of technology and method of implementation impacts our values and public policy, then we will continue to be disabled in our choices. One example is the issue of accessible web design that enables communities to be built and participate in e-government and e-commerce.

"As a public policy person who wrote the first local government accessible web design standard in the US, I continue to be concerned about the ability of government to take advantage of and recognise the benefits of technology to the betterment of our society."

Elisabeth Slapio, Managing Director of the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce, said another access issue that needs to be debated urgently by governments is that of ergonomics.

"Are you young, healthy and experienced in using the tools of digital society? Welcome to the digital economy! But what's happening for those, who are not part of the favourite target group? Where is the discussion about problems to handle tiny push-button-phones? Who is interested in helping citizens and consumers to understand complex user software? Where we will find details about the efforts to simplify prompting?

"One of the greatest challenges for digital industries will be the ability to design more accessible products and services. Issues especially around the use of the new technologies by older people should be discussed urgently."

Elsewhere in the debate, the recent monopoly ruling against Microsoft from the US Department of Justice was analysed for its broad implications for the global digital economy.

Jose Herrero Valdes of the publicly-owned Spanish IT and communications engineering and consulting firm ISDEFE said the Microsoft battle illustrates that the nation-state is still the only institution which can defend the general interests of the citizens. "Any other existing or conceivable bodies are still too far and distant from the citizen for the time being. Therefore, I wouldn't speak of "threat" to the nation-state but rather of new opportunities to meet new social demands."

However Juanita Neale Saxby, a Multidisciplinary Social Research consultant from New Zealand, disagreed: "I think that saying the nation state is the "only body" that can defend its citizens, draws attention away from the need to create an international body to defend all citizens, even those who are not fortunate enough to live in states that defend their rights. The advent of Internet commerce makes this necessary. We can start planning for such a body, even if achieving it is far in the future. It will often be easier to set up new international bodies to do specific tasks than to "improve" bodies like the United Nations."

In a fascinating discussion on privacy in the information age Marcel Bullinga, Author and adviser to the Dutch government on Internet issues, suggested that some day, crime and fraud would become impossible to commit because of the degree of control exercisable over digital systems.

The traditional approach, he said, has been making laws and trying to sue the offenders after they have committed their crimes. "What a laugh in Internet times! In my opinion, the Internet gives citizens the tools to set their own rules, their own level of privacy. This means that government control goes down to the individual level of a citizen.

The Internet also makes it possible to prevent the committal of a crime. This will considerably change the impact of government intervention. For the first time in history (except in dictatorships), enforcement can be one to one. There will be no space left at all for committing crimes and fraud.

"In government circles in Holland where I tell this story, the initial reaction is shock and disbelief: some people consider it a basic human right for citizens to be able to trespass the law." He concluded that "The potential of total control stresses the need for democracy more than ever."

William Zucker, a Partner at US law firm Gadsby & Hannah, agreed that "The debate on privacy and how one controls data is critical to the protection of democracy and individual rights.

"There is a difference between the concepts of privacy and anonymity as they apply to actions taken on the web. To my mind, privacy is the protection of private data when engaging in purely personal transactions. In this sense, what you buy, where you go, what you may download are actions that are private actions much like walking on the street and visiting a store or a cafe is a private action. Similarly, there can be private chats. On the other hand, privacy should not be confused with irresponsibility. Anonymity should not be a cloak that one invokes under the guise of privacy when the purpose is to act publicly. Thus, for example, individuals who choose to post messages on public boards that pertain to commercial matters like stocks should not be protected under the rubric of privacy. Otherwise, we encourage irresponsibility by ensuring that there is no accountability. The very information flow we seek to protect now becomes untrustworthy."

PREVIOUS DAYS' NEWS:

07/04/00
DAY FOUR REPORT