Presentation for Human Rights & Information Technology Workshop

Tom Riley
Riley Information Services, Toronto

Governments are facing tumultuous changes not witnessed for many a decade. Any individual who works in government, no matter their position, has been faced with more change in these past five years than in all the decades of this century. Both Information and Communication Technologies have wrought these changes. These changes are very relevant to information professionals. I would like to comment on some of the social changes that have occurred and their relevance to both government, the citizen and you as information professionals.

In the very recent past we have seen the sudden rise of the Internet as the major factor in the developing super information highway. It has changed the workplace in ways not imagined as little as two years ago. There is not a department that does not have some form of a web site. At last count there were over 60 million web pages around the world and this continues to grow exponentially. But there are changes well beyond the simple fact of web sites and how to do business on them.

We struggle daily now with how to deal with Email, how to handle records in these new formats, with privacy, copyright, censorship and a host of other issues. We look to technology to better deliver services to the citizen, we seek ways to use our new and improved ways of communicating to reach out to the citizen (as the citzen now looks for ways to reach through what were once the seemingly impenetrable barriers/mazes of government). We seek ways to be more efficient, to seize the burning sword of technology and shape it to our needs. Yet, to many of us, it seems as if the technology itself has sped ahead of us and we are constantly playing the age old game of administrative catch up. We are in a time of change and we long to truly understand it.

The communications and information technology evolution has brought with it new challenges in the workplace and a host of new issues which we now must all deal with. Not least of these is the increasing range of citizens who are making creative usage of the evolving community networks, bulletin boards and the Internet. This ability to so easily communicate and exchange information with their friends or neighbors in the community, or anywhere around the world, has created thousands of electronic villages in this new place called Cyberspace. These are emerging pockets of power that governments, businesses, futurists, academics, leaders and others who think of these issues, are trying to grapple with and understand. The change is so enormous, it is so volatile that, in many respects, we cannot conceive it is occurring. It thirsts for more information not less. Ironically, it has also meant that governments are not the single, major source of information as they once were. This situation has changed in less than a decade as billions and billions of bytes of data become available for the asking. But how such information will be used in a workable, useable format is a question for another. The importance of the Internet is not what you can get from it but the very fact it exists as communications tool never before known to Man.

Another reason governments are struggling with this, is the simple fact the changes are happening in a new domain, Cyberspace. This place is invisible and, like the fog that greets us on many an autumn morning, difficult to grasp. But like the wisps of fog on a chilly morning or a warm summer's evening turning cool, it is there and must be contended with. It is essential we come to understand these changes and seek to navigate our way in order to adjust ourselves to live in this new, emerging world.

As little as a decade ago, just before the cumulative rise of the personal computer and the modem,`power was located in a linear way, at the top of a hierarchy. Decisions were centralized and ,the big decisions were made at the top. Power was concentrated at the higher echelons of government and large organizations. The citizen,or workers at various organizational levels, held differing levers of power. The further down the hierarchy the less power, including the ability to be part of the decision making process.

The new technologies, as we move into the Digital Age, with the increasing power to send out and receive at high speeds, more and more information, has meant that the once concentrated powers of hierarchies has moved out from the centers to the edges/peripheries of society itself, a reversal of what once was. Now decision making is no longer a top down process. It is non-linear in nature.

This is because we are now in an age where we can interact. The technologies have allowed this. The result has been the increased awareness of many in governments of the need to involve citizens in the process. But just as important it has meant citizens can now engage in practices and decision making processes in the community in domains which were once the sole turf of governments. This means governments must be aware of and realize that there is a fundamental shift occurring in society.

This then entails web sites where individuals are not mere receptacles of information loaded onto web sites but have the capacity to be a part of the process and the ability to send information/data/ideas back to the site. This also means they can take information down and use it for links to other sites. A thousand different usage's can be made of the information/data/graphics sent down. This is a non-linear process which allows paths of transmission in any direction and in differing forms.

To say we are in an Information Age is a misnomer we continue to live with, as it easily identifies for all of us the phenomena we are currently experiencing. In fact, we are living in a new Communications Age.. a world of digitalization in which we shall be able to manipulate not just data but the bits and bytes of electrons that come through Cyberspace, such as graphics and sound. This is multimedia and will reach heights of usage's we are only beginning to understand . The possibilities of the manipulating and arranging of data at will are going to bring new, complicated issues.

Citizens no longer totally rely on governments because these new technologies, especially web sites, give them the capacity to execute functions that traditionally were done by governments. Take a simple information function such as getting the latest weather results. It is no longer necessary to call some government number to get a comprehensive breakdown in the weather, listen to the radio or TV to find out if there is a snow storm on the way, whether it is going to be hot or cold tomorrow of if we can expect rain. That way means you get the information based on someone else's time table. Now, a simple press of a button on our keyboard and we go on-line and get the weather from a multitude of sources. Going abroad and want to know what to pack? Get on- line don't try and search through a newspaper to get what you want or wait, in exasperation, for the Weather Channel or CNN or Newsworld to give you the world weather. Getting the information when we want it and getting it now is certainly shifting a lot of power into the hands of the individual. It is just one more sign of the breakdown of hierarchies which is going to lead to significant shifts in the patterns of our society. I can only predict there will be radical change but hope I am not foolish enough to say what they will be.

The media will continue to supply such information for those who prefer this medium but there is now a powerful alternative. And it is this that is causing a strong shift in the political forces in this country. While we may not see the results now we will within the decade. It is a phenomenon governments need to understand.

In other words, we seek out information, we communicate it in real time. The weather is but one example. Think of anything in your life and you can find it through a search on the Internet. The paradigms of our lives have changed forever. The keyboard is giving individual citizens a form of power our parents would never dreamed we could have. A Pandora's box of technological wonders have been opened upon the world and governments around the world know they must deal with this phenomenon (as well as understand it which is the most difficult task).

Technological writer and futurist George Gilder has said that the computer is going to increase our individual power a million fold. A bold statement which while it may seem like hyperbole to the reader, captures the change that is going on in the Western world.

In the midst of all this change the individual at the work station in any government or company office has to continue to get on with the business of governing. But, the title of this speech, I trust, reflects the fact of the shift of power to the citizen as the citizen is now engaging in so many functions that were once the traditional role of government. While the listener may argue that those inhabitants of the new World of Cyberspace are still a minority (and will be correct in their assumption,) the fact of the matter is that this population is growing exponentially and are leap frogging into the next millennium that is upon us. None of this is to deny the pressing political and social issues that continue to haunt our societies: struggling economies, disruptions in the job force brought by information and communication technologies, crime, urban decay, national unity, downsizing of government, lay-offs, etc.etc.etc. All these are valid social phenomena which no one can deny when analyzing the phenomena of the Internet.

Nor is this to in any way deny the traditional role and value of freedom of information statutes and the need to be ever vigilante in ensuring they are not weakened but rather improved upon to continually make it easier for the citizen to gain access to information. But, as these leaps in technologies in the past few decades have created the most significant social change to take place since the dawn of the Industrial Age, we must seek to grasp the intangible of this seemingly invisible, incomprehensible world. It is important, as information professionals, that we understand these changes so we can continue to better serve those who seek information from government.

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© 2007 Atlantic Human Rights Centre, St. Thomas University