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This is the World Bank's blog on governance and anti-corruption. It aims at providing a space for debate and knowledge sharing on this critical field of development. | Learn more...

web 2.0

"140 chars is a novel when you're being shot at"

Submitted by Tanya on Wed, 2009-07-01 09:20

-courtesy: @chadelund Quote of the day- #iranelection

In a previous blog entry, I wrote about how Web 2.0 is improving governance, with or without the help of the government in question, and irrespective of whether the country is developed or not.

Throwing traditional wisdom to the winds, the Web 2.0 story is continuing to unfold in a way that was not predicted by researchers and experts of the development community and outside.   When I last wrote my blog entry on this issue, it was specifically to explore how Bangladeshi citizens, independently of the government, NGOs, or media were sharing their experience of the BDR mutiny and its results.  This shone a light into the situation in Bangladesh to many who would have been otherwise left in the dark about the BDR revolt.

Then Iran happened.  The situation in Iran has many interesting parallels with Bangladesh and the BDR revolt – both related to the citizen-fuelled proliferation of news, occurring independently of the Government, and in Iran, even inspite of the opposition of the Government.

Twittering your way to improved governance

Submitted by Tanya on Fri, 2009-06-05 16:47

San Francisco is setting the US standard for using technology to improve accountability.  The Mayor recently announced the launch of a 311 Call Center through Twitter. Check out the site here.  San Francisco is the first US city to roll out a major service such as this on Twitter.

When blogging becomes an issue: worst places to be a blogger

Submitted by Alfredo on Tue, 2009-05-19 18:29

Blogs have changed the way people put into practice concepts such as voice and freedom of expression.  In a matter of minutes, anyone who has access to a computer with internet connection can create a blog and start posting ideas, experiences, opinions, pictures and videos that will be become available to more than 1.5 billion internet users in the world.

Also, blogs' features enable two-way communication and interaction between users, very different to the "static" dynamic of traditional websites. Most important, people can do all of these things at no cost.

However, the expansion of the blogosphere has also triggered negative reactions, especially in environments where censorship and control of information still prevail. Touching on several of these reactions, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) launched a special report in which it highlights the "10 worst countries to be a blogger."

 

e-democracies: will Digg-like social networks pave the way for participatory decision-making?

Submitted by Alfredo on Fri, 2009-04-24 18:16

The hype about social networking sites doesn't seem to come to an end.  If it's not Facebook, it's MySpace, and now it's Twitter.  Even though some people are still reluctant to believe in the functionality of some of these web 2.0 applications, it's a matter of years before they become a tool that we have to use on a daily basis, as it happened with email and the internet not so many years ago. 

In this entry, I will follow-up on one of Tanya's three points mentioned in her last entry -namely, participation-, and will make the case for Digg, one of some applications for social bookmarking that allow its users to share, comment and vote on their preferred bookmarks.  From my perspective, these participatory features can give us a glimpse of how decision making processes in the public sector might look like in the not-very-remote future.