domingo, 10 de janeiro de 2010

National Brazilian Day for " Adopt your Politician"?


Several people are having ideas toward a better way of accountability in Brazil. The government is doing a nice job creating different kind of portals of transparency in every level of government. Local and National governments are supposed to share the public information inside the public administration in Brazil. There is information even a local legislative organisation has its own portal of transparency.


However,  Brazil has 59,227 elected directly by the people. How about a close on them? There is a way to do it by the civil society? Probably it can happen!


The first step is claculate how much politicians we have, and how much people we need do the work.

If all politicians in Brazil were followed by people for every day of the year, we would have 59,227 x 365 giving a total of 21,617,855 days of work.


The second step is recognize that is a har work, and we don´t have big quantitaties of people disposed and very well organised.

If we take only 1% of the electorate would have 1,470,051 people. If these people were willing to spend a few days of the year to cover the days of one or more politicians would give about 15 days per person. This gives a little more than 1 day per month.



So we have a little conclusion:

If we are considering only 1% of the electorate, ALL politicians and ALL the days of the year. Any change in this, imposed by reality, can make even the smallest amount of days per person.


How we can do it?


The first step is organise this people. Probably it is the worst task for the job. How improve online participation of citizen in following all the actions of our politicians?


The second step is construct a computer program. This system would have to manage the use of "days of politics" and provide an easy platform to store the result of those hedges, whether text, video or audio "embeded". Imagine a platform you can upload every kind of information and type of information. With a large storage it can be the black box of citizen against the corruption politicians and all the bad system of bias inside the governmanet and public administration.


All this database could then be made available in formats usable for numerous combinations and recombinations.


(...)


Imagine how cool that would be on whether the project could raise a minimum amount of supporters?


If is it a dream?  I don´t Know. I know that it is the way to improve a better kind of politician in Brazil. The formule is created, let´s go behind the ingredients.



Ricardo Matheus

sábado, 9 de janeiro de 2010

Map of the Urban Violence at Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Since June 17, in 2009, the Deputy Gabeira created an interactive map into Google Earth, to produce a Map of the Urban Violence at Rio de Janeiro.


Several kind of violence have been reported on the Map. Furthermore, there are links to these several cases reported at the local and national media.


Manifold contributions of media reporteds are from citizens who live in Rio de Janeiro. Probably without this contributions the online tool won´t be able to be sucessful such as it is now.


Below is the address for the Gabeira´s Blog:

Map of the Urban Violence at Rio de Janeiro - Brazil


Do you live at Rio de Janeiro? Do you wnat to contribute to this map?

Click at here: MAP - RJ

sexta-feira, 8 de janeiro de 2010

Black Economic Empowerment Program at South Africa

Firtstly, is very important to recognize the recent history of South Africa. Democracy started in 1994, when the apharteid was finished in the african country. Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa and around 800 thousands of white people decided to back to europe and their origin countries. At least recently, the government has a lot of humildity in recognizing that "We didn´t know what is to govern, we don´t know the business 'government' and we still not knowing what we don´t know" such as Michelle Wiilians, IT Diretor from the Department of Public Services and Management of the South Africa Government.

There are a lot of effort in empowering the younger generation to manage the country. One of this experiences in the African Country is the South Africa's policy of black economic empowerment (BEE) is not simply a moral initiative to redress the wrongs of the past. It is a pragmatic growth strategy that aims to realise the country's full economic potential. In the decades before South Africa achieved democracy in 1994, the apartheid government systematically excluded African, Indian and coloured people from meaningful participation in the country's economy.

This inevitably caused much poverty and suffering - and a profoundly sick economy. The distortions in the economy eventually led to a crisis, started in the 1970s, when gross domestic product (GDP) growth fell to zero, and then hovered at about 3.4% in the 1980s. At a time when other developing economies with similar resources were growing, South Africa was stagnating.

Full potential

"Our country requires an economy that can meet the needs of all our economic citizens - our people and their enterprises - in a sustainable manner," the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) says in its BEE strategy document. "This will only be possible if our economy builds on the full potential of all persons and communities across the length and breadth of this country."

Despite the many economic gains made in the country since 1994 – growth has been 4% or higher in every quarter since 2004 – the racial divide between rich and poor remains. As the DTI points out, such inequalities can have a profound effect on political stability:
"Societies characterised by entrenched gender inequality or racially or ethnically defined wealth disparities are not likely to be socially and politically stable, particularly as economic growth can easily exacerbate these inequalities."

Broad-based growth

Black economic empowerment is not affirmative action, although employment equity forms part of it. Nor does it aim to take wealth from white people and give it to blacks. It is essentially a growth strategy, targeting the South African economy's weakest point: inequality.
"No economy can grow by excluding any part of its people, and an economy that is not growing cannot integrate all of its citizens in a meaningful way," the DTI says.
"As such, this strategy stresses a BEE process that is associated with growth, development and enterprise development, and not merely the redistribution of existing wealth."
Black economic empowerment is thus an important policy instrument aimed at broadening the economic base of the country – and through this, at stimulating further economic growth and creating employment.
The strategy is broad-based, as shown in the name of the legislation: the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Act of 2003.
This reflects the government's approach, which is to "situate black economic empowerment within the context of a broader national empowerment strategy … focused on historically disadvantaged people, and particularly black people, women, youth, the disabled, and rural communities".
As the DTI notes, discrimination "is at its most severe when race coincides with gender and/or disability".

How to achieve BEE?

Black economic empowerment is driven by legislation and regulation. An integral part of the BEE Act of 2003 is a sector-wide generic scorecard, which measures companies' empowerment progress in four areas:
  • Direct empowerment through ownership and control of enterprises and assets.
  • Management at senior level.
  • Human resource development and employment equity.
  • Indirect empowerment through:
    • preferential procurement,
    • enterprise development, and
    • corporate social investment (a residual and open-ended category).
This scorecard, as well as a scorecard for multinational companies, is defined and elaborated in the BEE codes of good practice.
The codes of good practice, which govern how companies do business in South Africa, allow global and multinational companies some flexibility in how they structure their empowerment deals. For example, representation does not only have to be at ownership level.
The codes are binding on all state bodies and public companies, and the government is required to apply them when making economic decisions on:
  • procurement,
  • licensing and concessions,
  • public-private partnerships, and
  • the sale of state-owned assets or businesses.
Private companies must apply the codes if they want to do business with any government enterprise or organ of state - that is, to tender for business, apply for licences and concessions, enter into public-private partnerships, or buy state-owned assets.
Companies are also encouraged to apply the codes in their interactions with one another, since preferential procurement will affect most private companies throughout the supply chain.
Different industries are required to draw up their own charters on BEE, so that all sectors can adopt a uniform approach to empowerment and how it is measured.
The DTI has all the relevant documents and information on black economic empowerment available online, including:

Ricardo Matheus

quinta-feira, 7 de janeiro de 2010

GovTech 2009 - New Challenges for the Humankind

The presentation of Quentin William, manager of the W3C Office for Southern Africa, "Improving Access to Government through better use of the Web" was high in cases of use of information technology and communication for citizen, show the technology we are producing finally is being apropriated to create an e-government citizen centered.

In Kenya, the project offers farmers Drumnet services market price of the products they sell, product disclosure and sharing of cargo transport through cell phones and kiosks. Already accounts for 7 thousand transactions with economy of $ 2.3 per transaction and a total revenue of $ 16,705 arising from savings.

In Uganda, the project UNIDO offers through 8 telecentres business, business consulting services and access to secure information relevant to your business, services of intermediaries in the distribution of products as well as support the creation of linkages with local governments, regional and national.

In Egupt the Forum for the Future, where the market for prepaid mobile is a majority, a study by the Forum for the Future, showed the benefits of credit transfers between devices in personal cell phone minutes. So, who has left credit will expire and that can transfer to a family or a small business owner may transfer an employee to which it is connected longer. This facility has increased the use of cellular and created a new business of reselling minutes.

Barbara Watson, director of the Center for Public Service Innovation (CPSI) in South Africa government reported two wonderful experiences. A mobile police station which runs from village to village in the countryside for issue of certificates, the basic document for obtaining social benefits. Brazilians can introduce this kind of thecnology in rainforest Amazon. Another project is the audio-book for the illiterate population with hsitories that help prevent malaria and AIDS. Eventually, they learned that it also reached the population with visual deficience.

Ricardo Matheus

quarta-feira, 6 de janeiro de 2010

Hacking como activismo político en Brasil

Sin duda la idea del gobierno federal brasileño empezar un blog con informaciones acerca de las actvidades políticas fue increíble. Hoy tenemos informaciones, películas, fotos en un canal más dinámico y agradable para el pueblo brasileño.
Todavia los comentarios eran imposíbles de seren hechos, o sea, la democracia incompleta en Brasil. Podemos ver que el gobierno gustaria que vemos, pero el no oía su pueblo. La liberdad de expresión no era garantizada para el pueblo brasileño!
Entonces, un grupo de estudios llamado "Transparência Hack Day" crió el 'clone' del blog del gobierno federal. En este blog ahora sí pueden seren hechos comentarios libremente.
Y qué se pasó?
Actualmente el blog del gobierno és más asistido en su clone que en el original, simplemente porque la liberdad es garantizada en el clone y un forum de ideas fue creado, atrayendo la atención ciudadana y de la prensa brasileña.

Para conocer el blog "clone", visite: http://planalto.blog.br/.

terça-feira, 5 de janeiro de 2010

Arregla mi calle?

Hola,

Hoy la temática es el blog de servicios "Arregla mi calle" de Inglaterra

El sitio funciona como sigue:

Primero se pone una dirección postal siguiente, nombre de la calle o de la región para permitir que el lugar donde reside el problema.
Después de este paso se le llevará a una página donde se encuentra en la parte izquierda, los viejos problemas ya colocado en el lado derecho y un mapa de la región en la que usted ha indicado que hay un problema.
Si el problema ya ha sido terminada, usted puede aumentar la calidad y cantidad de información sobre el problema, con una actualización de la información.
Si el problema no se ha informado, existe la posibilidad de que el usuario presente una queja en línea.
Para presentar una queja sólo necesita informar el nombre de usuario y su permiso para hacer que los datos públicos.
Hay alrededor de 20 tipos diferentes de problemas que pueden ser identificados, de los vehículos abandonados a los problemas en la acera y el asfalto de la calle. No hay opción de hacer una foto de subir para ayudar a resolver el problema rápidamente.
Después de enviar la información al sitio, el problema es reportado a las autoridades judiciales en la región. En el caso de Londres, cada barrio tiene una especie de sub-prefecto, que coordina la región políticamente.

Para obtener más información, visite: http://www.fixmystreet.com/
Si usted no conoces Londres, utilize la región de WESTMINSTER para hacer una búsqueda rápida y una comprensión más profunda del sistema de información en línea.

Ricardo Matheus

Una nueva era en este sítio empeza hoy

El blog es un sitio de cambio de informaciones acerca del gobierno electrónico y la gobernanza electrónica, especialmente en latinoamerica. Varios casos fueron estudiados para la investigación LOGOLINK - Nuevas perspectivas para la gobernanza electrónica local en latinoamerica.
Sin duda la contribución de amigos y investigadores en el ámbito del gobierno electrónico y la gobernanza electrónica, especialmente centrado en la promoción de la participación ciudadana, control social, transparencia y la lucha contra la corrupción en todos los niveles de gobiernos.

Además de las experiencias de las ciudades, estados y países, tendremos una sólida experiencia de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil y movimientos sociales, demostrando que además de las actividades gubernamentales, las actividades paralelas, realizadas por la sociedad civil también son importantes y generar un aumento satisfactorio en la participación y de control social, combatir la corrupción y aumentar la transparencia de los datos y la información de la gestión pública.

Vamos a empezar las actividades mediante el uso de un gotero sistema, donde cada semana no será responsable de la publicación de las iniciativas gubernamentales y / o la sociedad civil, para que podamos tener continuidad en el proceso de construcción de la página web.

Estas experiencias deberían servir de guía para la elaboración de políticas públicas en el área de gobierno electrónico, seguridad civil, control social, la promoción de la transparencia, la lucha contra la corrupción, salud, educación y muchos otros, sin perder el enfoque de la gobernanza electrónica.


Saludos Cordiales,


Ricardo Matheus