Yola Georgiadou

A European Perspective on Digital Earth

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the definition of a European perspective on Digital Earth (DE), identify some actions that can contribute to raise the awareness of DE in the European context and thus strengthen the European contribution to the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE). The paper identifies opportunities and synergies with the current policy priorities in Europe (Europe 2020, Innovation Union and Digital Agenda) and highlights a number of key areas to advance the development of DE from a European perspective: (1) integrating scientific research into DE; (2) exploiting the Observation Web with human-centred sensing; and (3) governance, including the establishment of stronger linkages across the European landscape of funding streams and initiatives. The paper is offered also as a contribution to the development of this new vision of DE to be presented at the next International DE Conference in Perth, Australia, in August 2011. The global recognition of this new vision will then reinforce the European component and build a positive feedback loop for the further implementation of DE across the globe.

Blame Games in the Amazon: Environmental Crises and the Emergence of a Transparency Regime in Brazil

Expanding on recent debates in environmental governance and political science, we show that the relationship between environmental transparency and public accountability is far from linear and politically neutral. This is particularly true in moments of environmental crises, when transparency regimes are most likely to emerge as an integral part of the palette of blame-avoidance strategies of accountors in their attempt to disqualify accountees’ perceptions of environmental harm and irreparable loss. Drawing upon the study of blame-avoidance strategies in political science, we discuss the emergence and evolution over time of deforestation monitoring in Brazil, a transparency regime based on GIS and remote sensing led by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research since 1989. We arrive at three conclusions. First, the evolution of transparency regimes is conflictual, culturally embedded, and emergent. Second, the relation between accountors and accountees changes over time as blame-avoidance strategies unfold. Finally, solutions in a blame game may cause a future crisis, as the social context changes and becomes incompatible with the transparency regime of the day. Based on these considerations, we argue for the need to understand the instrumental dimension of transparency regimes alongside their normative and substantive dimensions.

Citizen sensors or extreme publics? Transparency and accountability interventions on the mobile geoweb

Transparency and Accountability (T&A) interventions are emergent social technologies in middle and low-income countries. They bring together citizen sensors, mobile communications, geo-browsers and social organization to raise public awareness on the extent of governance deficits, and monitor governments (in)action. Due to their novelty, almost all we know about the effectiveness of T&A interventions comes from gray literature. Can citizen sensors radically increase the transparency of the state, or are changes brought about by T&A interventions more likely to be incremental? We review the literature on transparency policies and describe their drivers, characteristics and supply–demand dynamics. We discuss promising cases of T&A interventions in East Africa, the empirical focus of an on-going collaborative research program. We conclude that the effect of T&A interventions is more likely to be incremental and mediated by existing organizations and professional users who populate the space between the state and citizens. Two elements at the interface between supply and demand seem rather crucial for designers of T&A interventions: accountability-relevant data and extreme publics.

Citizen Surveillance of the State: A Mirror for eGovernment?

This paper discusses, conceptually and empirically, the role of geographic ICT (geoICT) and virtual globes (e.g. Google Earth) at the interface of public policy and citizens. Our preliminary findings from on-going field work in an Indian city and in Zanzibar suggest that virtual globe technology can potentially transfer to citizens surveillance power, traditionally held by the government. Starting from the traditional electronic government framework, where bureaucracy acts as a filter between policy makers and citizens with grievances, we outline an emerging framework where commercial virtual globes act as mediators between policy-makers and citizens. We show that the emerging framework holds the potential of allowing citizens concerned, in our case, about the quality of water services, to influence policy makers directly. The virtual globe acts as a mirror to the traditional eGovernment framework and lends a different societal visibility both to public services provision, and to localized citizens’ needs.

Opening the black box of donor influence on Digital Earth in Africa

Africas participation in Digital Earth is uneven. There is a tendency to ascribe this state to prevailing governance and cultural challenges in Africa. However, foreign actors such as donors have an apparent role in shaping geospatial policies and outcomes. Thus far, the complex linkages between external aid and improved social and environmental monitoring and decision-making have been handled as a kind of ‘black box’. To better understand the situation, we open the box and focus on the interaction between donors and policy-makers. We use a heuristic from political science, as well as empirical evidence, to describe the policy-influencing tools that donors employ based on four basic resources donors possess: organization, authority, treasure, and nodality. We show an evolution of tool usage as donors shift from ‘old aid’ to ‘new aid’ modalities. The new tools include: technical assistance for geospatial curriculum development, inscription of standards and data access requirements in contracts and grants, cross-agency project design, best-practice analysis, portfolio management, and the use of language to promote participation and accountability. Though these tools reflect donor intent to partner in the realization of Digital Earth, the tools stem from a persisting asymmetric power dynamic between donors and policy-makers.

Practices of Legibility Making in Indian Cities: Property Mapping Through Geographic Information Systems and Slum Listing in Government Schemes

Property mapping through use of geographic information systems (GIS) and slum listing are practices of official knowledge production in government improvement schemes in Indian cities. Our comparative analysis of these two practices is in concert with recent amplifications of Scotts analytical scheme around the notion of legibility making. In both cases knowledge production in practice encounters an “amorphous state.” Government representatives and interests frequently intermingle with non-governmental representatives and interests. This influences knowledge production in practice with different implications for government scheme implementation and participation in urban governance. We find that slum listing supports scheme implementation better than GIS property mapping. The latter seeks to translate the notion of a clear delineation between state and non-state into organizational and technical design for legibility making. It stops short of reaching larger aims of the scheme and comes to focus on the problem of incomplete knowledge and mechanisms of self-referential monitoring. The more organic practice of slum listing involves dispersed paper and desktop technologies and relies on traditional sites of knowledge production in the city. It is adjusted to and enacted by an amorphous state. The official knowledge produced is temporary in nature, and as such allows for incremental and partially reversible scheme implementation. Slum listing retains channels of negotiation with city administration and politicians, which are vital for poorer sections of the urban populace. Our study is relevant to policy and future research, because as of 2012 the new national slum improvement scheme requires implementation of GIS also for slum data collection and management. The question is, whether the new scheme will run into similar problems as GIS property mapping or whether it puts at risk existing channels of negotiation.

Evaluation of the Dutch subsurface geoportal: What lies beneath?

This paper focuses on a geoportal from a “what lies beneath” perspective. It analyses processes of budgeting, planning, monitoring, performance measurement, and reporting of the national initiative titled Digital Information of the Dutch Subsurface (known by its Dutch acronym, DINO). The study is used as a means to empirically refine a conceptual model that illuminates how external agents influence or control the coordination of geo-information in the public sector. DINO is developed and maintained in a formal principal-agent relationship with clear objectives and accountability. DINO is managed by the Netherlands Institute of Applied Geoscience (the agent) through a performance-based management contract with the sponsoring Geo-Information Commission (the principals). The DINO program is characterized by the pooling of financial resources from five ministries, the internal tracking of activity progression, the routine reporting to the user community, and the regular monitoring and evaluation of DINO by the Geo-Information Commission. The case study reveals that ‘soft’ rather than ‘hard’ controls are used and that ‘mutual shaping’ takes place, with the agent influencing how it is ‘controlled’ by the principal. However, the management contract still relies on a power disparity and reinforces previous research findings that external parties can influence network/coordination conditions. In-depth case studies such as this work can increase understanding of evaluation in the context of politico-administrative processes and improve researchers’ ability to critically compare geoportal initiatives.

Digital earth applications in the twenty-first century

In these early years of the twenty-first century, we must look at how the truly cross-cutting information technology supports other innovations, and how it will fundamentally change the information positions of government, private sector and the scientific domain as well as the citizen. In those positions, location will be a prominent linking pin. The classical top-down system architectures of information exchange will be diluted by peer-to-peer and bottom-up channels, forcing us to rethink their designs. We should not only focus on better architectures, but need to attend to a different economy of information exchange, in which the ‘client’ is not only the information sink, but has become an important source as well. The laws of this rising ‘infoconomy’ have yet to be settled on. This special issue on ‘Digital Earth Applications: Technological design and organizational strategies’ brings together a number of papers that shed light on this future information ecosystem in which location-specific information will be exchanged between stakeholders. The introduction presents a framework that combines geoinformation streams and organisations brokering between government, science, private sector and citizens. This novel framework helps us improve the appreciation of those papers.

Participatory local governance in Asian cities : invited, closed or claimed spaces for urban poor?

In the past two decades, many Asian countries including India have mandated participatory local governance through national statutes. Emerging research on Asian cities shows that despite strong national mandates, the practice of participatory governance at local levels remains largely ineffective. Our research in Ahmedabad, India, shows that while the state government’s policy mandate for invited spaces for participation in local governance is weak compared with the national government’s policy mandate, the practice of participatory governance by the local government is even weaker, leading to ineffective or closed participatory spaces. In the absence of invited spaces, the middle class successfully uses the executive wing at the ward and zonal levels and e-governance and m-governance platforms to negotiate their needs, whereas the poor rely on the elected representatives, but with limited success, resonating the experience of many cities in Asia. While in other cities of India, the poor have successfully engaged with elected representatives through clientelism to negotiate their needs, in Ahmedabad, this platform is captured also by the elite middle class and offers little opportunity to the poor. In response to the denial of all invited spaces of engagement and the consequent implications on their lives, the poor mobilize to claim spaces for engagement with the state through judicial recourse. Although successful, claimed spaces of the poor are one-off mechanisms that close upon the end of the judicial process rather than culminate into permanent invited spaces for participation.

A case study of geo - ICT for e - government in Nigeria : does computerisation reduce corruption in the provision of land administration services?

Abstract This paper examines the role of the Abuja geographic information systems as an e-government policy initiative for promoting the reduction in corruption in the provision of e-land administration services and good governance in general. The paper explores the contribution of e-land administration with regard to the different forms of corruption (i.e. fraud, forgery, multiple applications, bribery, nepotism and favouritism, and white collar malpractice) as well as the different services (i.e. legal searches, recertification of titles, granting rights of occupancy, consent to alienate and regularisation of titles). Generally, our findings suggest that corruption was reduced with the introduction of electronic services for the verification of land records through legal searches and the recertification of land titles. Yet, other forms of corruption, such as nepotism and favouritism, are persistent and increasing.