2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Identifying Informational Needs for Open Government: The Case of Egypt Ralf Klischewski Faculty of Management Technology, German University in Cairo (GUC) Al Tagamoa Al Khames, New Cairo City, 11835, Egypt
[email protected]
government and to engage in participatory democracy, many questions still remain how to do this in practice and which guidelines and frameworks are to be taken into account. While the technology potentials to be used are basically known and accessible around the world, little is known about what the best strategies are and what a best practice path is to ensure that efforts towards open government will meet the informational needs of the citizens. Some outstanding examples of open government implementations are frequently cited, however we do not know about the variation of success factors in implementing open government in different countries and regions, given the differences of history, culture, political system etc. This paper focuses on the case of Egypt which experienced a so-called “Facebook revolution” in early 2011 during which the president was driven out of office and the military took power to guide a process towards more democracy. Social networking has been largely acknowledged as an enabler for this revolution, and as expectations are high for the political system to develop to be more open and transparent to everyone, the contribution of information and communication technology is again in the focus. The government itself has taken first steps to answer informational demands, e.g. through operating dedicated pages on Facebook in addition to preexisting website for information dissemination. However, even with the political will to enhance transparency of government operations and decision making and access to basic information technology and networks on the side of citizen and administration, it is not clear for stakeholders in Egypt what specifically are the informational demands and what should be the next steps in moving towards open government. Therefore the main research questions of this paper are: (a) what is an appropriate approach to analyze the requirements for dissemination of governmental data and information, and (b) how can
Abstract The success of open government initiatives depends on understanding the informational needs of the concerned citizens and other stakeholders as prerequisite for open access to relevant data and information. However, it has not been studied yet how such informational needs can or should be identified to build a common ground between the people and their governments. This paper focuses on the case of Egypt where social media have played a major role in the recent political transformation and where the call for government transparency is high on the political agenda. After describing the current practice of disseminating government information, the result of focus groups and interviews are presented regarding future informational needs, appropriate methods for requirements analysis, and transformation into technical and organizational support. Findings show that citizens and government in Egypt agree on basic principles of information sharing and that both sides are largely comfortable with using social media for information and opinion sharing. However, findings also reveal a significant demand for guidance and support in understanding the data and information provided, underlining the need for a continuous reflection of the actual citizen context as to support the information sharing within any open government initiative.
1. Introduction Since the public sector collects and generates vast amounts of data, the interest from outside in re-using public, non-personal data has been increasing in recent years. As civil society groups, businesses and individual citizens, and of course media, show interest in using public data, more and more public sector agencies inform about their data sources and make data available in relevant formats. Assuming that administration have best intentions to establish and maintain an open and transparent 978-0-7695-4525-7/12 $26.00 © 2012 IEEE DOI 10.1109/HICSS.2012.312
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these requirements be translated into adequate technical support for computer-based communication channels within the given information infrastructure? The research approach is at first descriptive, seeking to provide an account of the current state of disseminating government information. In addition, the approach is explorative, using instruments of focus group and stakeholder interview to identify informational needs and appropriate methods for requirements analysis. The paper is structured as follows. After identifying the research gap with reference to the existing, but scarce literature, the main body focuses on the case of Egypt. It describes the current practice of disseminating government information, explores future needs, and discusses setting up citizen information services. Finally, the conclusion points to possible generalizations as well as to future research.
primary, timely, accessible, machine-processable, non-discriminatory, non-proprietary, and license-free. More broadly, Dawes and Helbig ([3], p. 51) have defined public information resources as “the data, information content, systems, and information services that emanate from the day-to-day administration of government programs.” The use of semantic technologies can additionally support the reuse and linkage of the public data to other repositories, which is specifically a critical issue in federated political structures. To this end the European Commission [4] identifies interoperability as a key enabler which, beyond technical aspects, also involves legal, organizational and semantic challenge of handling data. Government efforts are also fueled by the spreading use of social networking ([9], [10]), building up a base for online interaction and participation of citizens. At the same time, the principles of open online collaboration, participation, and transparency do challenge the established selfperception of administrations’ roles, calling for an explicit change management in order to seize these new opportunities [6]. Systematic efforts of evaluating these new open government initiatives are still scarce. For example, after analyzing the access to data about beneficiaries of European Structural Funds, Reggi ([11], p. 12) concludes that “the European Cohesion Policy is only halfway to accomplishing a paradigm shift to open data.” In particular, he recommends using only open and machine-processable formats, providing comprehensive descriptions of the data (including information on the frequency of update), and improving the data accessibility through sharing and collaboratively developing new and larger data-sets. In view of the challenges related to the vast amount and complexity of government data, Dawes [2] suggests establishing and following the guidelines of stewardship und usefulness: − Stewardship calls for managing government information as a resource that has organizational, jurisdictional, or societal value; it is supposed to protect the information from damage, loss, or misuse and to make it ‘fit for use.’ − Usefulness calls for the content of the information to be helpful, beneficial, or serviceable to its intended users (or that the information supports the usefulness of other disseminated information). Examining information strategies for open government, Dawes and Helbig [3] concede that those governments publishing datasets are facing substantial criticisms such as poor usability, weak application of stewardship principles, lack of data
2. Research gap: Open Government and information needs analysis Open government as a concept has gained significant attention since the Obama Administration outlined a set of open government principles for the US government in 2009, based on the main objectives of collaboration, participation, and transparency. In the same line, the European Commission emphasizes the concept of empowerment, meaning that “governments should provide easy access to public information, improve transparency and allow effective involvement of citizens and businesses in the policy-making process.” ([4], p. 6) To reach any of these objectives, the “easy access” to public information is the key. In order to ensure such access, explicit roles are needed; for example the “Information Commissioner” in Australia1 that takes care of promoting public awareness and understanding of open government, providing information, advice, assistance and training to agencies and the public, dealing with complaints about government agencies, investigating agencies' systems, policies and practices, and reporting on compliance with the legislation. Since 2009 many new initiatives have started to open government informational resources. Often cited as best practice examples, governments of US, UK, Australia and Canada have etablished central access point to “open data” (i.e. freely available to everyone to use). Such data, according to the Open Government Working Group [12], should comply with the principle requirements of being complete, 1
According to the Government Information (Information Commissioner) Act 2009, No. 53
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are being formed to shape the political future, the demand for information owned by the government is already growing and expected to further increase. The government itself has taken first steps to answer informational demands, e.g. through operating dedicated pages on Facebook in addition to preexisting website for information dissemination. However, even with the political will to enhance transparency of government operations and decision making, it is not clear for any stakeholder in Egypt what specifically are the informational demands and what should be the next steps in moving towards open government. Therefore this case study reports about the current practice of disseminating government information, undertakes a first effort to analyze informational needs towards open government and discusses the implications of setting up citizen information services. The descriptive part of the case study reports on the electronic outlets of government information which are most known and most used as of spring 2011. For each outlet the main stakeholders and objectives are identified from its original sources along with the most important types of information provided. The data collection of the explorative part rests mainly on conducting two focus group meetings and one stakeholder interview. The focus group meetings were conducted in May 2011, each for three hours, one with 16 participants and one with eight. The age of the participants (both men and women) varied from 23 to 27 years, all of Egyptian nationality. Both meetings were roughly structured into four parts; a brief introduction to the topic and existing government resources, informational needs in light of improving stakeholder accountability, informational needs from an individual citizen’s perspective, and public participation in information exchange. The moderator for both sessions was an Egyptian university student who documented the details of the participant profiles, the structure of the approach, and the results in his Bachelor thesis [5]. In addition, an interview was conducted with the Acting Minister of State for Administrative Development (MSAD) who also had been the deputy to the previous Minister for many years. An interview guide had been prepared upfront covering the ministry’s open government strategy and action plan, and the questions were asked alongside a presentation given by the interviewee about “Egypt Web 2.0” in Cairo, end of May 2011.
feedback and improvement mechanisms, and inadequate metadata. In consequence, they call for a careful and more complete stakeholder analysis to improve the understanding of needs and capabilities of a wide variety of users with respect to interfaces, services, and analytical tools. The essence of their argument is: well-articulated standards for data description and formats, high-quality data, and good data management practices can be derived from the appreciation for the many ways different people think about, use, and benefit from government data. Building on this argument, this paper seeks gathering insights about the implementation of such analysis, i.e. how to appropriately understand the requirements for dissemination of governmental data and information, so that these requirements are eventually translated into adequate technical and organizational support. From information management we know that the value of information can be defined only relative to its actual user. Therefore it has been argued before that information quality is the key concept to establish a common ground for information sharing in e-government [7]. However, how to proceed to actually establish this common ground between government and citizens has not been studied before.
3. Open Government in Egypt? The basic infrastructure for electronic information sharing in Egypt is basically available, but still not accessible for everyone. According to recent statistics (www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm), Egypt has about 20 million Internet users (roughly one quarter of the population), and for those social media are ubiquitous. Facebook et al. have played a major role during the revolution and will even more in the transformations ahead (only in the first five month of 2011 the number of Facebook users has increased by more than 20%). For a several years the Egyptian government has already been publishing information also through electronic media. Egypt even took pride in developing its e-government policies and implementation [1], it has significantly moved up the ranks in terms of egovernment service evaluation. However, as typical in the region, Egyptian government agencies at all levels have been operating largely in secrecy with regard to the business of government. Not surprisingly, an open government framework has not yet been elaborated. But after the revolution in early 2011, open access to relevant information has become an important issue. As citizens now feel empowered, the media censorship has been eliminated, and the new groups
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designed as a “Think Tank” to support decision makers with regard to economic, social and political issues, but it also strives to open and maintain communication channels with the public, disseminating data and information, and also measuring selected attitudes of the society towards national issues. Besides publishing reports on all areas of economy and society, it also features the results of polls regarding government performance and other questions of national interest. After seizing power in February 2011, the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces has set up (in addition to its official website at www.mmc.gov.eg) an Arabic-language Facebook page (figure 2) which since then has extremely high traffic. The Facebook page presents Arabic-language communiqués and the subsequent comments by Facebook users (see e.g. the communiqué #48 in figure 3 which received almost 20,000 comments in less than four days). The Egyptian prime minister and his cabinet took a similar move to publish their press statements on Facebook and also breaking news on Twitter.
3.1 Current practice of disseminating government information The to-date most comprehensive website is operated by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), founded in 1964 as the official source for data and statistical information collection, preparation, processing, and dissemination. The website www.capmas.gov.eg provides statistical data in a variety of areas such as telecommunication, social services, industry, workforce, housing, population, economy, agriculture, environment, culture, tourism, justice, security, education, and water resources. CAPMAS is also the responsible for implementation of statistics and data collection of various kinds, specializations, levels and performs many of the general censuses and economic surveys. Regarding financial information the Ministry of Finance has recently increased its effort to publish data, also in downloadable spread sheet formats. Another website (www.idsc.gov.eg; see figure 1) is operated by the Egyptian Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC). It has been
Figure 1. Homepage of the Egyptian Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center (May 11, 2011)
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and legislation. An “Information Exchange Law” had been under preparation in order to force the governmental entities more explicitly into cooperation and mutually sharing important information in order to provide efficient services for the citizens. However, this initiative is on hold because it has to be upgraded in light of the recent events, and all stakeholders expect this will be on the agenda of the newly elected parliament, but not before. Meanwhile preparations are underway to increase the portfolio of government information outlets (e.g. to support the parliamentary elections) and to understand the informational needs on the side of the citizens.
Figure 2. The Armed Forces of Egypt on Facebook (May 11, 2011)
Meanwhile, practically all ministries have opened Facebook pages of their own, requiring MSAD to take the initiative and coordinate the appearance and policies of the various government outlets. Many ministers and other government officials also maintain Twitter accounts and blogs to post their news and opinions to the public. Other noticeable government achievements in relation to open government are dedicated websites to disseminate detailed information; for example the MSAD site www.estefta2.eg with information about the constitutional referendum (location of polling stations, counts of votes and percentages sorted by regions and districts, etc.). And Egypt’s Government Procurement Portal, which displays information about ongoing and closed tenders and has received a 2nd prize from the United Nations in the category of “Preventing and Combating Corruption in the Public Service.” Furthermore, the central call centre (dial “19GOV”) is an important outreach to citizens by managing about one million calls per year. Even before the revolution, the Egyptian government basically had a positive attitude towards shaping up e-government. Since the revolution, principles of open government are increasingly applied, but not yet governed by a coherent policy
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Figure 3. Communiqué #48 of the Armed Forces published May 7 on Facebook (May 11, 2011)
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English translation at www.eip.gov.eg/upload/media/news/264/statement%2048.pdf
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reports and raw datasets related to public health and economy [only voiced by those with medical and business background, respectively] − information about the candidates running for parliament as well as other informational resources and tools that offer a better understanding for the voting process, similar as in supporting the constitutional referendum The discussion of public participation in information exchange revealed the following: − The government’s usage of social media such as Twitter and Facebook was highly welcomed, because participants always use these websites and therefore find government information there without having to access other sources. − However, concerns were raised regarding equal access to information as many people have limited or no internet access. − Discontent was expressed about high number of spam messages and the overall low quality of online discussions and feedback to government announcements; it was suggested using rather online polls and surveys for obtaining citizens’ feedback. − There is a willingness and need to increase participation and interaction with the government (especially in times of critical decision making which will affect the future of Egypt), calling for the government to provide more options to do so (e.g. services that allow to expose and report corruption cases).
3.2 Identifying informational needs The most important informational needs on the side of the citizens, as perceived by MSAD, are budget data and other kind of financial information because people want to know how their taxes are being spent. This is also in line with a survey in May 2011 to determine the most important demands of the people, conducted by the most prominent group in initiating and leading the revolution in Egypt, “We are all Khaled Said” (www.facebook.com/ElShaheeed), with more than one million Facebook subscribers. Among the top ten were demands regarding full transparency and stakeholder accountability, which confirmed the agenda of the focus group meetings to center on these issues. The results of both focus group meetings revealed that the participants as Egyptian citizens indeed have a variety of informational needs on various levels (although there was no overlap in the participant groups, the results turned out to be almost identical). As for stakeholder accountability, the needs repeatedly stated have been: − more comprehensive information about governmental actions in terms of detailed plans including timeframes and milestones, supplemented by periodical progress reports − governmental budgets for every agency, easy to understand, along with supporting tools that enable better understanding of data and figures provided − statistics related to the economy and its performance, but also with explanations for the different indicators provided The most frequently stated needs for personal information from a citizens’ perspective have been − easy to find and easy to understand information explaining the steps and perquisites to fulfill a certain government service;3 this information should include the places and types of employees whom should be addressed to conduct this service, and for online services the availability and function of (new) services should be explained and how to use it − analysis reports about the current and predicted job markets (including salaries, specialties) to support educational and career choices − interactive maps and directions (for various platforms and devices) for all areas in Egypt
3.3 Setting up citizen information services Although Egypt has not yet elaborated an open government framework, there are already noticeable steps on the ground in providing information services to citizen. As indicated above, since February 2011 the Egyptian military and many governmental units have embarked intensively on social media for dissemination and discussion of information rather than the larger web. This is a substantial turn in policy,4 but at the same time it is also a continuation of the government’s effort in advancing e-government. According to MSAD, the plans for further expanding citizen information services are based on the principles of transparency, participation, collaboration, and innovation. The analysis of informational 4
For example, still in 2010, a Facebook user was accused of spreading military secrets without permission and even sentenced to six months in jail, even though the user reportedly only gave online advice on how to enlist for the military and prepare the requisite documents (source: http://www.allfacebook.com/egyptian -court-gives-six-month-sentence-to-facebook-poster-2010-12)
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The focus group participants share the same experience as most citizens, i.e. having to go two or three times to the same agency in order to complete a administrative service cycle just because they were not informed about perquisites for this service.
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needs is intended to be accomplished through a using mix of (a) telephone-based surveys, (b) Web 2.0 tools (online polls, mining of discussion threads etc.), and (c) seminars or focus group meetings. The scope and mode of internet-based exposure of data and information as found in the US, UK or Australia is considered as best-practice example also for Egypt. As for the implementation of new citizen information services, administrations are now basically ready for electronic interaction: websites are provided throughout the whole country, and the overall infrastructure is mature enough to manage high traffic transactions (e.g. 400.000 students applying in one month for public universities). In addition, the overall development of internet-based services (e.g. more localized platforms, support for mobile devices) is expected to benefit also the government in its service provision. Open APIs (for apps and widgets) will allow for more personalization and integration of information from various sources on the side of the citizens. And on the government side efforts are underway to be able to link data sources from various databases (e.g. health, tax, family) in order to allow more interoperability for informational and transactional services. However, the most critical issue is and will be managing the content of such services. First, the mandate for publishing government information is missing for most areas (notable exception: the procurement portal, see above), and only a comprehensive information law to be passed by the newly elected government can ease this bottleneck. Second, the attitude and behavior of the data owners as potential service providers have to be changed. In 2010 a directive called for establishing CIOs in government institutions, but so far only ten have been appointed, and even collaboration among them is still pending.
3.4 Discussion Egypt is a remarkable case to study because, on one hand, before 2011 practically no efforts were exerted in developing a common ground of information sharing between the people and their government. On the other hand, the massive use of social media has proven to be a driver of the political agenda, and at the same time the Egyptian government has a positive attitude towards and a successful track record of e-government and developing the country’s overall electronic infrastructure. Thus, prospects for open government are promising if the government succeeds in understanding the informational needs of the citizen.
Noticeable findings of this case study can be summarized as follows: − Given the experience and technical infrastructure, the Egyptian government has build sufficient capacity for providing citizen information services. − Equal access to information is still a major problem as many people have limited or no internet access. − Citizens and government share the opinion that dissemination of information regarding full transparency (especially of financial aspects) and stakeholder accountability is a top priority objective. − Citizens highly appreciate the government’s usage of social media for information sharing. − Citizens seek information not only in retrospect but also about governmental actions in terms of detailed plans including timeframes and milestones, supplemented by periodical progress reports. − Citizens expect that the information is easy to find and easy to understand; if matters are complex, then understanding should be supported by explanations and/or additional tools. − Citizens are willing to interact with the government, calling for more options to do so; however, the overall low quality of online discussion is an impediment. − The government is basically willing to implement open government principles, but the mandate to do so is still missing and the action plan to reach out to citizens beyond the current practice is still vague. With respect to the informational needs expressed by citizens regarding transparency and accountability, and also regarding administrative e-government services, most aspects have also been mentioned elsewhere; a noticeable extension is maybe the call for sharing action plans and regular progress reports. However, clearly significant is the voiced demand for guidance and support in finding and understanding for almost every category of information in focus, and especially when information must be extracted from raw data sets. To address this demand it has been suggested [5] (a) to establish project champions and service teams (working under CIO supervision) in order to ease problems of access, interoperability and interpretation, and (b) involve intermediaries (e.g. journalists) that are professionally trained to help people understand issues related to the public sphere. The good news for Egypt is that citizens, at least the young and educated, and government agree on basic principles of information sharing and that both
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any information provided to their context of living. It has been argued before that information quality is the key concept for negotiation in order to establish a common ground for information sharing in e-government [7]. This emphasizes the pragmatic aspect of information, and it accounts for the fact that informational demands of citizens may vary and change, also and maybe particularly in the context of open government. From this perspective the informational needs analysis implies the need of constantly being engaged with citizens to learn what the appropriate deliverables of open government are in a given time and place, and how they should change. The findings from the case study of Egypt underline the need for a contextual relationship management as to support the information sharing in an open government effort. Maybe this aspect has been outstanding in the given case because the previous lack of access and exposure to relevant information prevented the emergence of a shared interpretation context of government information. Or it might be a defect resulting from the limitation of the case study, i.e. the small number and restricted segment of citizens involved. However, this research was meant to be explorative, and a significant outcome is the proposition that the success of open government initiatives always depends on the pragmatics and that establishing a common ground for information sharing between governments and citizens remains an open task to be addressed. Therefore, in order to inform open government initiatives and the provision of citizen information services, future research in this area should focus much more on empirically investigating the use of open government data, how users (try to) relate data to their own context of interpretation, and how intermediaries (can) contribute to building a common ground for information sharing.
sides are largely comfortable with using social media for information and opinion sharing. If this sustains, we can predict that open government principles will continue to gain ground in public information management. On the other hand, the call for open government may easily be push aside by other political issues high on the agenda (e.g. unemployment, national security). Furthermore, the developments in Egypt after the revolution also reveal that practices and instruments of state repression are swiftly revived (e.g. with reference to street violence and emergency law) and that not all stakeholders share the interest of paving the road to citizen participation in political affairs.
4. Conclusion This paper has set out to gather insights about how to appropriately understand the requirements for dissemination of governmental data and information from the citizens’ perspective, so that these requirements are eventually translated into adequate technical and organizational support. To this end the case of Egypt has been studied, where citizens clearly demand a more open government and some noticeable steps on the ground have already been achieved in providing information services to citizen. Findings of the case study, beyond what has been discussed in relation to open government so far, reveal the significant demand for guidance and support in understanding the data and information provided. This aspect refers to the dimensions of semantics and pragmatics inherent to data and information, and to the perception of information as artifact versus deliverable [8]. As discussed above (section 2), Dawes and Helbig ([3], p. 59) concluded in their analysis of open government information strategies that “a thorough assessment of the needs and capabilities of a wide variety of users could lead to well-articulated standards for data description and formats, highquality data, and good data management practices that serve many different needs.” Such assessment is mainly directed to clarify and improve the semantics and quality of the information from the artifact perspective, assuming that informational needs have been understood. Surely, such approach can be recommended to all stakeholders (including the Egyptian government) when moving towards open governments; and cross-agency collaboration will even lead to synergy and enlarging the common ground for information sharing. However, the value of open government can only be realized when citizens actually understand the meaning of any data provided and are able to relate
5. Acknowledgement Thanks to Tarek El-Kafrawy for conducting and documenting two focus group meetings in May 2011.
6. References [1] Darwish, A.M., “Egypt: from e-government to egovernance – the road to fast pace development”, Proceedings ICEGOV 2008, ACM Press, pp. 1-3 [2] Dawes, S.S., “Stewardship and Usefulness: Policy Principles for Information-Based Transparency”, Government Information Quarterly 27 (4), 2010, pp. 377-383
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[3] Dawes, S.S., and N. Helbig, “Information Strategies for Open Government: Challenges and Prospects for Deriving Public Value from Government Transparency”, Proceedings EGOV 2010, Springer LNCS, Volume 6228/2010, pp. 50-60 [4] European Commission, The European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015. Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable and innovative Government. Brussels, COM(2010) 743, 2010 [5] El Kafrawy, T., A Roadmap for Citizen Information Service in Egypt. Bachelor thesis, Faculty of Management Technology, German University in Cairo, 2011 [6] Klischewski, R. “Drift or Shift? Propositions for Changing Roles of Administrations in E-Government”, Proceedings EGOV 2010, Springer LNCS, Volume 6228/2010, pp. 85-96 [7] Klischewski, R., and H.J. Scholl, “Information quality as capstone in negotiating e-government integration, interoperation and information sharing”, Electronic Government, An International Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2008, pp. 203-225 [8] Lillrank, P., “The quality of information”, International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, Vol. 20, 2003, pp. 691-703 [9] Ossimo, D. Web 2.0 in Government: Why and How? European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, 2008 [10] Ossimo, D., et al., Public Services 2.0 - Web 2.0 from the periphery to the centre of public service delivery, Report from the ePractice Workshop, European Commission, Brussels, 2009 [11] Reggi, L., “Benchmarking Open Data Availability across Europe: The Case of EU Structural Funds”, European Journal of ePractice, No. 12, March/April 2011 [12] Tauberer, J. (ed.), “8 Principles of Open Government Data”, Open Government Working Group, 2007, accessible at www.opengovdata.org
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