Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
It is important to make clear to potential participants the difference be-
tween those activities which will benefit from the knowledge, skills and
capabilities that most people already have - such as those listed below and
those where some preparation and opportunities for learning are required
e.g. in areas associated with technical aspects of ICT developments. Re-
garding the skills which citizens have in abundance, it will be important to
emphasise that it is capacities such as those listed below - and not their
knowledge of ICT - that are most relevant and important in shaping ICT
developments.
To inform ICT design decisions citizens/users can do the following:
•
use their imagination and creativity as well as their knowledge of their
context and experience to envision the possibilities;
•
consider the implications and the potential of emerging technologies for
their lives;
•
be demanding, informed and willing to 'co-create' the systems, products
and services best suited to their lives;
•
exert their power and influence to significant effect by asking critical
questions;
•
engage in considered reflection to pre-empt or reduce the negative unin-
tended effects of new technologies;
•
provide inputs to the design decision-making process that reflect the di-
versity and richness of their own experience.
In addition to the above capabilities, there are some specific skills which
are frequently of value and relevance in design exercises of many kinds.
These include envisioning, knowledge sharing, requirements shaping, con-
sensus building and conflict resolution. It is has already been indicated that
an active educational process and appropriate learning opportunities, sup-
ported by tools and techniques described in Chapter 9, may be required to
promote development of these skills.
As indicated above, an appropriate organisational infrastructure will be
essential to launch a viable citizen engagement strategy and to support en-
gagement processes. Setting up organizational infrastructure to facilitate
and enable citizen engagement processes in the context of on-going ICT
projects is best done in advance of launching engagement processes. More
typically, this happens as an ad hoc response to developments. For exam-
ple, pressures from national government to implement local e-government
in the UK has required local councils to find their own ways of developing
structures and procedures to support the implementation. The trial and er-
ror involved has been an expensive process and slowed up the delivery of
e-services. For example, people who are in job roles that require them to
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