ICTs, citizens and the state: moralphilosophy and development practices

Tim UnwinUNESCO Chair in ICT4D

Royal Holloway, University of London

ICT4D Consortium Online Seminar Series, 2009

Is the introduction of e-government initiatives in

‘developing’ countries a ‘good’thing?

On what grounds do we makesuch judgements?

• Costs and benefits– Makes government delivery cheaper

• Efficiency– Enables government business to be

transacted more efficiently• Transparency

– Reduces corruption and wastage in thesystem

• Arguments generally made primarilyon economic grounds

But is the introduction of ICTsin e-governance ‘right’ or

‘wrong’?

How does moral philosophy helpus answer this question?

Posted on Kictanet (2009)‘...Pakistan has created a national smart ID card database,managed by the National Database and RegistrationAuthority (NADRA). Currently this database holds 170million fingerprints, 72 million facial images, and has alreadyissued 70 million ID cards. … The mere scale of thisdatabase raises questions about access management,security, and interoperability, but these have yet to beanswered. A centralised pool of information may be aninvaluable tool to any government; especially one trying toraise its people out of poverty. But given how high thestakes are, we need to ask ourselves whether adopting aone-sided approach and focusing on the benefits alone willnot harm those same people in the long run’?

The example of national digitaldatabases

Positive and negative impacts onboth citizens and states

Positive benefits of nationaldatabases

• For governments– enables easier checking

of individual identities– cheaper delivery of

services– Increased efficiency of

managing citizen control– reduces ‘illegal’

immigration– Centralises diverse

sources of existinginformation

– reduces numbers of civilservants

• For citizens– Enables swifter access to

information– Facilitates agencies in

accessing their lifehistories for medicalreasons

– Individual benefits (interms of financial/tax andpersonal safety) gainedfrom government deliveryof more efficient and costeffective services

But also negative impacts ofnational digital databases

• For governments– Costs of

implementation andmanagement

– Potential failure ofuntried technologies

– Risks of fraudulentuse of counterfeit IDcards, as withbanknotes andpassports

• For citizens– Should states have biometric

information about citizens?– Identity only proven through

the presence of the ID card– Increases the potential of

identify fraud– Ultimately, citizens have to

pay for ID cards– Increases potential for

citizens to be subject to actsof violence against them bystates or agencies thereof

– Increases potential foridentity theft

How do we decide what isright and wrong in this

example?

… especially in contexts wheregovernments are not trusted

Outline

• The Information Society, WSISand human rights

• African information ethics and theTshwane Declaration

• E-government and changes in therelationships between states andcitizens

• Questions we need to ask aboute-government to inform uswhether it is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’

Drawing on

• 17th century European social contract theory– Especially Locke and Hobbes

• Recent work in Information Ethics in anAfrican context– Typified by Capurro et al. (2007)– And debates over the Tshwane Declaration

• Critical realism– Raymond Geuss’s (2008) Philosophy and Real

Politics• Popular debates on identity cards, national

databases and surveillance

Towards conclusions

• In each particular ‘real’ contextwe need to ask three types ofquestion about– Trust– Privacy– The system of law

• And we need to rethink our takenfor granted assumptions about‘human rights’

The Information Society andWSIS

‘We acknowledge theimportance of ethics for theInformation Society, whichshould foster justice, and thedignity and worth of the humanperson. The widest possibleprotection should be accordedto the family and to enable it toplay its crucial role in society’(WSIS, 2003, para 57).

The Information Society andWSIS

• Nowhere does this make explicit what ismeant by “ethics for the Information Society”

• Interesting emphasis placed on the family– How does this relate to the Information Society?

• WSIS (2005) reaffirmed interest– To “address the ethical dimensions of the

Information Society”– With emphasis on the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights• “so that people everywhere can create, access, utilize

and share information and knowledge, to achieve theirfull potential and to attain the internationally agreeddevelopment goals and objectives”

Focus on Human Rights• WSIS claims are an ideal aspiration

– Premised on the Universal Declaration• But do not reflect current reality

– Especially in Africa• Contested nature of human rights is

not recognised– ICTs have enabled powerful interests

to assert their vision of human rights• US dominated model focusing on the

individual as a ‘free’ labourer and consumer– But this is not necessarily in the

interest of poor and marginalisedpeoples

African information ethics

African Information Ethics…• Ethical considerations are essential so as to

avoid an increased digital information gap inAfrica

• Distinction– Information ethics for Africa

• The dominant modality, imposed from outside– Information ethics from Africa

• Importance of African traditions in shapingAfrican information ethics (Capurro, 2007)– Oral traditions– Communal traditions (ubuntu)

• Perhaps European privacy concerns are less relevant?

…Tshwane Declaration• But, failures of the political process (Frohmann, 2007)• ‘African information ethics is treated as a plug-in to a

system of stable phenomena already assembledtogether in a fixed totality by’ the ‘three absolute andalready stabilized virtues’ of universal human values,human rights and social justice

• ‘the Declaration reflects the political reality of theTshwane Conference, where instead of pursuingscholarly discussion of ethics in any philosophicalsense the academic delegates were set the task ofcrafting a document – the Tshwane Declaration –only to find that none of their recommendationssurvived the final draft’

National ID cards: an exampleof e-government

Ghana’s National IdentificationAuthority

• 2. Q. How does the NIS benefit Ghana?– A. The NIS will facilitate:

• development planning based on sufficient accurate populationdata. This will boost comprehensive national planning,especially in sectors such as education, health, employmentand infrastructure;

• delivery of social services such as health, retirement benefitsand social administration;

• delivery of credit facilities; and• identification of individuals for voting, insurance, licensing and

general national security purposes.

• 15. Q. What information will the ID Card bear?– A. The card will bear the holder’s unique identification

number (assigned to him/her for life), name, photograph,fingerprint and residential/ home address.

“How brokers mint millions inKenya ID fraud”

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/561348/-/item/2/-/9575rbz/-/index.html

Positive benefits of biometricID cards

• For governments– Helps to guarantee

transparency andreliability of electoralprocesses

– Prevents illegal activitiesand threats (claims that itreduces terrorism, illegalimmigration, under-agedrinking and criminalactivity)

– Increases ability tomonitor movement ofcitizens

• For citizens– Simplifies proof of

identity for purposessuch as banking, health,insurance

– Reduces identity fraud– Enables foreign national

working in a state to haveproof of identity

– Facilitating travel to otherstates that recognise theidentity card

But also negative impacts ofbiometric ID cards

• For governments– Costs of implementation

and management– Potential failure of untried

technologies– Risks of fraudulent use of

counterfeit ID cards, aswith banknotes andpassports

• For citizens– States do not currently have the

right to have access tobiometric information aboutcitizens; why should they?

– Makes identity only proventhrough the presence of the IDcard, rather than through trustin physical person

– Increases the potential ofidentify fraud

– Ultimately, citizens have to payfor ID cards

– Increases potential for citizensto be subject to acts of violenceagainst them by states oragencies thereof

http://www.wholetruthcoalition.org

Three key moral issues need tobe explored in choosing between

‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in e-Government: trust, privacy and

the law

Each withinlocally specific

contexts

Origins of Social Contracttheory

• 17th century Europe– Hobbes: Leviathan– Locke: Two treatises of government

• People have rights that they give up togovernments in return for protection(Hobbes)– Reconciling conflicting human desires for

peace and power• They also have duties to replace

corrupt governments (Locke)• But, do people actually have rights that

they can cede to governments?

Trust• Trust often seen as the basis for effective

human cooperation– Underlying importance of regulatory environments

in business and government– Yet 2008 financial meltdown has been a challenge

to ‘trust’• Trust and ICTs - Gerck (1998)

– ‘trust is that which is essential to a communicationchannel but cannot be transferred from a source toa destination using that channel’

• Surveillance suggests that governments donot trust citizens– Why should citizens trust governments?

Trust and e-Government• Three key issues

– Where citizens do not trust governments, noamount of e-government will encourage thedelivery of better governance

– the use of digital technologies may actuallybe reducing the trust between citizens andgovernments rather than increasing it asintended and expected

– No amount of e-government technology willactually make a government change itsattitudes and approaches towards itscitizens, unless that government has in thefirst instance decided to adopt new ethicalstances towards concepts such astransparency, equity and fairness

Privacy• Privacy as a good that can be weighed up

against other goods (Etzioni, 2005)– Governments can pry into individuals’ lives to protect all

citizens– External circumstances must change to permit this

• Use of ‘terrorism’ as a justification

• Or privacy as a means through which wehave power over our own lives– But assymetric power relationships between states and

citizens: states have more power than individual citizens• What if states cannot be trusted to be good?

– ‘Reducing government’s ability to do bad things to us, at thecost of limiting its ability to protect us from bad things doneto us by ourselves or by other people, may not be such abad deal’ (Friedman, 2005)

Freedom on the Net (2009)

Privacy and e-Government

• A fully transparent society (Brin, 1998)– Governments can watch citizens– And citizens can watch governments– But this is an idealistic view

• Three key questions:– Will citizens ultimately benefit by giving up

privacy rights to the state?– Do governments have in place

mechanisms to avoid abuse of formerly‘private’ information?

– Do overall communal benefits outweighlosses of individual freedoms?

Ethics and legal systems

• Locke’s fundamental constitutional principle– the individual can do anything apart from that

which is prohibited by law, whereas the state mayonly do things that are explicitly authorised by law

• Important differences between systems ofCommon Law and Constitutional Law– Distinctions between existing practices and

constitutional principles– Separation between legislature and government– Challenges in reaching international agreements

The Law and e-Government

• Three challenges– Technological innovation faster than ability of legal

systems to respond– ICTs and globalisation leads to need for

international agreements that are difficult to forge• All too often resorting to Human Rights agendas

– Legality of ICTS• If some use of ICTs has not yet been defined as illegal,

citizens are allowed to act with impunity• yet states should have to seek authorisation from the

courts to be able to implement a new ICT basedinitiative, such as the construction of a national databaseof citizen information

Conclusions

• Challenges for human rightsagendas and social contract theory– If people do not have rights that they

can cede to governments,governments cannot claim legitimacyin using biodata

– Need for a focus on responsibilities tobalance hegemonic focus on rights

• Importance of consideration ofcommunities, not only individuals– And importance of African communal

traditions in particular

Who really benefits from e-Government?

• Some benefits for citizens• Considerable increase in the

power of states– Despite anarchic potential of

some ICT usage• But the biggest beneficiaries

are those corporations sellingand implementing thetechnologies

Is e-government ‘right’ or‘wrong’?

…in yourcontexts

Keeping in touch….

http://www.ict4d.org.ukhttp://ict4dconsortium.rhul.ac.uk/elgg/