http://funredes.org/mistica

MISTICA: Empowering women for Public Policy Advocacy

From: Juliana Martinez ([email protected])
Date: Thu Jun 20 2002 - 11:15:14 AST

A continuacion incluye resumen del documento que acabamos de escribir Katherine
Reilly y yo para la oficina de Naciones Unidades que esta trabajando temas de
genero y nuevas tecnologias.

Ademas, como documento adjunto va texto completo para que la moderacion de la
lista lo tenga disponible.

Un abrazo,

Juliana
Investigadora Fundacion Acceso

--------------
The United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the
Advancement of Women (INSTRAW)
Gender and ICTs Virtual Workshops

Looking Behind the Internet:
Empowering Women for Public Policy Advocacy

Juliana Mart�nez and Katherine Reilly

The authors are part of the research team currently conducting a project on
�Public Information for Public Policy Advocacy: Action Research with Women�s
Organizations in Costa Rica and Nicaragua� with Fundaci�n Acceso, sponsored
by the
International Development Research Centre (IDRC) (Mart�nez, 2002a). The
project
is looking at the role of public information, information systems, and ICTs in
mediating state-civil society relations. Gender issues and the work of
organized
women are being used as the backdrop for this study. A primary hypothesis
is that
access to public information is a key ingredient for the participation of civil
society organizations and social movements in the shaping of public policy.
Additionally, ICTs may play a key role in improving access to public
information,
but only insofar as organizations are capable of demanding what kind of
information they require, how they need the information to be presented,
and what
concrete means would help them access to it.

Certain core ideas behind this research differentiate it from other efforts
in the
area of gender and ICTs. The primary focus is on women, policy and offline
concerns, while ICTs are seen only as a potential solution, reflecting the
difference between the dominant and alternative approaches to ICTs for
development
identified by Martinez 2002 and FUNREDES 2002.
Additionally?, women are not seen only as users, recipients, consumers, or
individuals making use of ICTs or receiving information, but as actors �
organized
women - seeking to participate in policy and decision making processes.

In the research, the interface between state and civil society is modelled in
terms of e-government (the use of ICTs by government to modernize the state),
e-governance (the use of ICTs by government to improve top-down governance) and
e-democracy (the use of ICTs by government to facilitate citizen
participation in
democratic processes through transparency, accountability and access to
information). In Central America, the focus has been on e-government for the
modernization of administrative systems and implementation of e-services, and
e-governance for e-commerce. Education and universal access activities are
geared
towards creating �users�, while e-democracy efforts are not a focus of
attention.
In particular, gender programming has focused on individual (rather than
organized) women�s access to the technology, rather than on the decision-making
processes around how and what public information is produced.

The focus has not been, therefore, on using ICTs to increase the ability of
marginalized groups to participate in public policy. In particular,
neither woman
as individuals nor organized women are included in information production or
information system design. Nor are they considered in the production of
information outputs. The information produced facilitates clarity � easy
understanding of government structure and service offering in order to
manoeuvre
the bureaucracy � rather than transparency � information that allows
citizens to
make value judgements about the performance of government. Improving
government
accountability will require both putting more information on websites, and
changing information systems and political processes and structures to
ensure that
they contribute to accountability and transparency.

In order to identify means to make ICTs more responsive to gender advocacy
goals,
an action-research approach was chosen for this study. The project pursues
a cycle
of problem definition, strategic planning, advocacy and evaluation to determine
whether women�s organizations have access to public information that is
relevant
for policy advocacy, identify the primary shortcomings in this vein, and
explore
strategies to overcome these obstacles. Data gathering relies on a strategic
planning methodology, taking participants through a process of reflection
on their
long-term political project and the design of strategies to realize change.
Data
analysis draws on Strauss� (1987) grounded theory approach, an inductive
framework, in which raw data is built into categories, relationships and
eventually exploratory theoretical statements, which in turn can be used
for the
generation of new data sets. The research is currently in phase 1:
identification
of public information requirements, and moving into phase 2: prioritization of
desirable changes. Later stages will include defining strategies, realizing
advocacy, and evaluation.

Findings to date have identified obstacles to public information including
difficulties with access to complete, timely, verifiable and reliable
information,
problems with using public information including capacity to manipulate and
interpret, and challenges in the area of appropriating public information for
policy advocacy. While the organized women surveyed indicate problems in all
three areas, at the current phase of research, the focus is on access. So
far, it
has been found that the information available is incomplete (raw data,
indicators
and reports are not made public), unreliable, outdated, fragmented, and usually
not gender disaggregated. Furthermore, it is most often only available through
personal contacts, and access is not considered a right of citizens. Problems
with access can be broken down into obstacles in production (selection of
indicators and gathering of date), formatting (analysis and production and
presentation of reports), and dissemination (how, and how widely). So far,
it has
been found that public entities do not produce the information needed by
organized
citizens, information is often presented in formats that require
interpretation to
understand, and dissemination is limited. The quality of the information
at all
three stages is also at issue.

>From these findings, emerging grounded theory has begun to generate some
basic
understandings of the role of ICTs and information in mediating the
relationship
between civil society and the state. In particular, the project is
exploring the
difference between managerial information systems and citizen information
systems,
a difference reflecting e-government and e-democracy respectively. The former
produces, formats, and possibly disseminates information that is of use of
public
administrators for managerial concerns such as human resources allocation. The
later produces, formats and necessarily disseminates, in appropriate
formats, the
information required by organized women to monitor agendas of interest to women
and propose change. Civil society groups need to make clear to government
their
specialized information needs, as different from the information needs of
public
administrators, or clarity needs of citizens. Also, it becomes apparent that
making information demands implies looking behind www.government.com, and
identifying gaps or issues with the systems that produce public information.

A second area of emerging grounded theory is in the use of ICTs to mediate
state-civil society relations. The lack of public information makes it
harder for
women to promote policy changes, as public information is required to even make
the argument that a policy change is needed. The lack of production of
meaningful
and relevant information about women�s programming produces a barrier to
effective
policy advocacy. Women�s groups need to begin producing agendas for changing
information-related policies, but this requires an understanding of the public
administration information systems behind the information that is produced, and
this implies the need for new capacities. Also, changing information
production
requires changes in policy, which is the result of politics. Research that
addresses policy without acknowledging politics leaves us without clues as
to how
to get there. In order for ICTs to empower women, we need to be thinking about
policy formation, including the various actors participating in policymaking,
their interests and agendas. This research seeks to shed light on this
relation
from the vantage point of the role played by public information, and area where
more work is required.

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