democracy

This brief article provides the reader with a focused, concise critical analysis regarding the challenges of Cyberspace Governance and Security from Canada's perspectives.

This article seeks to explain the harms of government surveillance. Drawing on law, history, literature, and the work of scholars in the emerging interdisciplinary field of “surveillance studies,” the article offers an account of what those harms are and why they matter. The article moves beyond the vagueness of current theories of surveillance to articulate a more coherent understanding and a more workable approach. At the level of theory, the paper explains why and when surveillance is particularly dangerous and when it is not.

Over the last few years, consumers, corporations and governments have rushed to move their data to “the cloud,” adopting web-based applications and storage solutions provided by companies that include Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Cloud computing services provide consumers with vast amounts of cheap, redundant storage and allow them to instantly access their data from a web-connected computer anywhere in the world. Unfortunately the shift to cloud computing needlessly exposes users to privacy invasion and fraud by hackers.

With the rapid spread of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), new opportunities have been opened for a revival of public discourse and improved governance efficiency. ICTs offer concrete opportunities for local and national governments to improve their performance in terms of transparency, participation and decentralization. The mainstreaming of ICTs within planning and design of development strategies helps to strengthen the establishment of efficient, effective and transparent governance systems. This paper takes a critical look at Democracy and Governance.

The World e-Parliament Report 2012 documents the efforts of legislatures to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to support their constitutional functions. The Report is based on the Global Survey of ICT in Parliaments 2012 conducted by the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament between February and May 2012, which is the third in a series of surveys that began in 2007. The number of parliaments responding to the surveys has increased over time, from 105 in 2007 to 134 in 2009 and 156 in 2012. These 156 parliaments represent a membership of 28,613 legislators.

In the fall of 2011, Danida commissioned a study with the objective of examining strategic opportunities for using ICT for promoting governance and democratization efforts within development assistance; and exploring opportunities for ICT in the present Danish portfolio of development programs and within the vision of the Strategy for Danish Development Cooperation. The study touches on a range of ICT technologies but its focus is the use of mobile phones, including voice calls, SMS Text, mobile internet, and social media.

This article explores the challenges of fighting corruption and presents some ideas on how to start addressing them through the use of ICT. Section 1 sets the scene by providing a brief overview of how pervasive, serious and difficult to fix the problem of corruption is. Section 2 gives a sense of the very exuberant hopes and expectations that ride on new information and communication technologies to evolve into a game-changer in the fight against corruption.