The third techfast will take place on Friday next 23rd May. This Friday Colm Butler, Director of Information Society Policy Unit at the Department of the Taoiseach will present ‘E-Inclusion-a national perspective’. Colms role is to promote the public policy agenda for the development of the Information Society in Ireland. The policies are designed to ensure that modern technologies are universally accessible and that everyone has an opportunity to participate in a society being increasingly impacted by technologies that are opening up new possibilities for innovation in government, commerce and in all sectors of society. Colm has long been a friend to the Community ICT Steering Group in Limerick and we very much look forward to his input.
There are still a limited number of places available so if you are interested in coming along you might email me at brendanryan@clvec.ie as Elaine is away on leave this week.
Please keep on commenting on this blog as your input is vital to the ongoing development of our new strategy.
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Well done on another excellent & thought provoking breakfast. I agree with Colm that the real focus must be on the content and services that people “want to go online for” (or use their mobile phone for) – not the technology. This is going back to the key issue of “Relevance” in people’s lives. In all such services and promoting the use of ICT, we must start from where each individual is at: what their interests are and make them aware of the potential and life/work opportunities afforded by the Information Society. eGovernment services must be citizen-centric, not organisation-centric (as most are at present).
Colm made a very good point that we have to be very careful in speaking about “disadvantaged areas” that we may be labelling people and suggesting that they are “excluded” with problems that need to be “fixed”. I really liked the ABCD (Asset Based Community Development) approach that he mentioned, to focus on people’s and communities’ positives (“assets”) rather than trying to “correct” their negatives. I think that the resulting ICT Steering Group strategy from this process needs to be positive, proactive and focus on the “assets” of our communities, particularly supporting the “champions” who are already working on the ground.
I really appreciated Colm’s honesty on the various short-comings of e-enabling public services over the years,. But at least the Information Society Unit recognised these and tried to learn and do it better. While the shake-up in that area will probably bring in fresh thinking, I do hope that they will not make those mistakes all over and “re-invent the wheel” again !.
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