A Discussion Paper on Cybersecurity Policies

This chapter presents various reasons for the insufficiency of externalities in terms of the inference of market failure with regard to the field cybersecurity policy, which is claimed to be necessary for government intervention. The main argument of this chapter is that cybersecurity market failures are much smaller than initially assumed, and as a result, more harm might be done by trying to correct them through naïve government regulation.

A Privacy Perspective of Open Government

Open government and freedom of information are key values in today's democracy, rule of law, and public governance. Their further development may have to be equally taken into consideration with other important public interests, such as state secret, public security, and other individual rights including reputation and privacy. In particular, there is the need to consider how individual privacy can be protected in the digital era in which both the concept and practice of open government may claim more territory. Taking China as an example, this chapter tries to reveal the complex, dynamic relationship between open government (transparency) and privacy protection, in particular by studying two specific privacy-related issues: the disclosure of official's public interest-related private life and the disclosure of family asset. In the sense that they can be regarded as the benchmarks to measure the level of open government and FOI development in a community, both can reflect the cultural and political complexities that affect such developments.

Openness of Public Financial Management

This chapter reviews the open government model and assesses the position of public financial management (PFM) of an emerging economy, Bangladesh. Open government (OG) is an emerging issue that is identified as the prerequisite of ensuring the accountability and transparency. From different research platforms, OG is suggested to pertain to the development goals of the country as well. Therefore, it has an importance to the emerging economy. This chapter investigates the openness of public financial management (PFM) through the theory of accountability, transparency, and open government model in Bangladesh. It seems that though the ease of accessibility of government data is demanded in the developing economy for accountability, transparency, and development, the situation of public financial management is far reaching from the demand in Bangladesh. The open government data platform and different PFM agencies are disclosing very little information regarding the public finance. The chapter argues to strengthen the basic structure of opening up the PFM.

Data Organization as Structure for Collaborative Governance

NREGA is an employment guarantee legislation promulgated for the rural workers of India. It provides 100 days of employment in a year with a provision of unemployment allowance by implementing agencies. To monitor the legislation, a collaborative platform has been developed that is customized to the requirement of the multiple stakeholders (e.g., different governments, village bodies, beneficiaries, public, work engineers, etc.). A large amount of the data is generated on the platform. Despite this, it takes lot of time in complaint redressal and mostly it is done manually. The chapter attempts to explore ideas of how the collaborative platform could be made more effective by organizing the data such that the requirement of field-based variability can be minimized.

Open Mexico Network in the Implementation of National Open Data Policy

The objective of the chapter is to identify some barriers to accessing public data through the study of one of the pillars of Mexico's national open data policy, the Open Mexico Network. Based on the exploratory analysis of the “Mexico Abierto network” and the description of a case study in northern Mexico, an attempt is made to answer the following question: Does Mexico's national open data policy generate timely data and have efficient access to data? and the final question, Is it easy for citizens to obtain? The study identifies major problems from the design of the national policy of open data, such as not having foreseen the creation of positive incentives for local governments to update the databases in the “México Abierto network.”

Conceptualizing Cyber-Security From EU Perspective

If the aim of the EU is the establishment of deeper cooperation with other nations within the context of cyber security in the future, platforms (e.g., the Task Force) should create an effective agenda that reflects the differences between the EU (soft power) and other countries such as China or Russia (hard power). Yet, there should not be any compromise in the principles and norms of these countries with regard to their Internet policies. Although this may sound too difficult to accomplish, it is not impossible given EU's increased emphasis on cybersecurity along with its evolving cybersecurity strategy.

Prospects and Challenges of E-Government in Black Africa

Most scholars' perspectives on e-government development in Africa have tended to be monolithic. This has been irrespective of the fact that African nations have been adopting relatively different approaches to e-governance. Though the dominant tendency among them has been to struggle to have a certain amount of web presence through the creation of e-government web portals, each African country has designed its own (customized) e-government initiatives. It will therefore be very interesting to explore the extent to which the prospects and challenges of e-governance in Africa have been varying across countries. This chapter attempts to fill this gap in knowledge through a comparative study of e-government implementation in Nigeria and Cameroon. The chapter is divided into three main parts. The first part provides a conceptual definition and a brief history of e-government. The second part explores the phenomena of ICTs and e-governance in Africa while the last part provides a comparative perspective on the implementation of e-government in Nigeria and Cameroon.

Open Government Data (OGD) Initiative in India

Open Government Data (OGD) is a relevant discussion concerning transparency in governmental procedures. The chapter examines how India has followed up on the open data policy and constituted the Open Government Data (OGD) Platform and National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) to ensure that citizens can access data generated from public-funded governmental activities. The author has conducted an empirical examination of the status of the Open Government Data initiative in India, its scope, how the programme ranks against other countries, and has evaluated the same against the parameters of Democracy Index (33 out of 165), Open Data Barometer (43 out of 100) of Open Government Data and webometric analysis. India has taken proactive steps towards releasing government data to public domain. This can be seen in the rising growth in contribution of datasets and increase in OGD literature. The NDSAP and OGD Platform can be applauded as a healthy step on the part of the Government of India towards transparency and encouraging public participation in governance.

Open Government and Bureaucratic Secrecy in the Developing Democracies

Despite the widespread assumption that open government (OG) has emerged as a critical apparatus of governance, its institutionalization in the developing democracies remains contestable. Studies in open government suggest transparency and accountability in public office. This typically depends on the development of OG data and use of the same for effective and efficient governance choices and decision making. Although open government initiatives have recently proliferated to remedy transparency and accountability deficiency in governance in various ways, while it succeeds in fostering the culture of governance accountability in the developed societies, it has failed to fully resolve the difficulties associated with bureaucratic secrecy in the developing democracies, particularly in Africa. This chapter builds on content analysis to review and analyze salient issues raised on bureaucratic secrecy in Africa and in particular provides evidence of the effects of bureaucratic secrecy on the advancement of OG initiatives.