Egm report e-Government and New Technologies: Towards Better Citizen

Session Three: Perspectives of Non-Government 

Stakeholders 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The role of NGOs can and has played an important role in helping governments best 

utilize citizen engagement tools. Mr. Michael Szafraniec provided an excellent example 

through his organization, Care Ways Community. NGOs have the critical links to citizens, the 

private sector and governments. They also enjoy a degree of independence from each of these 

main groups, and thus can maintain a healthy degree of autonomy and institutional 

objectivity. NGOs can also harness a good deal of creativity from among the various sectors, 

both internally and externally. One main area of interest is in the area of developing and 

setting of international standards citizen engagement.  

This is important because without standards, there exists a vacuum where ICT 

development and data management can be scattered and nonproductive. Mr. Szsfraniec sees a 

good opportunity for not only standards-based citizen engagement tools – but the creation of 

“Social Data Warehouses” based on standardized inputs and outputs. He also sees the need 

and opportunity in creating an “Index of Measurement” where citizen measurement impacts, 

capacity can be compared and improved upon when necessary. Under this proposed initiative, 

codes of ethics can be created and agreed to, there would be standards for how data is 

captured, stored, and analyzed. There is a need to develop standards of engagement, principals 

of engagement, and key benchmarks. 

The NGO sector enjoys a unique position to help develop, influence, and implement an 

action agenda. The NGO can help develop the requirements to develop resources and training 

to further build government expertise and citizen capacity. The NGO sector is in the unique