What is an Information Society
Why are Information Policies needed
What is an Information Policy
Elements of Information Policy
Who has Information Policies
E-Inclusion
Life Long Learning
E-Business strategies
Infrasture – physical (broadband/e-fibre)
Infrastructure – political / Legal and regulatory
Copyright, Intellectual Property, Data Protection, Freedom of Information
Regulation of Domain Name Spaces ( .ie)
E-government
Information Policy in Ireland
2. Agenda
What is an Information Society
Why are Information Policies needed
What is an Information Policy
Who has Information Policies
Information Policy in Ireland
3. What is an Information Society
A society where the creation, distribution, use,
integration and manipulation of information area
significant economic, political, and cultural activity.
Economic counterpart = Knowledge Economy
Successor to Industrial Society???
4. Theories of ‘Information Society’
: Sample
Machlup – patents & research
Knowledge Industry, sectors
Drucker – materials based > knowledge based economy
Bell – no. of employee > in sector = indicator of
informational character of society.
Other theorists include :
Porat
Touraine
Lyotard
Sonntag
Stehr
Toffler
Van Dijk
5. Castells – Network Society
The key social structures and activities are organized
around electronically processed information networks.
10. History of Information Policy
Image http://www.personal.psu.edu/glh10/ist110/topic_old/topic01/topic01_02.html
11. What is an Information Policy
Information policy is the set of all public laws, regulations and
policies that encourage, discourage, or regulate the creation, use,
storage, access, and communication and dissemination of
information.[1] It thus encompasses any other decision-making
practice with society-wide constitutive efforts that involve the flow
of information and how it is processed.[2]
[1]Weingarten, F.W. (1989) Federal Information Policy Development: The Congressional perspective. In C. McClure, P. Hernon and H. Relyea (eds), United States Government Information Policies: views and Perspectives (Ablex, Norwood, NJ).
[2]Braman, S. (2011). Defining information policy. Journal of Information Policy 1-5. http://jip.vmhost.psu.edu/ojs/index.php/jip/article/view/19/14.
Can be anything
1. How you manage your privacy settings on Social networks
2. Government strategy (Infrastructure, Policy, Law, Regulation)
3. Corporate plan
12. Elements of Information Policy
E-Inclusion
Life Long Learning
E-Business strategies
Infrasture – physical (broadband/e-fibre)
Infrastructure – political / Legal and regulatory
Copyright, Intellectual Property, Data Protection, Freedom
of Information
Regulation of Domain Name Spaces ( .ie)
E-government
15. Freedom of Information (FOI)
Image: http://wayne-newsyoudontsee.blogspot.ie/2011/04/what-freedom-of-information.html
16. Censorship
Is not a thing of the past.
Banned books week 2013 in the USA
Image http://blogs.furman.edu/com221sp10d/2010/04/07/12-months-of-censorship-in-china/
17. Data Protection
About your right to privacy
EU Directive 95/46
Principle: individuals should be in a position to control
how data relating to them is used
18. ISSUES
Digital environment: intellectual property,
economic regulations, freedom of
expression, confidentiality or privacy of
information, information security, access
management, and regulating how the
dissemination of public information
occurs.
20. Issue: Privacy
Habermas:
Public and private sphere
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4tLsTt9LxM
The NSA has huge
capabilities – and if it
wants in to your computer,
it's in.
• Explaining the latest NSA revelations – Q&A
29. Data Protection - Ireland
Data protection acts 1998 & 2003
Data protection commissioner
Data protection is about your fundamental right to
privacy.
You can access and correct data about yourself.
Those who keep data about you have to comply with
data protection principles
30. FOI – Ireland
Table from http://www.oic.gov.ie/en/Publications/Special-Reports/10th-Anniversary-Publication-Freedom-of-Information-The-First-
Decade-/Freedom-of-Information-The-First-Decade.pdf
32. Advantages of having an
Information Policy
Get the best of web 2.0 (ie non-static web
pages – interactivity)
Influence people paying attention to the
social aspect of these socio-technical
systems.
Secure the preservation of digital content
Bring about information production
33. Future needs
Needs to be flexible, and change to meet ever evolving
circumstance as the ability to access, store and share
information continues to grow.
DNA / Genetic information
Medical privacy
We can consider than in very primitive societies, the individual held all the power. As social organizations became more complex, the need for a minimal coordination comes evident: tribes got their chieftains to guide the collective.
The growth of communities and the need to strengthen coordination — especially against the “threat” of other communities — imply (amongst other factors) the militarization of a society and, sooner or later, the seizure of power by the military chaste. Warlords and absolute kings (and also Pharaohs, etc.) do not only rule but also reduce the degree of freedom of their subjects:
Many claim that the Information Society is empowering back individuals, and it well may definitely be true: never before as now can people or people have the potential to freely act, create, speak, reach out… within the given system. But it may also true that,never before as now is governance — as the power to change the system — so far from the citizens’ reach… even of their direct representatives, which are controlled by higher powers, most of them out of anyone’s jurisdiction. Like in an hourglass, the distribution of power is shifted to the (upper and lower) edges, the question being: who is playing the role of the transmission chain between these two edges?
Information goes through a lifecycle from creation to collection, organisation/classification, dissemination and destruction, laws an policies are needed for each stage of this cycle.
This lifecycle informs what need an information policy, and other information related policies like data protection copyright and information security policies.
For one they are needed for legal reasons associated with the development of technology and society and it’s people responding to this technology, especially the digitisation of cultural content – from music downloads to images of the book of kells. Digitisation reduces production costs, but has also seen an increase in the exchange of file – illegally or of unauthorized copies (Napster controversy is an example of this). This exchange can take place online, p2p or via hardcopy off line. It created a grey area. Because it had economic impact something was done about it via information policy. The music industry demanded regulation.
This is also the origin of those lovely anti-piracy sections at the start of our dvd’s.
Information policy shapes many aspects of society and set boundaries as they set a framework to evaluate issues in relation to the life cycle of information and the it’s use.
Organization information policies reflect this in that they Look at the interaction between tech and people, where using information is the aim of the interaction, issues include who sets the policy where it’s top-down or middle-down, AND how the organisation’s culture influences the complexity of it’s information need.