"The
2003 Hawaii International Conference on Social Sciences. The Second Annual
Conference. June 12 - 15, 2003.
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Citizens role in participating monitoring of urban
areas
G. Anselmi, ENEA – U. Mocci, expert ICT
Introduction
Many reasons push to re-examinate the citizens role in
today life of the big towns and specifically in environmental monitoring. In one hand, the complex and
often contradictory nature of the urban problems (e.g. cities enlargement
and multiethnic migration and
urbanization phenomena) are creating new needs; at the other hand, the change
of behaviours are producing a weakening of the social cohesion and of the
natural identification of citizens with their historic traditions. In addition,
the new achievements of IC tecnologies, have determined the spread out of
internet and intranet data networks and
of both fixed and mobile terminals with internet navigation capability. Such infrastructures can be used
easily to collect data about the status of the towns, possibly by using
specific applications and formats accessible on the network. A further element is represented
by the administrative constraints and the need to limit the public services
costs and improve their efficiency. All these factors motivate a strong action
to be undertaken by the Local Authorities with the manifold objective to
involve citizens in finding shared
solutions to the main problems of the towns and in contributing to the
environmental monitoring.
Hereinafter these mentioned
problems will be examined especially in relation to the second aspect, the role
that citizens can play in the urban monitoring and in quality control of public
services. In this respect the services delivery conditions will be analysed
from a systemic point of view; the new chances offered by ICTs to make easier
town monitoring will be further examined
to point out the benefits expected on both techno-economical and social
side.
Urban systems, environmental
and public services quality
Environmental
and Services Quality (ESQ) plays a very
important role in the advanced societies, as it deeply influences goods and
services production, constitutes an element of guaranty and safety in social
behaviours and market relationships and really defines an important framework qualifying
the life conditions of the towns.
The today management of
environmental and Public Services processes can be represented as in Fig.2,
where controls on the population and on the environment are exerted under a
given set of rules mostly without any intervention of the citizens, which are
only authorised to give long term
feedback with the choice of the local government.
In the frame of participating towns the role of the citizens
is much wider and relevant to a number
of directions, as represented in Fig.3. We can distinguish in particular.
-
transversal links directed toward the others
citizens;
-
monitoring actions, which integrate or substitute the
ordinaries ways of monitoring;
-
a more external feedback, relevant to the identification
of the town problems and of the
relative solutions.
As to the impact on the services
delivery processes, it is wise to distinguish two reference management schemes,
respectively based either on pre-established programmed interventions, or on dynamic
programs adapted according to the real status of the town. The first scheme is
characterised by a limited effort in real time town monitoring and the
interventions are mostly made according to a fixed program updated on a
mid-long term time scale. The second case is characterised by more focused and
efficient interventions, that follow the indications risen by a larger
monitoring activity; the last could be done at very marginal costs resorting to
the modern IC technologies and to
citizen participation.
New Technologies and urban monitoring
The monitoring of the towns can be
carried out with different features and timescales. Data collected by the
monitoring process can be utilized off-line,
to identify new needs of services and
re-organise services delivering, or on-line,
in the frame of adaptive delivering processes. In both cases, however, monitoring data must be
processed to find out statistics, to evaluate
demand to satisfy, to verify
quality and efficiency of services and, in the case of adaptive
delivering, to adequate delivering plans to the services needs. So it is always
necessary to collect data by monitoring and to store data in a city database
for further processing. The whole chain can be very expensive to implement and manage, taking into account the territory
extension of the big cities. Till some time ago the technologies usable to
collect data where very expensive and could not be easily deployed ; however in
the recent time, new and encouraging chances have been emerged regarding to the
all rings of the process chain, i. e. the collecting networks, the terminal
equipments, the storage and processing of data.
As to the network, the Internet
network, can cover metropolitan areas at very low cost, being accessible both
from all the telephone sets of the fixed network and all the terminals of
mobile and wireless nets. Messages (e-mail, fixes images, forms) can be sent
via Internet or Intranet at very cheap marginal costs, once the application
necessary to access and communicate with the internet collecting sites would be
installed in the net servers. Also the development of such applications and the
management of the collecting internet site, are not particularly expensive,
being the costs of the data collection due essentially to the costs of the
operators involved in monitoring. This cost item can be easily put down, or
highly reduced, resorting to citizens’ participation.
Also as
to the data-entry (putting data in the database), that traditionally has
constituted a big barrier to the realisation of efficient monitoring systems,
the technological developments have now radically changed the situation. In
this regard it is necessary to consider that the most of the events of the
towns to be monitored have attributes that can be defined a priori and included
in dynamic forms,
accessible at the internet data collection site, that can be filled in by the
citizens during the sent of their messages. With this technology forms are
directed back to the sites and stored in the database without intervention of
operators. All these applications are weakly service-sensitive, so it is possible to think to a unique
collecting structure for several services or to a dedicated structure for each
service, simply developed one from the other.
In conclusion
today technological evolution makes
possible easily:
- to
realize effective Urban Sensorial
Systems (SSU), union of the telecommunication nets and of human collectors
(citizens/operators) sending their proposals or complaints through fix and
mobile terminals
- to
realize urban integrated systems, by which to control the Environment and Services Quality, that are constituted by the
union of SSU and the site applications needed to collect the information about
the towns via Internet (CitySensor
Systems-CSS).
- to let
citizens actively participate to the monitoring on their towns .
Citizen participation to
town monitoring
The
channels today open to the citizen’s participation are represented in Fig.4.
Mostly
citizens send complaints to Local Authorities, Associations, Newspapers and Services
Companies by letters, fax or e-mail.
These means are often affected by some limitations:
-
data collection is
rather occasional and incomplete;
-
citizen messages are stored
in archives not open to citizens,
operators or social researchers;
-
proposals and complaints
have not the proper format to be automatically processed as a whole so to lead
to a global vision of town problems;
-
citizens do not perceive the
global process of data collection and processing, and can not monitor the exit
or the responses to the citizens
messages that are given by Local Authorities or Services Companies;
it is impossible to produce classified information useful to realize Quality Control Observatories.
Instead
according to a more advanced and democratic view citizens should responsibly:
-
to contribute directly to
the information base required for the decision process and the management of
the towns;
-
to know the contributions
sent by all the others citizens;
-
to participate to the
decision process.
CSS are
an adequate response to the needs of town monitoring and to the citizen’s right
to participate in city government.
The main
functionalities to be met in developing such systems are the following:
-
citizen messages
(e-mail/forms/images) are collected via Internet;
-
citizen database is fully
accessible to citizens and to other actors;
-
messages are automatically
classified and processed to produce statistical analysis and a global visioning
of city problems;
-
information given by citizens
could be used in public services delivering.
Using CSS
citizens can send their complaints or suggestions (Infocity) by selecting a
particular object or urban service (Streets, Bicycle ways, Parks, Street
lightening, City cleaning, Waste collection, Gardens, Environment, Pollution,
Traffic, Transports, Post Offices, Health, Schools, ect...) ,and filling the
relevant forms given by the CSS and so describe drawbacks in the town or
inefficiencies of Public Services.
Differently
to e-mail, fax, letters and telephone calls, Infocities can be automatically
processed. Trough Infocity it is
possible:
-
to locate geographically and
temporally the event citizens intend to
send messages (eventually with the help of maps and street directories);
-
to describe the event by
typology and by features using CSS.
CSS can
also send the Infocities to the Institutions, to the Authority on the Services
Quality, to the relevant Public Services Companies, and allow citizens to
monitor the taken interventions, the time employed and the quality of the
response.
Although the realization of CSS
don’t requests relevant investments, the participation of the citizens is a
prerequisite to be assured and so proper promotion initiatives are required to stimulate and accustom citizens to use
it.
The benefits of CSS and of participating monitoring
There
are both techno-economic and social benefits by the use of CSS and by
participating urban monitoring.
The
techno- economic benefits are connected to the possibility to realize systems
allowing:
-
extended diffusion over the
territory;
-
high scalability with
respect to addition of new services;
-
low systems and management
set-up costs;
- automatic data-entry.
There are also manifold social
benefits.
They are related to the
Institutions, the Services
Companies, the Citizens and the Associations. They are listed below.
Benefits
for the Institutions
-
to have citizens more closed
to the city and the institutions;
-
to have efficient and
democratic governance tools, based on the active participation of the citizens;
-
to find out shared visions
for the city problems;
-
to have maps and up-dated
statistics of the drawbacks in the town and so improve the quality of the
interventions planned for the city.
Benefits
for the Public Services Companies
-
to improve the image of the
Public Services Companies in front of the citizens;
-
to cut costs of the call
centres and the man power involved in town monitoring;
-
to make focused monitoring
and produce lists of priority for the realizations of the interventions.
Benefits for the Citizens
-
to use tools designed for
sending claims and proposals to the Institutions and to the Public Services
Companies and monitoring the results of their suggestions;
-
to be a community where the
reclaims and communications are positively attended;
-
to feel the city where they
live more cohesive and with a higher public behaviour;
-
to be conscious actors of a
powerful tool of democratic participation.
Benefits for the Associations
-
to have access to an
extended database regarding the events and the problems of the town, based on
the opinions of the Citizens;
-
the growth the level of
their initiatives in their representative functions;
-
to profit of a new
environment open to democratic participation and involvement of citizens.
Conclusion
The technological
evolution makes possible to realize CitySensor systems (CSS) usable for town monitoring purposes. By CSS several
objectives of great social relevance can be pursue: reorganization of the
public services oriented to the end users, democratic formulation of shared
proposals for the towns governance, development of better public behaviours
among Citizens and Administrators. CSS can become an essential tool to support
the decisions of Institutions and local Authorities in the field of
Environmental Control and Public Services Quality.
Contacts
Ugo Mocci, ICT expert
Tel.: +39 670 47 50 16, e-mail: umocci@inwind.it
Giovanna Anselmi, ENEA/UDA/ADVISOR
Tel.: +39 636 27 28 01, e-mail: ganselmi@sede.enea.it
About the authors
- Dr. Giovanna Anselmi graduated in Political and Social Sciences at the Catholic
University of Milan in 1970. Until 1983 she conducted research into
Economic Planning and Social Politics at ISPE (Italian Economic Planning
Studies Agency). Since 1983 she has been a senior Researcher at
UDA/Advisor Unit at ENEA (Italian Agency for Energy, Environment and New
Technologies), where she has been responsible for several research
activities and evaluation in national and international projects. Her
professional interests concern the Impacts and Changes in Economic, Social
and Cultural Scenarios of IC Technologies, Technology Assessment and
Sustainable Growth Studies.
- Dr. Ugo Mocci graduated in electronic engineering at the Rome University La
Sapienza in 1966, where until 1969 he conducted research on system
identification and automatic control. In 1970 he joined Fondazione Bordoni
where he led and managed research groups on design and planning of
telecommunication networks, network management and performance analysis,
high speed Internet networks with quality control, wide-band networks for
interactive services. He has participated in many European projects
promoted by ESA, RACE and COST organizations and until 1999 was secretary
for many years of the annual European Network Planning Workshop. He has
presented about one hundred contributions in international congresses and
was co-editor of the volume Broadband Network Teletraffic, Lecture Notes
in Computer Science N. 1155, 1996, Springer- Verlag. His present interest
concerns the applications of IC technologies to promoting citizens’
participation in the local government of urban areas.
Fig. 1. The Environmental and Public Services
Quality Systems
Fig. 2. To day Town Management
Fig. 3. Participated Town Management
Fig. 4. Channels for Citizens