Violence against journalists and media outlets has become an increasing problem in Mexico in the last few years. According to Article 19, an organization that defends freedom of expression and information, Mexico has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist.

Last week, the Mexico and Central America chapter of Article 19 presented their latest report which shows that such violence is increasing in states like Oaxaca, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Mexico city and, more dramatically at a 200% rate, in Veracruz.
The problem gets worse. The special government agency that is supposed to solve such crimes (FEADLE) has one conviction only.

To raise awareness on this issue, Article 19, using CitiVox technology, launched an interactive map that shows the total number of incidents from 2000 to 2011, separated by state, type of incident, time and sex: http://ax1x.dashboardable.com/

Tools like MapBox and CitiVox, can make complex and important problems easy to understand. Users can interact with detailed information and share it through social networks to raise awareness and hold governments accountable.

It is difficult to find a unique and 140-character-long definition of what open government means. In the end, it is all about transparency and civic participation with the final objective of creating more effective and accountable institutions.

People are understanding that democracy goes far beyond voting once in a while and we are slowly becoming citizens involved in our communities. At the same time, there is a governance deficit.  According to a recent study by the  OECD, citizens in close to 50% of member countries are losing trust in their government..

To further this topic, two very important regional events on the Open Government Partnership took place in Mexico City on March 20 and 21.

On the 20th, Fundar, in coordination with IMCO and CitiVox—and with the help of international organizations like OSF, Omidyar Network, Hewlett Foundation, the World Bank and the OGP—brought together around 50 representatives of civil society organizations from 11 countries to discuss the benefits and risks of the Open Government Partnership.

Despite a 7.4 Richter scale earthquake that took place almost at the beginning of the session, the discussion was very dynamic and everyone was eager to know more and participate.

Several risks were discussed like the oversimplification of problems by governments, such as an attitude of just needing to check off a list with minimum conditions to satisfy each commitment and in the fastest possible way.

However, various benefits were also identified like the international compromise and spotlight of each country with their commitments spelled out in their action plan, the availability of governments to discuss and work together with civil society on the action plans, and the possibility of organizations getting their agendas on the table.

On the 21st, and because an event by the Organization of American States (OAS) took place the day before, most of the organizations replied to an invitation by the Mexican government to continue the discussion with government counterparts, academia, and representatives from other institutions.

The day led to two very important conclusions. The first is that the action plans of each country are living documents and in constant change. These are just the first iteration, but eventually there must be less consultation and more instant feedback loops of each commitment as well as new ones. The second was that open government does not refer only to national governments but also to parliaments or congress, cities, and institutions.

The use of technology and new tools and ways to interact in real time were always part of the conversation. New ICT tools can help citizens engage and participate in policy making, as well as  bring an opportunity to reorganize the public sector at times of budget constraints.

The Internet has a democratization effect. Not only does it empower citizens to participate but also governments to understand and address real needs. Projects can be catalyzed and legitimize through openness, accountability and collaboration.

Today, with access to new tools and with initiatives like the OGP, we have an opportunity to reframe and rejuvenate government in very promising ways.

We’re looking at a new space and opportunities for transparency, accountability, engagement, and collaboration. Citizens and civil society organizations don’t need to wait to be invited to participate. They must find ways to be involved and on the driver seat.

Es un ataque contra la sociedad. A su omnipotencia, a su negación de la muerte…afecta a todo, a todos.

Una persona que se suicida no lo hace por sentirse atraida por la muerte. No lo hace por una convicción abstracta de que la vida no es suficiente.
Es igual que aquella persona que está en un edificio en llamas y decide, eventualmente, brincar por la ventana. El terror de caer por la ventana sigue constante pero la variable es el otro terror, el del fuego acercándose. Caer por la ventana de pronto se vuelve el menos terrible de los dos terrores. No es el deseo de caer, es el terror a las llamas.

Nadie puede entender ese brinco si es un espectador. Esa invisible agonía se puede convertir en ese fuego que te obliga a escoger el menor de dos terrores

En algunas culturas la salida mas honorable es el suicidio. A veces se les reconoce como héroes a los que, para evitar una muerte segura en un ataque, deciden ellos primero quitarse la vida…¿cómo es esto diferente de cuando el ataque es de tu propia mente?

No lo comparto. No lo entiendo. No lo justifico. 
También es cierto que en este mundo a lo que una persona realmente tiene un titulo y derecho innegable es a su propia vida.
El problema es que cuando alguien lo hace, creen que están acabando con el dolor, pero lo único que hace es distribuirlo y pasarlo a los que se quedan, preguntándose qué se pudo hacer diferente.

Tal vez es un acto sin sentido. Tal vez no hay un por qué. O tal vez hay muchos por qués, pero dificilmente alguno de ellos será el que queremos escuchar

—————

Como casi no hablabas, casi nunca te equivocabas. Cuando saliamos te concentrabas en escuchar y observar. Ya no vas a volver a hablar sino a través de aquellos que, como yo, te traen de regreso a este mundo y te interrogan y cuentan tus historias. Escuchamos tus respuestas, tus reacciones, vemos tus gestos.

Tu vida es ahora una hipótesis. Las personas que viven muchos años y se van, estan hechas del pasado y cuando piensas en ellos, piensas en lo que hicieron. Contigo no solo eso, sino tambien hablamos de lo que pudiste ser. Estas hecho para siempre de posibilidades.

Te voy a extrañar mucho amigo. Deseo que tengas un muy buen viaje. Deseo que donde quiera que fuiste, estés tranquilo, contento, en paz y que las llamas se hayan calmado al fin.

I was coming back from the bathroom. You had just checked your email. I was walking to bed, but you intercepted me, kissed me, then then clasped my left hand in your right hand and put your left hand on my back.

We started slow-dancing. No music, just nighttime. You leaned your head into mine and I leaned my head into yours. Dancing cheek to cheek. Revolving slowly, eyes closed, heartbeat measure, nature’s hum. It lasted the length of and old song, and then we stopped, kissed, and the world resumed.

-about arriving at Switzerland-

The first thing you notice about Switzerland is the silence…or the complete lack of noise, even at an international airport.
I come from a crowded city and a crowded neighborhood where you are expecting to hear a guy with a loudspeaker selling tamales at 7am and another one buying old mattresses at 9pm.
But not here. Here you try to be as quiet as possible so you don’t disturb anyone. Better to let them go by.

If this is your first time at a german-speaking country, then you definitely will get lost on the trains. Fortunately, the departure and arrival times are unique and surreally sharp. To get to Davos from Zurich airport you should take the 7:46 train to Chur arriving at 9:27, then take the 9:31 train to Tiefencastel and you’ll be there at 10:03.

-about the young global shapers-

Unconventional times call for unconventional leadership.

A group of around 60 people from 34 countries, called the Young Global Shapers, were invited for the first time to participate at the World Economic Forum to express their concerns and represent the millennial generation. I had the honor to be among those.

Once I got to know my fellow Global Shapers I can only feel real honor to be there. These are 29 year olds or younger changing the world every day in different sectors, in a local and in a global way.
Just to add one more thing about how cool that group was, we were the only community at the World Economic Forum with real gender parity.

One common trait that I’m happy to have found among the group is that we, young people, are embracing careers not only for financial gains but also to contribute directly to solve problems.

While leading one of the discussion tables about the role of the millennial generation, I heard that there is a study that has just came out about how the new technologies have changed modern society’s interaction (McKinsey is the source I think, I need to check on that sometime soon). In this study it says that in the 1930s they asked teenagers whether they consider themselves someone important and 12% answered yes. They asked the same question last year and 85% said yes.

Our duty to lead differently is becoming increasingly apparent. We are finding the convergence of the public, private and non-profit sector and we are absorbing the best practices from each one of them while identifying areas of opportunity.
We are thinking globally.
We understand diversity.
We are connected.
We want to try, fail fast, learn and iterate.

With our passion, our concerns, our questions, our personal goals during the forum, our converse at the gala dinner, our thinking in networks and not in hierarchies (I really felt like giving the high-five to the mexican president while holding a mezcal on my other hand at the mexican party was a good idea), we were anything but conventional.

-about the discussions at the WEF-

There were a lot of important topics addressed at the panels, around the halls and during the parallel events at Davos:
The Eurozone economic crisis, the US economic crisis, the social crisis and protests around the world, the growing inequality between rich and poor, the environmental crisis, the job creation crisis, tech regulations, the food crisis, housing crisis, health care crisis, education crisis, nuclear crisis…it was overwhelming and you could feel a lack of optimism and fear.

I focused my attention and tried to get involved in as many discussions as I could about how new technologies and social networks are a catalyst for social change, sometimes where previous efforts have failed.

We’re becoming a big smart community. Everything is networked now. Security and intelligence to manage and make sense of all the information generated by that community and how to make it actionable are now the concerns for the next couple of years.
Clay Johnson said that in an information rich world, the wealth of information means a scarcity of attention.

We are not an audience any more. We are a networked public and we do much more than just consume information. We discuss, we participate, we comment, we share, we like and, ultimately, we amplify the message.

However, the truth is that society’s outdated institutions (governments, companies, citizens, organizations) perpetuate incongruent values that prevent a balance between strategic leadership and self empowered action. To put it in the words of one of my mentors, the problem is not a technological one, it is an anthropological one.

Another hot topic was how to fix capitalism.

“Is responsible capitalism an oxymoron?” -Arose towards a panel.
I don’t want to believe that. I think it is about investing in social capital and creating a balanced ecosystem where social innovation should be the fuel of all the stakeholders of that ecosystem.

Governments and institutions need to recognize two things: the first one is that economic development needs not only money but entrepreneurial engagement and an ecosystem to achieve social progress. The second one is that entrepreneurship is different than self-employment and it is not the solution by itself for the current job crisis.

-a brief thought about the occupy wef movement-

The shared identity of a crowd relies on its legitimacy.

The Occupy WEF protesters were invited to a panel to speak and have a dialogue about how to fix capitalism. Just before it began, they walked out of the room. They said that nobody with four aces wants a new deal.

As one the organizers of the WEF pointed out, it’s easy to say what you’re against to, but saying what you’re for is far more powerful. Anti-power expressions, rather than counter-power, know what they don’t want but are finding it hard to create an inclusive and coherent dialogue of what they do want and what they do propose to build a smart policy that might bring a truly progressive future.

-some last thoughts-

The biggest challenge of leadership is understanding and learning to lead in a two way conversation. That is why the scene where the occupy guys leave the discussion table before even starting it really upsets me up. And that is also why I congratulate the WEF for opening the doors to them. I hope the opportunities for dialogue and cooperation increases.

Of course, the contradictions persisted. We were discussing the inequality of money distribution and that the 99% of americans live like the 1% of the rest of the world while we were having lunch on top of the Alps, at a ski resort, with an amazing view and with enough food to feed more than 2,000 people. However, the mood was always somber and with a real lack of optimism.

I take a lot of things back from Davos. Inspiration is one of them. An urgency to be the change I want to see in the world is another one.

There is a lot of need in the world. Each and everyone of us need to understand how we can help with our expertise and passion, and find the intersection between need and opportunity.

Mas allá de los temas muy importantes (y también ya muy discutidos) como la conectividad, neutralidad, nueva educación, nueva medicina, entre otros, considero hay dos puntos muy importantes que una agenda digital debería considerar para resolver necesidades del siglo XXI:

————————————-
Open innovation

Ayudar a los gobiernos a innovar, fomentar la participación ciudadana y ahorrar dinero al tomar un enfoque “abierto”.
Específicamente:
1. Compartir tecnologías
2. Estándares de datos y APIs
3. Crear comunidades

El punto uno ayuda a que los gobiernos se beneficien de inversiones de otros en tecnología y compartan experiencias. El punto dos fomenta que los sistemas sean escalables y el tres crea una infraestructura de conocimiento abierto entre gobiernos, ciudadanos y otras instituciones.
Esto fomenta innovación y reduce costos para gobiernos.

Lo anterior es “open innovation” y la idea detras es bien simple: los creadores de nuevas ideas no tienen que estar dentro de tu organización o institución. En otras palabras, abrir la posibilidad de combinar tus propios esfuerzos con los de otros.

Plataformas abiertas permite que otros innoven sobre la tecnología que el gobierno provee. Estándares y APIs permiten que otros gobiernos se beneficien de las innovaciones de otro y se generan comunidades que comparten experiencias

————————————-
Civic start ups

Otro punto que considero importante es el de crear comunidades. Transparencia no es solo gobiernos abriendose sino gente haciendo preguntas.

Una civic start up, es una con un enfoque de mejora cívica. Es como cualquier otra start up pero sus objetivo es, ademas de ser rentables, es que tener impacto en las personas y comunidades.

Me encontré un post en inglés sobre este tema pero no me acuerdo donde para citarlo…bueno pero hablaba de las distintas maneras en las que un gobierno puede crear un ambiente para start ups cívicas:

1. Ver al gobierno abierto y a los datos abiertos como una herramienta de desarrollo económico

Normalmente los argumentos para justificar opendata son la transparencia y la accesibilidad, y ambos son muy importantes. Sin embargo hay otro argumento que no se ha tocado mucho y es que al liberar los datos recolectados, curados y mantenidos por el gobierno pueden crear nuevos mercados y empresas con enfoque cívico.
Entender lo anterior impactará directamente en la cantidad, calidad y tipos de datos liberados.

2. Decretar y estandarizar requerimientos de opendata

Si los emprendedores van a empezar a construir start ups alrededor de opendata, necesitan tener la certeza de que esos datos serán liberados en un formato en particular y que continuarán siendo liberados en el futuro. Es difícil atrae inversionistas para start ups cívicas sin la certeza y el compromiso de sus gobiernos, mas allá de una elección.

3. Cambiar el formato de las licitaciones

Hay start ups con excelentes productos que resuelven las necesidades de los gobiernos pero con poco lobbying o contactos internos. Desafortunadamente hay grandes empresas con malos productos pero excelente lobbying y contactos.
Las licitaciones de software no se hicieron pensado en las start ups. Los gobiernos están gastando grandes cantidades de dinero y se están “casando” con una empresa en particular. Cambiar esto puede significar grandes ahorros para el gobierno, y motivación para los emprendedores para crear e innovar en esa área.

4. Difusión de las apps cívicas y start ups

Una de las maneras mas efectivas y de bajo costo que pueden hacer los gobiernos locales para apoyar y fomentar estas comunidades es difundir las apps desarrolladas.
¿Cuál es el punto de fomentar que los emprendedores desarrollen apps usando datos de gobierno si el gobierno no fomenta que sus ciudadanos usen esas apps?

5. Manejar las expectativas

Opendata y start ups cívicas no son la panacea ni la gran solución para los problemas de interacción y comunicación entre gobiernos y ciudadanos, pero si son una opción, dentro de muchas otras, para que los gobiernos provean servicios a los ciudadanos y fomenten el desarrollo de nuevos negocios al mismo tiempo que hace su propio trabajo mas ligero e innovador

Turning reports into actionable information

“in god we trust, everyone else bring data” - W. Edwards Deming

Interaction between governments and citizens through digital media and tools like mobiles and social networks create opportunities for transparency, accountability, participation and collaboration. People are understanding democracy beyond voting every once in a while and they are becoming citizens involved in their communities in a local and global way,. That, is the foundation of the weGovernment era and where I focus my work with CitiVox, the company I’ve founded.

Just as Facebook and Twitter create ecosystems, each government, has the opportunity to become a platform that encourages citizens to connect and engage to its community, collaborate and find innovative solutions.

The impact these kind of initiatives have is not yet understood by governments, nor by citizens. In a broad view, a government that embraces and encourages transparency and accountability will involve citizens in the governance process, building the foundation for innovation. New technologies provides a space where these interactions can happen and a real time dialogue is established. The data obtained, will be current and in correspondence with real needs.

However, data by itself and without context does not tell a complete story and provides little actionable insight. The more data a city or a decision maker have, does not necessarily lead to more knowledge nor an accurate vision of real needs. In order to separate noise from signal, information must be meaningful. We should not focus in just aggregating data, but in curating it so it can be useful.

Data when put into context becomes information, which, when acted upon, brings the identification of patterns that will tell us what, where and when problems occur. Once this happens, it will lead to predictions to better allocate resources in a more efficient way, execute effectively and bring as a result the satisfaction of real needs.

For technology to be used by citizens, simplicity is key. Most citizens don’t feel the need or have incentives to participate with their government and engage with their community; but if the correct tools are available, and citizens feel there is someone at the other side of the line, it will encourage them to participate.

To help decision makers find the meaning of all data and citizen reports, as well as reduce the cognitive overload, CitiVox was conceived.

Report and information management, two-way communication, real-time visual and relative analysis, transparency and open data makes governments more effective and efficient.

CitiVox groups individual stories and turns information into a landscape where patterns, trends and co-relations can be easily identified. That way, CitiVox effectively reflects what is and what is not a structural problem.

CitiVox has been used in Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Honduras, Benin, Tunisia and Egypt in different context and with different results. From tracking crime reports, alerting citizens against security threats, election monitoring and public services reports, CitiVox turns reports into actionable information.

The true power of the weGovernment may be its effect on the public imagination. With solutions like CitiVox, combining the wisdom of the crowds, data visualization, and real-time information, every citizen becomes a sensor and governments are capable of evolving while making accurate and informed decisions, providing the citizens with what they really need.

The internet has a democratization effect. New tools and media have made easier the expression of individuals, and their interaction with their governments, as well, as for governments to use that information to address real needs. It is no longer a technology problem, but an anthropology one.

We all need someone to look at us.

We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under.

The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public…The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes…Then there is the third category, the category of who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love…And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present…

Lisa Green lanza el cuchillo lo más lejos que puede, blasfema y sigue peléando mientras la puerta de la cocina se cierra de golpe chirriando - ¡Dios! -.

Justo 23 o 38 minutos después, sentada sobre la mesa de su madre, Lisa Green se mete en los ojos del piloto de guerra, del conductor de carreras, del kamikaze y sabe que no tiene dinero para pagarse tal clase de ojos. Y es que Lisa no es verde, no es graciosa ni escribe…y la vida se vuelve insoportable…no tiene control, no es el narrador ni se mueve por sí misma y es ahí cuando lo sabe por primera vez. Suelta a los mercaderes de Venecia, a las trampas 18 o 22, al idiota…¿por qué preocuparse de las historias de los demás? Sólo te conduce a la tortura/el mundo está loco de justicia…