On Friday, February 4th, CID hosted a virtual Speaker Series event featuring Meagan Dooley, the Global Program Officer at Tetra Tech overseeing the research areas of migration and human rights, and George Ingram, a Senior Fellow in Global Economy and Development at the Center for Sustainable Development at Brookings. The two discussed their working paper, Digital government: Foundations for global development and democracy. Maryam Guerrab, an undergraduate student at Harvard College and CID student ambassador, moderated the event.
With a need for better information and guidance on how to approach digital government, Dooley and Ingram explored (1) what is digital government, (2) what are the benefits, challenges, and risks, (3) what is the state of digital government in developing countries, and (4) how can donors improve their programs to advance digital government. There are six components to digital government: digital infrastructure (i.e. ICT networks); digital literacy (i.e. digital skills in traditional education programs, ongoing worker training, reskilling); digital data (i.e. building of databases, government websites, online services, interactive mode); digital participation (i.e. government solicit public opinion, voting online); digital institutions, policies, and regulations (i.e. making existing analog functions compatible with digital world); and digital security and rights (i.e. cyber attacks).
With these highlights, Dooley and Ingram dove into an exciting talk about the conditions needed for effective digital government: political leadership, willingness and ability to take risks, trust, transparency, and a focus on user accessibility.
The Center for International Development Speaker Series continues on February 11th at 12:00 pm featuring Jacqueline Klopp, Co-director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development and a Research Scholar at Colombia University. Klopp will discuss Climate Change, Digital Data Commons and the Politics of Urban Transport in African Cities. Register here to attend.
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CID Student Ambassador Author:
Sarah Deonarain, junior at Harvard College studying Economics
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