Later than normal owing to internet connection problems, the blog that should have appeared on Sunday …
Back in 2012 I acted as a rapporteur during the DG CONNECT’s
strategy review week. Selected people (known as stakeholders) were allowed to
participate in a number of meetings on specific subjects. The meeting that I
worked with addressed Smart Cities (whatever that may mean). A central theme of
this meeting was the importance of citizen engagement and participation.
Everyone was so clear about how crucial this was for the success of Smart
Cities. And in the meeting room, of the 40 or so people present, how many had
any idea about what this really means and how to achieve it? I suspect that the
answer was two – myself and the chairperson, an architect who is involved in
mass participation. None of the
panellists in this meeting demonstrated that they had any insights into this so
called crucial matter, and in fact, the chairperson, who was only there to
moderate the discussion, put them all to shame for he was the only person who
had anything of value to say about engagement and participation.
It is my advantage, in acting as the rapporteur, and also
because I am a writer (a key capability of which is observation (as Charles
Dickens well illustrated)), that I can observe what takes place in meetings.
And what I observed were people paying lip service to citizen engagement and
participation. What they were really interested in was gaining access to
European Commission funding so that that could continue with, what I later came
to describe as a technology joyride.
Prior to the meeting I mentioned to the Policy Officer with
whom I was working, that, if the European Commission were really interested in
citizen engagement and participation they should be looking for projects
constituted along very different lines to that which is usual for an ICT
research project. The response was that changing the nature of projects was
unnecessary.
Anyone with deep knowledge of participation will know what I
am talking and will understand the need for an approach that fits the needs of
such projects, and will also recognise in
the response, the operation of taken for granted assumptions about … so many
things that I will not here go into details.
Sometime prior to this strategy workshop, I was involved in
a proposal that sough to respond to a call for user-driven innovation in the
area that is now called Smart Cities. I proposed to the consortium that we
should adopt what is sometimes called a user-centred approach that would embrace
the participation of citizens who would become the drivers for the project’s work,
which obviously means leaving open the details of this work – how else would it
be user-driven?
This idea was greeted by the other consortium members with
great enthusiasm. Then one of the technology people said: “so long as we do not
have to do anything differently.” I have been hearing this for close to 30
years. New science – yes! New technology – yes! But, whatever you do, never,
ever, ask a European engineer or technologist to do anything differently! It is
a heresy to do so!
The bad news is that when embracing participation it is necessary
to design and run projects along lines that few technologists are familiar
with, and most of them would not agree with – in the end it is about their
dogma, and what these stupid people find acceptable. I say stupid for this is
yet another manifestation of that rather peculiar behaviour that I have highlight
in my (now) often asked question: Why so smart yet so dumb?
Here I mention also the need to change the evaluation
process as well, for participatory projects need to be evaluated against their own
internal logic, as the evaluation of the proposal I was involved with, well demonstrated.
Having embraced user-driven innovation and only defined areas of interest in a suitably
broad manner, the experts condemned our proposal for not defining exactly, what
would be done. Yet they were supposed to be evaluating proposals that sought
user-driven innovation. More stupid people!
Recall last week’s blog and my comment about the research
proposal evaluation system: an orthodox system, designed by orthodox people, to
enable orthodox experts, to make orthodox comments, about what are mostly
orthodox research proposals – and in those cases when proposals are not
orthodox, which should imply that the orthodox experts do not understand what
is before them (otherwise why would it be innovative?), to continue with their
orthodoxy, and to strangle the innovation at birth.
One can add words like innovation to call texts. One can re-order
the evaluation criteria and give greater importance to impacts. However,
hanging a sign on a cow that says I am a
horse does not alter the fact that, what you have is still a cow.
The message is clear – if you have an innovative idea, do
not apply for funding from a European Commission research programme.
And to conclude, I note, that after the strategy workshop
was over, I said to the policy officer:
“It will be interesting to see if this idea of citizen
engagement and buy-in will, in reality, be achieved! History suggests that it
will not – are we asking general infantry to do the work of special forces? If
I were managing Research and Innovation in a competing region or country (like
India and China) and looking for a weakness to undermine Europe's efforts in
Smart Cities, this matter of user engagement and involvement would be it, and I
would make sure that considerable effort was directed at addressing this topic
and creating an environment where ICT centric/driven solutions would not be
accepted – on the battlefield you need to exploit your enemy’s weaknesses.”
And the response I received was:
“That’s a very interesting and compelling train of thought.
I would tentatively agree. In my personal opinion I am not so sure whether the
idea of citizen engagement and related notions will really achieve what the
buzzwords around it suggest. Further, it might even carry the kind of risks you
mentioned.”
A counter argument against all the above is that through DG
CONNECT’s engagement with the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) these
matters will be resolved. Nonsense! I have worked in the space between
Technology and the SSH for 30 years and the complexities of this are only known
to those who have been brave enough to enter the space, and such people are few
in number. Perhaps engagement with artists then, through ICT & ART CONNECT?
More nonsense – even fewer people know anything about this. These are all
recipes for telling tales of the emperor’s new clothes.
And it was during the process of working on the DG strategy
workshop, that the idea of writing a book directed at assisting those in the
Eastern world to exploit Europe’s strategic weaknesses took hold. I have
mentioned this idea before, in my blog On
the Saying of Unreasonable Things, which is a copy of a correspondence I
had with Morton Løkkegaard, MEP, in connection with New Narrative for Europe . I have many case study examples to illustrate my
points: Smart Cities; New Narrative for Europe; FET Proactive; Marie Curie
Initial Training Networks; Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters; Factory of the Future;
ICT & ART CONNECT; Responsible Research and Innovation; Future Internet Research
and Innovation; and Anne Glover.
So I am back once more to the notion of the Prometheus
Syndrome. It is here, around the notion that Europe is tied to an irrelevant
past by invisible and unbreakable chains, that China ,
India , and others will engage
Europe in battle and defeat it. The book I
will write about this will be made open access, so all will be able to read it,
but I intend to ensure that it is written in a way that few Europeans will
understand or accept – which is not a difficult thing to do. This is something
else I have been studying for the past 30 years as well.
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