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Brazil has to grow social programmers
Last week I’ve attended, in Washington, to the Gov 2.0 Summit, a first attempt to articulate the discussion about how to use the huge potential of Internet to strengthen the citizenship and democracy, by applications produced by the civil society to improve the world. During a break, I managed to get near to the organizer of the event, Tim O’Reilly, and I asked him how this idea, that decentralizes the production of Web tools placing the responsibility on the citizens’ hands, could be applied in a country like Brazil, in which the number of Web-entrepreneurs is low.
“Well, you must nourish this community.” In short: it’s our problem.
The answer has bothered me. I thought O’Reilly was washing his hands of the subject. I was thinking about it since then and I reach a tough conclusion: what have bothered me wasn’t the O’Reilly’s smile. Was the fact that he was right. It’s really our problem. Although this discussion about Gov 2.0 is new even in the United States, is clear the Brazil’s situation regarding to development to Web is still very insecure.
As we Brazilians are analyzing if Facebook is good or not, or criticizing the noise produced by Twitter, the Americans are building tools to change the shape that we relate around here. We always had an important role to quickly adopt tools as MSN, Orkut, Blogger. Is calculated there are nearly to 63 million of Brazilians in Internet, which surpass even the number of developed countries as France, Italy and United Kingdom. However, despite all these people online, we still aren’t able to produce not even one application in national relevance, even less international. It’s not about time to show our creativity, to left the place to be only spectators to participate in this conversation?
If it’s up to us, citizens, to produce tools to solve society problems, which part is up to the government? After the conference, I notice that the change of the Brazilian government into an innovation platform to Web has to come in an attempt to solve a triad of basic needs.
1) We need to decrease the time and cost of experimentation. Startups are experiments. As any other experiment, there’s a great chance to go wrong. Well, “if the failure is unavoidable, it has to be quick and cheap” Eric Ries, from the blog LessonsLearned, says. The success formula is to decrease risks and increase agility then we can wrong to learn more. To offer free hosting for applications towards to welfare would be a great help from the government into this direction. The Brazilian government has the chance to make Brazil the first country to offer a public cloud computing service, which would break one of the great locks in the Web programming in the country: the lack of quality servers. No doubt that would be a milestone in the country’s infrastructure. The equivalent of roads and bridges from the last century is this infrastructure of the XXI century. A real Web-construction work.
2) We need to have the raw material to work on. The main raw material for the next Web is data, as told by Tim Bernes Lee. Especially clean and fresh – but if there’s only raw, it’s already a nice nourishment. To avail public data is essential to view more clearly which are the problems and therefore which are the new solutions. Brazil needs a public transparency policy through the availability in real time of government data, as the United States are doing in the site data.gov.
Vivek Kundra, Federal U.S. CIO (Chief Information Officer): “The goal is to democratize data, turn it public available in a readiness form for machines. Today already are 110 thousand databases.”
3) We need people interested to produce citizens’ tools. If wasn’t enough the lack of entrepreneurs in the Brazilian Web, the situation gets worse by the disbelief in public causes. Some think the public sector is too rotten, others don’t believe that is possible to survive doing the good to society. Be whatever the disbelief cause, the government has to gain the interest of this new generation of innovators. We need incentives – be them discounts on taxes, prizes in money or simply opportunities to gain visibility so people can have as goal to help the society through Internet. What they’re doing in the United States is to award the best initiatives with prizes like the Apps for America and the Apps for Democracy. The North-Americans have as tradition to believe the awards can create a valor much greater than the amount distributed. But if you are like those that only believe in what you see (especially seeing numbers), the case of Apps for Democracy is an example. In just 30 days and offering a prize of only 50 thousand dollars, the challenge has created 47 applications, which the market total valor calculated is US$ 2.3 million. Invest 50 thousand to gain 2.3 million – isn’t that good business? The award is a way to stimulate the endeavoring and to recognize collaborations for the welfare (important intellectual achievements for our evolution). What about a Brazilian Prize of Online Public Innovation?
To have the government as a platform means to create an environment to exercise the Webcitzenship. Just in this way we’ll have the critic mass for the society to use the Internet to solve our problems. Only one initiative won’t change Brazil into a digital nation. Nevertheless is required to have commitment with idealization and performance of solutions. It’s required to begin.
Text and pictures by Helder Araujo. WebCitizen’s co-founder.
8 Responses to “Brazil has to grow social programmers”
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Solon Brochado. Solon Brochado said: RT @Webcitizen_: Novo post no blog http://webcitizen.com.br – O Brasil precisa cultivar programadores sociais. #g2sww http://bit.ly/lcbZx [...]
O engajamento da sociedade, através dos meios de inovação – na discussão política é um problema nosso (Brasil) como essência.
Esta ampliação da discussão deve ser encarada e estimulada como um ato-cidadão. Neste momento os políticos discutem as barreiras eleitorais para uso de novas tecnologias, mas o que o cidadão não toma como dimensão é que no jogo da cidadania já há um atrasado da “sofisticação” (mindset) deste engajamento social (não político, não partidário, não organizado…) mas da espontaneidade dos fatos na contribuição do SER social. Fato este que permite de forma ímpar ampliar… amplificar a condução dos interesses para o bem comum da sociedade, dos fatos políticos, da condução pública e coletiva destas decisões e conduções.
Os 3 pontos apresentados por você são considerações valiosas sobre a ponte que se pode criar (ou querer ter) para termos um ambiente favorável para esta conquista do indivíduo e da sociedade e para que as “vias” de inovação venham realmente contribuir na ‘evolução’ da cidadania.
Parabéns!
Alexandre Canatella
A questão de uma base de dados integrada é fundamental. Não somente para aplicativos online, mas também para a difusão de todo o conhecimento.
A melhor plataforma, em minha opinião, hoje, são Ipeadata e Seade, que são até bastante dinâmicos. Mas faltam muitos dados que, para serem encontrados, só buscando nos sites dos ministérios ou no IBGE. E são dados crus, de forma que planilhas em excel têm de ser sempre consolidadas.
Conheço alguns bons projetos relacionados à educação em relação a tratamento de dados. Se tiverem interesse, posso indicar algum responsável.
Abs.
É realmente esse o caminho. O importante é consolidar junto a essa dinâmica de inovação tecnológica a inclusão digital de muitos brasileiros ainda à margem para poderem participar, mas, realmente, essa é outra discussão e deriva do resultado das descobertas de projetos mais abrangentes.
Sucesso a todos.
Helder,
Muito boa inciativa. Estou trabalhando na extração dos dados, veja mais em: http://1anonimo.wordpress.com/category/dados-publicos/
Estou trabalhando com o Helder Ribeiro http://helderribeiro.net/?p=180 na extração dos dados.
Estamos finalizando junto com o Partido Pirada a tradução e instalando do http://www.nationbuilder.com
Muito bom de encontrar outro grupo para fortalecer o movimento.
@1anonimo
I spent a lot of time reading your blog, it’s awsome
What tamplate do you use in your blog? Very interesting articles
Excellent article, bookmarked for future referrence