This research examines the link between transparency and accountability, by adopting a Single Case-Study design. It studies how the Rijks ICT-dashboard, a transparency-platform listing all Dutch...Show moreThis research examines the link between transparency and accountability, by adopting a Single Case-Study design. It studies how the Rijks ICT-dashboard, a transparency-platform listing all Dutch governmental IT-projects that cost over 5 million Euros, affects and is affected by, the relationships that together make political accountability. Political, civil service and oversight interviews as a main source have been supplemented by examining parliamentary records. We conclude that the Rijks ICT-dashboard generally does not succeed in leading to more accountability. Members of Parliament lack the time and knowledge to structurally and actively monitor IT-based policy execution through using the Dashboard, rather depending on external ‘fire-alarms’ for their information, and as such tend to focus on failing IT-projects. When using the Dashboard’s data, MPs tend to question its validity and trustworthiness instead of using it to ask substantive questions. Civil servants fear failure-related consequences instigated by this incident-driven political debate, and tend to use a wide array of strategies to ‘dodge’ reporting on the Dashboard. This leads to a further distrust amongst both parties, and to MPs demanding more transparency out of principle, with little understanding of its practical and structural use. It can be expected that this leads to further dodging. As such, the Dashboard is a product of negative characteristics of the relationship of political accountability, and in turn further reinforces these characteristics. To mitigate this negative cycle, we advise a higher update-frequency, and a major shift in emphasis from quantitative to qualitative transparency on the Dashboard, focusing on linking IT-projects to the political debates, actively showing projects’ successes and societal value, and aiming to keep the barriers to use the information as low as possible.Show less
Bachelor thesis | Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (BSc)
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This thesis meditates on the concept of unindexed knowledge and how anthropologists may approach the retrieval of such knowledge in the context of the digital.
Systematic discrimination suggests that societal systems such as governmental, legal, medical educational systems are biased, and positioning certain groups and individuals in a more privileged...Show moreSystematic discrimination suggests that societal systems such as governmental, legal, medical educational systems are biased, and positioning certain groups and individuals in a more privileged position than others. Firstly, this article looks at digitalization in relation to Gilles Deleuze’s concept “Societies of Control” to reveal the controlling power that informatics systems hold. It argues that informatics systems do not only duplicate the already existing biases and norms but also establishes new methods to keep them functioning. Furthermore, it realizes that the controlling aspect is woven with the formal qualities of the digital such as binary digital encoding, algorithms and the actions that they allow and forbid. This article perceives the certainty and the binary limitations that are promised by the informatics systems as a danger for queer, diverse and inclusive understandings of reality. By analyzing Merrit Kopas’s video game Lim through a queer theoretical framework that is provided by the book Queer Game Studies, edited by Bonnie Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw, it illustrates the queering potential of video games against the normativities and the control power the informatics systems hold. The analysis shows that video games as an action-based medium, can teach about the politics of the informatics age and therefore can raise an awareness but also provide strategies to counter-play with the normativities and the controlling power. As a result, it suggests video games as the tools that carry a potential for resistance against the promised certainty and to build more inclusive, queer futures.Show less
