karen louise smith

GovCamp 2011 was held in June at Mars here in Toronto. I found I needed an easy web link to my presentation so I embedded it here on my blog.

This afternoon I sent off a revised copy of the paper 'Playing with surveillance: The design of a mock RFID-based identification infrastructure for public engagement' which is accepted for publication in the journal Surveillance & Society. The image above shows a component of our mock infrastructure which is written about in this paper. Brenda McPhail, Joseph Ferenbok, Alex Tichine and Andrew Clement are my co-authors on this work.

Our abstract reads:

In many jurisdictions around the globe, governments are developing ID schemes based on radio frequency identification (RFID) and biometric technologies. In Canada, four provinces recently implemented RFID based ‘enhanced’ drivers licences (EDL) in response to the United States’ Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), which requires all persons entering the United States to present a valid passport or alternative ‘secure’ document to prove their identity and citizenship.

As researchers, we were closely involved in following the EDL policy development process. It became evident, as we attended legislative hearings, that parliamentarians needed clarifications to understand how the RFID identification scheme would function in practice. This project began with the goal of designing prototypes to demonstrate security and civil liberty concerns with a new RFID-based identification (ID) scheme in Canada. Influenced by participatory design and probe approaches to technology design, we built and tested mock infrastructures of RFID-based identification systems including low fidelity paper prototypes, and high fidelity prototypes using RFID-chipped cards, a database, antenna and reader. We also worked closely with civil society organizations to run public engagement activities.

This paper reports on our attempts to create spaces for ‘playful’ engagement with RFID-based ID scheme technology at a time of ‘serious’ policy deliberations. Designed in the spirit of serious play, our mock ID infrastructures make the security and civil liberties challenges inherent in the proposed combination of ID cards and databases more visible, while demonstrating how such ID schemes work. At this point, we see future promise in the design and use of mock ID infrastructure for public engagement during relevant policy deliberations about ID schemes and databases which contain personal information.

Organized by Megan Boler and Matt Ratto, the DIY Citizenship conference was held this past weekend at the University of Toronto. It was a treat to have many scholars working in the fields which intersect with my own arrive in my own backyard. One of the highlights for me, was to hear of the parallels between Boler and Henry Jenkins’ work.

For several years, Boler has been studying political satire in both broadcast and web 2.0 culture. During a keynote, she explained the question always arises, if an audience of satire can become politically engaged in the more traditional sense. In another keynote address, Henry Jenkins outlined how fan culture and political engagement are blending. The example of the Harry Potter Alliance was provided to demonstrate how fans are mobilizing around the values which underpin the fictional series. Fair Trade chocolate, human rights and the Darfur crisis are relevant to Harry Potter fans who seek social justice both in the wizzarding and ‘real’ worlds. These presentations gave me a greater sense of how the ‘fun’ of cultural studies can blend with political engagement.

Currently, I am authoring a report with Brenda McPhail and Andrew Clement on the process we utilized to develop a consensus contribution to the federal government's consultation on the digital economy strategy in the spring of 2010. Dave Kemp pulled together this video which is potentially a very useful visual component for the piece.

At the University of Toronto, I am helping to organize a consultation to prepare a collaborative submission to the Federal Government's Consultation on the Digital Economy. We are holding a roundtable on June 14th

We are also organizing via a wiki and there are numerous ways to get involved:

1. Opinion gathering (via the wiki): Do you have prelminary thoughts and ideas which respond to the consultation topics? If yes, add them to our submission document. Comments are welcome from event participants as well as from individuals who may not be able to attend. Contributions to the submission document will close a day or so before the Roundtable day in order to consolidate the and reorganze the postings for discuss at the Roundtable.

2. Roundtable discussion (in-person, half day on June 14): You need to register separately for this roundtable discussion day on the Roundtable event sign up page. Scribes will record ideas and add them to the consensus document wiki during the event.

3. Submission finalization (via wiki)
a) Consolidated draft statement: to be posted after the event by Wed June 16
b) Your further comments and feedback: accepted until Mon June 21
c) Endorsement period: all participants who attend the event will be assumed to endorse the submission. If you choose not to endorse it, please let us know by removing your name from the endorsement page by Thurs June 24. If you object to particular numbered clauses of the statement, you can also note this on the endorsement page of the wiki.
d) Submission finalized, with endorsements and submitted: Mon June 28

I hope you will join the wiki or attend in person on June 14!

I am currently preparing an exploratory paper to submit to the Online Deliberation 2010 conference, to be held in Leeds, England. The conference is an opportunity to delve into in-depth, online conversations where policy or political issues are considered, compared and discussed. I plan to present the ethnographic methods which are appropriate to examine offline and online participation associated with Ontario bills.

To help me prepare my paper, I am also currently reading Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice, edited by Todd Davies and Seeta Peña Gangadharan (CSLI Publications, November 2009). The book compiles papers from a previous conference where I presented and it is available online under Creative Commons license.

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The Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation or, C2D2 conference happened over the weekend in Toronto. I attended a number of interesting and relevant sessions. The images below were created by Daniel Rose of the Omkase Group and Lissa Sorsa of ThinkLinkgraphics.com. A few of my less beautiful notes from sessions are listed below.

Image by: Daniel Rose

Image by Lissa Sorsa

Mental Health Strategy
Since the Kirby Senate report on mental health was released, a non-profit called the Mental Health Commission of Canada has formed. The Commission has consulted extensively to inform their strategy document. During the session, the presenters demonstrated the use of real-time voting clickers to gather feedback from participants attending public meetings. For me, this session raised many interesting questions concerning the meaning of ‘Commissions’ in Canadian society and where public engagement is situated within the policy-making process. In line with the theme of my proposed dissertation work, I think there are many interesting considerations when a Commission is ‘outside’ government as part of the work of a non-profit organization or it is alternatively ‘inside’ government as part of the Royal Commission tradition. I look forward to following up on some themes from this session.

Youth @ the polls
Many levels of government: federal, provincial, municipal, and community-based, came together to consider what encourages youth to vote and participate politically. Additionally, a representative from Apathy is Boring brought forward civic engagement as a multi-faceted process and experience of citizenship. Youth voices were present and prominent in this session.

Canada @150
The Canada @150 session allowed participants to experience a mini version of the process undertaken by 150 ‘young’ civil servants (with 5 years or less of experiences in government) to envision our collective Canadian policy future. The session was interesting in that we got an insider’s glimpse of the web 2.0 infrastructures used to run this engagement process. I always love an insider view! Our wrap up discussion focused extensively on the difference between internal employee dialogue and deliberation and broader public involvement.

It seems that everything interesting these days is happening at the Convention Center in Toronto.

During the American Political Science Association (Sept. 3-6, 2009 - also at the Convention Center) I was able to attend workshop on Coding the Blogosphere run by Stuart Schulman. Currently, I am considering how I can use the toolkit to gather materials which can be collected via RSS feeds.

Today, I attended WIREDcamp, part of the Ontario Government’s showcase event. WIREDcamp builds upon the unconference ChangeCamp event in Toronto to consider government in the age of the internet and participation. It was open to ‘public’ participants defined very broadly (i.e. Ontario government, Federal government, municipal government, non-profits, etc.). I attended a variety of sessions that dealt with issues such as: Government participation on third party (i.e., typically corporate sites), eConsultation, and why government employees may feel a ‘chill’ to participate in certain online arenas. If you are interested in finding out more, the event is documented at: www.technowonk.ca

This is my badge from Showcase. They read the barcode on my badge before I could enter some areas of the event.

Until Monday, the CRTC was accepting comments on traffic management (aka net neutrality). In preparing my comments, I edited the form letter made available through www.saveournet.ca. It was a very easy process to submit comments.

Save Our Net is an important grassroots initiative which is mobilizing Canadians to speak about the impacts of throttling and the importance of net neutrality. Members of Save Our Net include individuals, civil society organizations and ISPs supporting net neutrality. Comments are still being collected by Save Our Net if you missed the CRTC deadline.

Submitted comments to the CRTC:

Dear Commissioners:

Karen Smith PhD Student, Faculty of Information & Knowledge
Media Design Institute University of Toronto

My most recent post at metronauts.ca highlights an upcoming content-generation and research opportunity which promises to be very interesting. This initiative will make use of Metrolinx's online consultation mapping tool and remix screencast materials on the metronauts community blog with participant permission.