IRISS (Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies) FP7 European Research Project, Deliverable D6.1: Civil Protection in a European Context, in A report on resilience in "democratic" surveillance societies. Civil protection in a European context, in A report on resilience in "democratic" surveillance societies

The term "civil protection" has different meanings and interpretations, sometimes varying from country to country. In the context of Europe, civil protection and its developing and multi-faceted relationship with resilience is a relatively recent phenomenon, arguably originating from the end of the cold war, commonly described as the period from the end of World War II to the early to mid-1990s, when the focus changed to civil protection from civil defence, with contingency plans being put in place by many countries for the civilian populations to organise, prepare to mobilise and defend themselves in the event of a major incident such as a nuclear attack or potential invasion by another country. Over the past two to three decades, and at the level of the European Union, the use of the term "civil protection" has become synonymous with the contingency and emergency planning arrangements that countries either individually and now increasingly collectively (such as the six regional European civil protection initiatives) have put in place to increase resilience and the ability to respond effectively both to the threat or occurrence of natural disasters, such as earthquakes and damage to the built environment, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, floods, landslides and man-made disasters such as marine pollution incidents or threats or actual acts of terrorism such as those experienced in London (2005) or Madrid (2004). . The European Union determined that increasing preparedness and resilience to natural or man-made disasters or to terrorism events would require greater humanitarian focus and co-ordination of resources at a community-based level. In response to this, the European Union adopted two pieces of legislation which cover European civil protection: first, Council Decision 2007/779/EC established a Community Civil Protection Mechanism and, second, Council Decision 2007/162/EC established a Civil Protection Financial Instrument. The Mechanism covers the response and some preparedness activities, while the Instrument enables actions in the three key areas of prevention, preparedness and response

IRISS (Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies) FP7 European Research Project, Deliverable D6.1: 2011 Christchurch earthquake, in A report on resilience in "democratic" surveillance societies

Located on the South Island of New Zealand, and sitting within the Canterbury region, the city of Christchurch (population: 341,000) is the country's second largest city. The Mw6.3 earthquake which hit Christchurch unexpectedly and catastrophically on 22 February 2011 at 12.51 killed over 180 people, injured a further 1500-2000, and was in fact an aftershock of a previous earthquake (Mw7.1) occurring on 4 September 2010 which resulted in no fatalities.This Report examines the emergent intertwined relationships between resilience, surveillance and big data in contemporary crisis management processes in a number of different settings. In doing so, the Report explores the evolution of established crisis management institutions and techniques alongside the increasing use of new technologies. At the heart of the Report, lies analysis of resilience and surveillance at national and local levels, involving different institutions, actors and actions

Delivering Smart Governance in a Future City: The Case of Glasgow

In 2013, Glasgow City Council received significant funding to develop innovative smart city applications, including the delivery of new electronic public services and the co-production of governance. This case study examines the processes that underpin the ways in which the 'Future City Glasgow programme' delivered 'smart governance', in the context of a regenerating post-industrial city. We assess the contribution of smart city technologies and data collection and monitoring processes designed to facilitate citizen engagement and sustainable governance practices. The Future City Glasgow programme ran from 2013-2015, and included the Open Glasgow project, and 'Demonstrator Projects' of: Energy Efficiency; Intelligent Street Lighting; Active Travel; and, Integrated Social Transport. Opportunities arose from these demonstrators for developing co-production and legacy initiatives. The case study provides insight into the ways in which citizens and local communities in Glasgow have been engaged in governance processes. This engagement has taken place via traditional and innovative smart city technologies, and in particular in relation to policy formulation, service design and delivery. It finds that the co-creation of governance is shaped by vested interests, that engagement is fragmented and partial, but at the same time new technologies, social media and shared learning opportunities offer innovative new ways for some citizens to influence local governance

Smart Governance: Opportunities for technologically-mediated citizen co-production

Citizens increasingly contribute directly to the evolution of sustainable cities, in particular where new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) promise to transform urban governance into ‘Smart city governance’ and where ICTs are integrated in strategies for citizen participation and the co-production of public services and policy. This article provides a multi-disciplinary understanding of Smart city governance, including new insights around the opportunities for citizen engagement in the co-production of service-delivery and decision-making. Using findings from a review of Smart cities literature and practice, the article aims to establish the breadth of Smart city initiatives which emphasise citizen participation and the realities of delivering such initiatives in complex city environments. Emphasising the emerging role of the technologically ‘empowered’ citizen, a new conceptual model is presented, where mutual trust, shared understanding and new opportunities for co-production emerge in an environment mediated by new technology – this form of Smart governance is referred to here as ‘technologically-mediated municipal reciprocity’

The Sale of Edited Electoral Registers in Scotland: Implications for Privacy, Data Protection and Citizenship

This article provides an assessment of the recent phenomenon in Scotland and the United Kingdom of selling edited electoral registers to third parties, and reflects on the implications of this practice for privacy, data protection and citizen-state relations. Drawing on the results of the National Survey of Electoral Registration Officers in Scotland, information is presented on the sale of edited registers, the types of organisation purchasing registers, revenues generated and the number of electors ‘opting out’ of the edited register. This is the first time such information has been collected nationally and therefore represents a unique Scottish ‘snapshot’. The article argues that the sale of edited registers is contentious. The collection of personal information contained within the register is critical for the successful functioning of elections and consequently our representative democratic system, yet the subsequent unrestricted sale of this information for commercial gain potentially undermines trust in democratic processes and alters the informational nature of citizen-state relations. This article offers a first opportunity to reflect on some of the consequences of this practice

Searching for the Real Sustainable Smart City?

The emergence of ‘Smart Cities’ is a contemporary global phenomenon which is closely aligned to a vision of modern technologically advanced sustainable urban environments. However, public policy and academic discourses differ about what constitutes a city that is either ‘smart’ or ‘sustainable’, and assumptions are frequently made about the positive impact of technology and its potential benefit to the environment. Whilst a smart city is not necessarily a sustainable city, the terms ‘smart city’ and the ‘sustainable city’ are increasingly being fused together in the concept of the Sustainable Smart City (SSC). This article seeks to explore the conceptual components of the SSC, with a particular focus on the participatory role of the citizen, where this involves the use of new digital technologies. Conventional eGovernment has tended to focus on service delivery rather than engaging citizens in participatory activity, whilst traditional discourses on sustainability focus on environmentalism rather than broader societal sustainability. Sustainability in the context of the SSC is a much wider concept, where the aspiration is also to improve the quality life by engaging citizens in participatory governance, by co-creating sustainability values, and by developing relationships, trust and sustainable mechanisms for ongoing engagement. In this respect, new digital technology is understood according to its transformational potential and the opportunities which it offers to citizens in delivery of services, meaningful participation and of sustainable societal solutions. This article explores the three underlying conceptual pillars of the SCC, namely insights deriving from perspectives associated with (1) sustainability, (2) new technology and (3) participation, where each of these perspectives offers up its own rationale and institutional logic. Here, it is argued, that whilst practice around SSC’s differs considerably, the ‘real’ SSC stands at the nexus of new technology, citizen engagement and sustainable outcomes

Delivering Smart Governance in a Future City: The Case of Glasgow

In 2013, Glasgow City Council received significant funding to develop innovative smart city applications, including the delivery of new electronic public services and the co-production of governance. This case study examines the processes that underpin the ways in which the ‘Future City Glasgow programme’ delivered ‘smart governance’, in the context of a regenerating post-industrial city. We assess the contribution of smart city technologies and data collection and monitoring processes designed to facilitate citizen engagement and sustainable governance practices. The Future City Glasgow programme ran from 2013‒2015, and included the Open Glasgow project, and ‘Demonstrator Projects’ of: Energy Efficiency; Intelligent Street Lighting; Active Travel; and, Integrated Social Transport. Opportunities arose from these demonstrators for developing co-production and legacy initiatives. The case study provides insight into the ways in which citizens and local communities in Glasgow have been engaged in governance processes. This engagement has taken place via traditional and innovative smart city technologies, and in particular in relation to policy formulation, service design and delivery. It finds that the co-creation of governance is shaped by vested interests, that engagement is fragmented and partial, but at the same time new technologies, social media and shared learning opportunities offer innovative new ways for some citizens to influence local governance

Smart governance in institutional context: An in-depth analysis of Glasgow, Utrecht, and Curitiba

Smart governance varies considerably across cities, allegedly due to the influence of the institutional setting. Nevertheless, the institutional factors influencing smart governance have yet to be systematically examined. This research proposes to remedy this by exploring the role of the institutional context in shaping the configuration of smart governance. For this purpose, this study, drawing on insights from institutional theory, zooms in on three cities with dissimilar institutional contexts — Curitiba (Brazil), Glasgow (UK), and Utrecht (the Netherlands). The findings suggest that institutional context does indeed affect how smart governance actualizes in cities. These empirical insights result in a heuristic framework for understanding smart governance in diverse urban environments. The framework exhibits a multi-layered influencing mechanism: institutions co-existing on multiple spatial scales interact and modify – reinforce or dissolve – each other's impact on smart governance. This study opens the door to a different approach to understanding smart governance and sheds new light on how this is interrelated with the institutional context

Governing police-public encounters mediated by the use of Body-Worn Cameras

This paper explores emerging governance structures surrounding the use of Body-Worn Video (BWV) cameras in policing contexts, with specific reference to the UK. It reviews existing knowledge about the diffusion of BWV, in relation to the purpose of the technology, existing regulatory arrangements and the perceived benefits and impacts of the technology. The focus of the paper is the nature of police-citizen interactions mediated by this specific technology and roles played by emergent scrutiny mechanisms. The paper will identify and assess the different types of police-citizen interaction involving BWV, from armed responses to ‘stop and search’, and identify the existing rules, protocols and regulations governing their use in these scenarios. In the paper, it is argued that the rationale for the use of BWV in policing is well established, is afforded a good level of public support, and that it is also evident, that across UK police forces, there is differentiated use of the technology and associated governance mechanisms. The paper also establishes that across the UK there are novel emergent mechanisms used to govern BWV in relation to scrutiny and accountability. These include dedicated ‘scrutiny panels’, practices referred to as random ‘dip sampling’, as well as dedicated codes of practice and use protocols. Here, it is evident that across the UK the provision and practice of BWV deviates by police force and region, resulting in a governance ‘patchwork’. The core underlying argument is the technology diffuses and ‘lived experiences’ shape use over time, and that simultaneously mechanisms for oversight and accountability emerge and are shaped by existing institutional arrangements. The research presented in this paper derives from an ‘evidence led review’ conducted by the authors for Police Scotland in November-December 2021 (Webster, et al. 2022). This review included an extensive literature review and interviews with key stakeholders. The outcome of the review is intended to inform the future provision of BWV by Police Scotland

IRISS (Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies) FP7 European Research Project, Deliverable 4.2: Doing privacy in everyday encounters with surveillance.

The main idea of IRISS WP 4 was to analyse surveillance as an element of everyday life of citizens. The starting point was a broad understanding of surveillance, reaching beyond the narrowly defined and targeted (nonetheless encompassing) surveillance practices of state authorities, justified with the need to combat and prevent crime and terrorism. We were interested in the mundane effects of surveillance practices emerging in the sectors of electronic commerce, telecommunication, social media and other areas. The basic assumption of WP 4 was that being a citizen in modern surveillance societies amounts to being transformed into a techno-social hybrid, i.e. a human being inexorably linked with data producing technologies, becoming a data-leaking container. While this “ontological shift” is not necessarily reflected in citizens’ understanding of who they are, it nonetheless affects their daily lives in many different ways. Citizens may entertain ideas of privacy, autonomy and selfhood rooted in pre-electronic times while at the same time acting under a regime of “mundane governance”. We started to enquire about the use of modern technologies and in the course of the interviews focussed on issues of surveillance in a more explicit manner. Over 200 qualitative interviews were conducted in a way that produced narratives (stories) of individual experiences with different kinds of technologies and/or surveillance practices. These stories then were analysed against the background of theoretical hypotheses of what it means in objective terms to live in a surveillance society. We assume that privacy no longer is the default state of mundane living, but has to be actively created. We captured this with the term privacy labour. Furthermore we construed a number of dilemmas or trade-off situations to guide our analysis. These dilemmas address the issue of privacy as a state or “good” which is traded in for convenience (in electronic commerce), security (in law enforcement surveillance contexts), sociality (when using social media), mutual trust (in social relations at the workplace as well as in the relationship between citizens and the state), and engagement (in horizontal, neighbourhood watch-type surveillance relations). For each of these dilemmas we identified a number of stories demonstrating how our respondents as “heroes” in the narrative solved the problems they encountered, strived for the goals they were pursuing or simply handled a dilemmatic situation. This created a comprehensive and multi-dimensional account of the effects of surveillance in everyday life. Each of the main chapters does focus on one of these different dilemmas