COMMUNITY INFORMATICS: The Slow Argentinean Way

SUSANA FINQUELIEVICH

Ballarat

Conferencia; Conferencia Internacional Community Informatics; 1999

University of Victoria

In Latin American cities, global processes have adverse effects: • urban fragmentation • increasing unemployment • poverty • cuts in social services • higher costs in urban infrastructures and services • difficulties of local governments to manage complex cities. Local governments are implementing informatics to increase the efficacy of institutional management, to collect the demands of the population, and to obtain political consense. Community organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), citizens, are creating alternative action spaces, and searching for solutions to the local problems triggered by global processes. They are beginning to use ICT to create local and international networks, get strength through the dissemination of their actions, access to international funding sources and exert pressures over national and local governments. How are technological decisions related to the local political context? Which are the factors that facilitate or inhibit the implementation of ICTs in the cities? How do community networks emerge in this context? The main case study is the City of Buenos Aires (13,5 million inhabitants, including Greater Buenos Aires). The paper deals with two issues: • Local government’s use of ICT for local management and communication with citizens: In 1995, the Government of Buenos Aires City went from a system in which the Mayor was chosen by the Republic’s President, to a citizens´elected Mayor. The government is opening to the use of ICT to decentralise urban functions, increase the flow of horizontal institutional information, update urban management, inform the citizens, and increase public participation in urban affairs. Prejudices, fear of technology, and a resilient institutional culture, are still obstacles for informatization.. • Emerging Community Networks. Computer-sustained community networks are emerging. From 1997 onwards, they have multiplied in various sectors: education, culture, community health and wellness, citizens’ rights, participation in urban affairs. We will focus on the differences between small and large NGOs, their diverse us of time, space, and online resources.