INESC Porto and UP organise lecture with expert from UT-Austin

The University of Porto and INESC Porto have organised a lecture, "The Wiki State: Transforming Government With New Internet Tools", delivered by Gary Chapman, professor at the University of Texas, in Austin. The lecture took place on 14 March at the Faculty of Engineering from the University of Porto (FEUP).
 
This event was organised in the context of the UT Austin-Portugal programme and it was presented by Artur Pimenta Alves, director of INESC Porto. The programme’s main theme was the appearance of new Web 2.0 tools on the Internet, such as blogs, wikis, image and video galleries and social networking sites, which offer some interesting and potentially historic opportunities for the transformation of governments.

Citizens using new online tools and government information in open data formats are creating new experiments in government transparency, accountability, and knowledge creation, and thus blurring the lines between volunteer citizens and government officials.

Gary Chapman described some of these innovations to a wide audience, focusing particularly on "disaster informatics," fiscal transparency and this year's election in the United States.
 
Chapman is director of The 21st Century Project and a member of the faculty at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin, the university's graduate school of public policy. He is also the associate director of the university's Telecommunications and Information Policy Institute.