The Network Society - University of Massachusetts Amherst

432 The Network Society
recommended, in the name of reinforcing democratic transparency
and participation, that forms of interactive online access to legally
unprotected administration information be promoted. The adequate
use, on the part of the public administrations, of flexible information
networks makes it possible to give public services levels of transparency
and reliability so that they can guarantee the best exercise of
citizenship, more effective and specific combat against exclusion,
greater accountability on the part of the administration and the creation
of an environment of mutual trust between the people and the
institutions which will undoubtedly strengthen the daily exercise of
democracy and the social welfare system. Improving the management,
gaining time and increasing the quality of the services provided should
be, in sectors as crucial as health, justice and the social security, objectives
around which all professionals and organizations can rally.
The statistics on access to the new information and communications
technologies and opening to the global networks tell us that the
Portuguese situation reveals, as in many other fields, considerable
deficits and a slowness to develop, although the incidence is less in the
younger generations and we do have examples of good practice both
in the entrepreneurial fabric and in the civil services. Expansion of the
access to digital networks, which is indispensable for not generating
new forms of exclusion, can, indeed, include—and this was one of the
topics put forward by some contributors—the consideration of opportunities
related with open source software. The monitoring of developments
such as those going on in Brazil today could be of great
interest, particularly, as far as Portugal is concerned, in a perspective
of promoting our language in the world. To this end, keeping abreast
of community directives on the regulation of access to software is an
absolute necessity.
On the basis of all that I have said above on the characteristics of
Portugal, I am convinced that our difficulties in the transition to the
networked society and the knowledge economy cannot be resolved
with a voluntarist approach centred on the restricted aspects directly
represented by the conventional figures and indicators. But I also do
not share the belief that, as long as all other structural obstacles to
development are not eliminated, we are condemned to being able to
do nothing in terms of joining the networked society and the knowledge
economy.