The “top-down” governance approach is alive and kicking in
Amman, and continues to be undeterred by the Kingdom’s unprecedented wave of
reforms and the socio-political paradigm shift that has been sweeping the
country with great speed and zeal. For the civil servants at the Greater Amman
Municipality (GAM), time stands still with its “autocracy as usual” mindset.
اضافة اعلان
The prime minister’s newly formed committee to modernize the
public sector, and the noteworthy strides made by the Royal Committee to
Modernize the Political System in the span of seven months only — mean nothing
to the bureaucrats at GAM.
Message after message by His Majesty King Abdullah, the
country’s intellectual crust, and opinion writers on every platform, have been
pushing for a nationwide transformation toward inclusivity, in a way that
guarantees a more robust role for youth and women (and, of course, men) in the
process of decision making.
Yet, the GAM is proving to be on a different planet
altogether.
The irony is, the capital’s municipality is supposed to be a
shining example of “autonomy” and “decentralization” (two principles of good
governance), but the truth remains, it behaves with lethargy similar to any
services-oriented public sector institution in the country.
On Friday, the former mayor and current chairman of the
GAM’s transitory committee found it rather plausible to sing the same tune of
citizen exclusion, which brings to mind the GAM’s typical non-participatory
attitude, with the announcement: “Amman will be transformed into a smart city.”
As per usual, Ammanis are being given as few details as
possible as to the GAM’s definition of a “smart city”, triggering all kinds of
speculation in all the wrong directions.
For starters, no one has taken the time to ask the citizens
of Jordan’s capital what they want for the future of their city. As a result,
Ammanis seldom see themselves as stakeholders in the city’s five-year plans,
and they most certainly have no clear understanding of where their city is
headed.
Tragically, the people of Amman are denied the tools that
would enable them to know what they want. In this case, they have no idea what
this “digital transformation” scheme actually entails at any level of detail to
have a say in it.
As is the customary, the project is shrouded in the GAM’s
classic absence of transparency, scarceness of information, and total
opaqueness, in what seems like a deliberate attempt to exclude public opinion
from meddling with a predetermined plan.
This constant fog surrounding most of the public sector’s
endeavors is one of the prime reasons trust is broken, and on a very deep
level, between citizens and their local and national governments. A spectacle
of mediocrity, engendered by obsolete models of governance, is the reality that
has for so long been a source of demoralization for this country’s citizens.
To circle back, when the GAM says “smart city”, what version
is it referring to exactly? Is it looking to adopt a model similar to the
privacy-invading hazard of the (now-scrapped) smart city that was supposed to
take place in Toronto, Canada?
If so, this will most certainly warrant fierce push back from
local privacy advocates, the community of local lawyers who are becoming more
and more aware of the need for privacy-protection measures, and everyday
citizens who have been abandoning platforms like Facebook’s sister WhatsApp for
more privacy-respecting applications like Signal.
Fortunately, Canada’s appalling version of a “smart city”
was canceled in May 2020, but the original scheme would have been a true
unwelcome precedent for the North American country and humanity at large.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, had lobbied top
liberal-party Canadian officials at the World Economic Forum (WEF) by painting
the smart city project as a progressive endeavor. As it happens, the WEF is one
of Big Tech’s favorite venues for convincing world leaders to adopt under-regulated
tech, while distracting them with buzz words like “innovation” to help delay
effective tech regulation.
Taking the bait, Canadians gave the greenlight to Sidewalk
Labs, an affiliate of Alphabet, to develop “a futuristic, data-driven city development
along Toronto’s downtown lakeshore”, according to Reuters.
But the backlash was real. The project faced strong
opposition by the local community over issues pertaining to data privacy
concerns, especially since the developers were planning to siphon data in every
way possible – by equipping public benches, sidewalks, and virtually any and
all surfaces with biometric sensors, facial recognition cameras, and artificial
intelligence technologies.
This would have enabled Google and its sister companies to
make billions more in revenue from harvesting intimate data about the citizens
of Toronto, such as their individual habits and preferences in a nuanced level
of detail.
Artificial intelligence and Google Analytics, an invasive
tool used by advertisers the world over to segment and track audiences, would
then offer insight to influence citizens’ choices, without their awareness or
consent. This includes influencing their political and religious views toward
newer ones predetermined by an adversary, in the likeness of “brainwashing”.
In other words, the plan was to create a nightmarish “social
engineering” and surveillance city in the footsteps of China’s “Social Credit
System”, which monitors the citizens’ every move with the goal of giving them a
“score” in a suffocating Big Brother fashion. Citizens are then rewarded or
punished for their daily behavior with things like allowing or banning them
from buying plane tickets, in a clear violation of human rights on a very basic
level.
Neither “smart city” model should be welcome in Jordan, or
anywhere really, as they bring authoritarianism to such inhumane levels that
stand in extreme contrast with the sanctity of people’s lives, and souls.
Ironically, the GAM officials have been quoted this month as
saying, Jordan ranks 148th on the UN’s E-Participation Index, “measured based
on the availability of online information and e-decision making through direct
citizen engagement”.
What “availability of online information” and what “direct
citizen engagement”? To say it mildly, the GAM is a governance model
characterized by its tunnel vision and a top-down approach that dictates
decisions to citizens.
Timing-wise, the GAM’s announcement came less than a month
from the Prime Ministry’s initial approval of Jordan’s long-overdue privacy
bill, the “Personal Data Protection Law of 2021”, currently awaiting the
crucial step of being sent to Parliament for ratification.
Also, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship,
which is the overall umbrella for Jordan’s “digital transformation” plans,
including the GAM’s, has recently started drawing up a national charter for the
ethics of artificial intelligence “with stakeholders” (that are yet to be
revealed), as inspired by the AI principles outlined by UNESCO.
While passing laws that protect personal data and guide tech
ethics is important, governance remains the true test of government. That is
where the best laws and regulations may very well lose their value: at the feet
of civil servants who choose not to “see” the citizens they serve.
The writer has reported on the environment, worked in the public sector as a communications officer, and served as managing editor of a business magazine, spokesperson for a humanitarian INGO, and as head of a PR agency.
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