By carelessly digitized seas, “Without Signal”, adrift with good intentions.

Registering a company online and what it reveals about how the money will be squandered if civic engagement is not strengthened in Portugal.

Content

Propellerheads feat. Miss Shirley Bassey – History Repeating

Digression on the problematic and complex nature of the meaning of innovation in a citadel with hybrid cars, ancient old tractors and flying kitchen chairs

Can everything be solved through artificial intelligence? No link left behind

The shortfalls of supply-side digitalization

A special regime of conditionality for the protection of citizens’ participatory rights

 

Propellerheads feat. Miss Shirley Bassey – History Repeating

Historically, the EU has played an essential role in administrative modernisation in Portugal. It has been the real catalyst of change. This is why I am contacting you. At a time when the Resilience and Recovery Plan is being discussed so much in Portugal, there is a firm and widespread conviction that only through robust oversight by Europe can the implementation of this plan achieve any real benefit for Portugal. This is a cause of concern to most Portuguese, and history shows that when that scrutiny fails, misuse increases and money is squandered to little avail.

94% of Portuguese respondents to the Special Eurobarometer 502 report on corruption share the opinion that corruption is widespread in their country (much above the EU average of 71%). The recovery fund increases the risk of corruption and misgovernment. For the time being, there seems to be no genuine interest in listening to citizens, which does not bode well for the implementation of the recovery plan. This is nothing specific to the government currently in office. The lack of consultation with the beneficiaries of public policies is a fixture of Portuguese democratic life (which, in part, is a rotten fruit of years of dictatorship and of a society that is still very hierarchical).

Below is a short account of my experience setting up a company through the Portuguese online business creation service. This brief report reveals:

• a normalisation of neglect of the quality of the service, as evidenced, among other things, by the profusion of broken links.
• absence of helpful basic information;
• lack of care in the explanation of the steps to follow;
• missing interactions between the various public services online;
• scant interest in the actual participation of citizens;
• evidence of half-baked reforms that reveal themselves through the referral to long-defunct public sites, etc.

Digression on the problematic and complex nature of the meaning of innovation in a citadel with hybrid cars, ancient old tractors and flying kitchen chairs

Despite its simplistic and excessively homogenous approach, Hofstede’s insights classify Portuguese culture as one where “hierarchical distance is accepted, and those holding the most powerful positions are admitted to have privileges for their position” and where “management controls” with a chronic lack of interest for subordinates. Unfortunately, this can be seen at various levels of public and private sector organizations. Although there are many exceptions (which confirm the rule) and younger generations have a gradually different attitude, this rigid and hierarchical culture hampers civic participation and innovation in general.

Many years ago, I met an international expert helping the Portuguese government design an innovation plan for the country. He was a North American who had helped and trained governments of multiple countries. After being in training sessions with secretaries of state, ministers, and members of the Portuguese political and business elite, he confided to me (I quote by heart):

Paulo, I liked the people, they were friendly, seemed very capable, some even brilliant and all were very interested in what I had to say. But talking to them and then moving around Lisbon and the country, I had the distinct feeling that I had been in a castle, where power remains very much in the hand of a few, who all know each other, but that aren’t very eager on listening to what people behind the castle walls are feeling, thinking, or living through. I know that as a North American, I am more sensitive to the greater inflexibility of European societies. But… Please don’t get me wrong! But in Portugal, more than in any other European country, I feel that the “castle” still has a lot of medieval traces. This traditional hierarchical culture, with its rigidity and centralization of power on an elite, is quite the opposite of what you need for innovation to flourish. No wonder Portugal is unequal and falls short of its development potential.

Last week a friend told me that Portugal must be the only country in Western Europe where you can see a hybrid car overtaking a Trabant-like tractor, carrying a shivering, very old lady wrapped in a worn-out shawl, sitting in a typical kitchen chair in an open trailer, in front of an international school. He told me this as an example of how dual and unequal Portugal is (and as proof that multiverses exist). He had just seen it.

Can everything be solved through artificial intelligence? No link left behind

The 2020 Rule of Law Report Country Chapter on the rule of law situation in Portugal clearly states that the country still has “constraints as regards an effective anti-corruption prosecution result from a lack of resources and specialisation of the law enforcement bodies”. In an interview with Lusa news agency (03-02-2021), Didier Reynders, European Commissioner for Justice, said that digitalisation would be a possible solution to the lack of efficiency of the Portuguese judicial system. I want to point out that increasing the use of digital tools and means is not enough. More must be done from an organisational and cultural point of view.

Mere digitalisation is not a panacea and only solves a few things. In the Portuguese case, for example, given an established culture that is very hierarchical, little used to citizens’ scrutiny, with a very modest civic participation and, in general, averse to learning from the bottom up, it would be necessary to incorporate in the recovery plans measures that could thwart these atavistic traits. Otherwise, we will be digitalizing erroneous procedures, and the most likely outcome will be a situation like the one I describe, with broken links, dead sites, ineffective programmes, etc.

According to Google, there are 4230 references to “inteligência artificial” in the .gov.pt domain. In this letter and the report below, I am just talking about fundamental dysfunctions that curtail the proper functioning of egovernment services and do not need sophisticated methods to be solved. They do not need artificial intelligence; they need organisation, scrutiny and focus on results (citizens).

The shortfalls of supply-side digitalisation

In my reading of international reports, which is necessarily frugal, Portugal is continually assessed more by the supply of digital services rather than by the quality of those services perceived by those who use them. This is understandable up to a certain point.

For instance: in the Country Profile – SNIG (2017), eGovernment services for registering a new company in Portugal are described thus:

«Website: http://www.portaldaempresa.pt/

Description: The service ‘Empresa On-line’ offers the possibility to carry out the declaration of a new business via the website and set it up in less than one hour at a more minor cost than before. The portal assists entrepreneurs on various legal procedures and administrative formalities and provides advisory services, such as business simulators and mobile telephony provider comparisons.»

I did not try to set up a business back in 2017. But from my experience in 2021, this description is a prime example of wishful thinking (unless, in 2017 the service worked much better than it does now). Portaldaempresa.pt has not been around for a long time but is still referenced in many government services, including the current online business start-up service. Setting up a new business “in less than one hour”… that’s an overstatement.

The discontinued website portaldaempresa.pt has 443.8k inbound links from 1.8k domains identified by Moz’s Link Research. Many of those links are from Portuguese official institutions (eGovernment in general, municipalities, state institutes, etc.).

This is what you get when accessing portaldaempresa.pt (screenshot 26-05-2021; but it has been like this for many months):

Nonetheless, some pages of the website are still accessible (26-05-2021):

There are still some links to portaldaempresa.pt from Europa.eu. It’s curious to observe that most of the 31 Points of Single Contacts (PSCs) run by the member states of the European Union mentioned on an Europa.eu webpage in 2014 are still operational (note: the link to “EU’s Points of Single Contact website” is incorrect). That is not the case with the Portuguese www.portaldaempresa.pt. Portuguese governments are eager to rename institutions and websites without ensuring that the State’s organisation is clear and understandable to citizens.

It’s a pity that the EU “Single Market Scoreboard” of Portal da Empresa hasn’t been updated since 2013

The special regime of conditionality for the protection of citizens’ participatory rights

Portugal has made a lot of progress since joining the EEC. However, it still needs to improve social participation and difficulties in focusing on results rather than indulging in various sorts of procedural and legalese nit-picking. The country needs external actors to enhance social participation, increase scrutiny and redirect focus towards outcomes.

The central issues here are participation and scrutiny – these can only be fully attained if the various actors are compelled to achieve results together. The Portuguese are counting on “Europe” to play a leading role in this process.

I hope this letter and the short “report”  below may lead RECOVER to condition the Portuguese plan to necessarily incorporate a greater and more continuous engagement of citizens and businesses.

Paulo Ferreira