Hiroko Kudo

Affiliation:

Professor 
Chuo University
Hachioji, Japan

Title:

Public Policy, Incentives and Regulations for ICT and Robots: how to prepare for the super ageing society and smart, resilient, and sustainable cities (click for download)

Abstract:

Developed countries are facing the so-called “super ageing society” or “super aged society”. This situation has brought, is bringing, and will bring us into a completely new era; while we have been used to plan for the growth, e.g., population, production, habitat, consumption, economy, institutions, and thus complexity, the future plans and strategies of our society would enclose and would be based on the decrease and decline of these elements. Many existing systems, e.g., political, institutional, financial, and social, would not be sustainable in the coming society. We have to reinvent the system to fit into it. Some authors as well as institutions have argued the negative sides of this new era, mainly questioning the aspect of growth; however, when one considers the aspects of sustainability, accountability, and complexity, the coming era could bring us some solutions to the current situation, thus some positive elements. But, how then, the ageing/aged society could be a solution for sustainability and accountability? Are there any conditions for all these? The future society has its spatial dimension: the population will be concentrated into cities, changing the urban structure and its network. These new metropolises need to be sustainable and resilience, since energy and disaster have become more and more important issues. Thus experiments like smart cities and smart communities have significant importance. But, why is it possible to “experiment” technologies, instruments, and processes, which are not yet authorised, under smart city projects? Why governments are keen to support and sometimes even to give incentives for these projects? What is the role of residents and other stakeholders in these experiments? The presentation would first dedicate to a literature analysis on current government and society, mainly from the point of view of governance and public policy. The literatures tell us that we have been moving from traditional institutional theory, through managerial, into network one. The latest stage stresses the importance of stakeholders, especially their participation in decision making processes. Indeed, the newly developed New Public Governance (NPG), which explains the governance of public and social sectors, is rooted within organizational sociology and network theory and it acknowledges the increasingly fragmented and uncertain nature of public management. Under NPG, stakeholders interact with each other in order to influence the outcomes of public policies and co-production becomes a key concept. Service users and professionals develop a mutual and interdependent relationship, in which both parties take risks and need to trust each other. Policy making is no longer seen as a purely top-down process but rather as negotiation among many interacting policy systems and services are no longer simply delivered by professional and managerial staff in public agencies, but they are co-produced by users and communities. This means that in the new era, we need to empower uses and communities as important stakeholders of the system as well as the decision-making process. These would be hints to understand the super aging society and/or super aged society from demography, habitat, production, consumption, and institutional points of view. From the view point of public policy, technologies, instruments and processes should be regulated. Before they are authorised and licenced, they need to be experimented, not only in the laboratories, but also in the real life, which is impossible without special permissions, incentives, and legal arrangements. Thus, the smart city projects are interesting showcases for this type of activities. In conclusion, the presentation tries to propose several alternative interpretations and/or scenarios for this super aging/aged society, in which ICT and robots have important role.

Biography:

Prof. Dr. Hiroko KUDO is full professor of public policy and public management at the Faculty of Law of Chuo University, Japan, and currently Visiting Professor and Research Fellow at the German Research Institute for Public Administration, German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer. She won the scholarship of Italian Government for the academic year 1992-1993 and spent a year at the Department of Regional Sciences, Milan Polytechnic. She earned her Ph.D. in public policy in 1998 (doctorate at the University of Venice).

She taught at Aichi Shukutoku University (1995-1998) and Waseda University (1998-2005) as assistant professor and then associate professor, before assuming the current position in 2005. Since 2001, she has been visiting professor at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", Bocconi University, the University of Cagliari, the University of Catania, and the University of Ljubljana, among others. She has been working with various master and doctorate courses at Italian, German, Austrian, and Slovenian universities, was visiting research fellow at Economic and Social Research Institute of the Cabinet Office of the Japanese Government. In 2015, she will be visiting research professor at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.

Her main research topics include: governance theory, performance measurement and policy evaluation; HRM and capacity development; decentralisation and local governments; urban planning and policy; e-Government; ICT and innovation; culture and sport policy; and public administration reform.

Among her works: “Public Sector Management Innovation in Special Autonomous Regions in Italy: intergovernmental relationship and public service delivery”, in Céline du Boys, Robert Fouchet, and Bruno Tiberghien (eds.), «Management Public Durable: dialogue autour de la Méditerranée», Bruylant, 2013; “E-Government as Strategy of Public Sector Reform: Peculiarity of Japanese IT Policy and its Institutional Origin”, in Financial Accountability and Management, Vol.26, No.1, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010; “Does E-Government Guarantee Accountability in Public Sector?: Experiences in Italy and Japan”, Public Administration Quarterly, Volume 32, Number 1, Spring 2008, 2008; and a chapter contributed in “Value and Virtue in Public Administration: A Comparative Perspective” (edited by Michiel S.De Vries and Pan Suk Kim, Palgrave Macmillan) in 2011.