Human Capital and the Readiness of the Society for Open Government RANEPA E. TORGASHIN FALL 2016

The knowledge, skills, competencies and attributes embodied in individuals that facilitate the creation of personal, social and economic well-being (OECD, 2008) The study of Jorgenson and Fraumeni, shows that, between 1948 and 1984 in the United States, investment in human capital was almost three times the magnitude of investment in physical capital and that during the same period, the value of human capital exceeded the value of physical capital by more than nine times (MireilleLaroche, Marcel Mérette, p.15, quoted in Jorgenson and Fraumeni, 1994).

One of the Open Government definitions is “the transparency of government actions, the accessibility of government services and information and the responsiveness of government to new ideas, demands and needs” (Gavelin K., Burall S. and Wilson R., 2009, p.12, quoted in OECD). According the other OECD definition it means “Government open to the contribution of Citizens and society to co-create public value and engaged to respect three main principles: ensure full Transparency of its actions, its processes and its data, enable Participation of Citizens to its decisions and processes, promote and accept the Collaboration of Citizens to the production of its services” (Barbara Lörincz and others, 2011, p.13 quoted in OECD).

Policy Transparency Participation in policy-making (government consultations taking, making conclusions, understanding their needs, using rules and procedures to get policy initiatives) Collaboration in policy-making (engagement with social media, producing services based on Governmental data, which would be useful for citizens, public organization or business) It is necessary to have enough educated citizens and developed business who have enough skills and culture to use the opportunities of the Open Government. It is necessary to have critical thinking, skills of working with information, inquiry and self-expression to use the pillars of OG. There is the human capital issue take a place, to make Open Government concept useful.

Readiness of society for the OG is the level of the Human Capital quality, which determines the effectiveness of the open Government functioning an its aims achieving. Readiness of society for the OG is strongly associated with Media and information literacy. The level of readiness includes citizen’s skills, culture, understanding of policies and needs, education level, information availability e.t.c. From the Government side the level of readiness could be managed by the quality of services, information, approach in OG implementation.

Media and information literacy of the citizens is in the base of efficiency of the Open Government behavior. Literacy of citizens is greatly influenced by the quality of human capital. Thus, the quality of the HC is developing by the Media and information literacy and the efficiency of the Open Government are growing. There could be imbalanced regional social policies in terms of factors of HC, which impact on the level of the media and information literacy. Furthermore, the society could be not ready to use Open Government opportunities in efficient way.,

Where: Y – salary, S – education period, EXP – working experience, ε – random variable. Where: Yn - person earnings with n years of education (Benefits ); X0 - the earnings of person with zero education; Cn - net investment over n years of schooling, i.e. accumulated human capital; R - the current rate of return of investments in education. The same approach for the benefits from citizens and Open Government relations?

the Human Capital Development Concept can be used for involving citizens in to the Open Government in terms of citizens’ participation and collaboration. Citizens need to develop their general and specific human capital in terms of basic technical skills and knowledge about governance system. And through this development they get the benefits in terms of time and quality of life. The Government gets the benefits in terms of governance as a whole (in the three main pillars of OG)

In the Theoretical part of the work there are shown imbalance of existent regional social policies and developed structural multifactor model of HC. There are gap of regional Government policies focus on the factors as Education, Skills, Culture. The focus of the Government policies is on the Employment and Entrepreneurial abilities factors. Limitations: Considering policies are targeted on the citizens (social direction).

The readiness of society for the open Government opportunities could be the measureable by the values Human Capital factors criteria. The Media and information literacy is one of the key values of Human Capital quality in the scope of the three pillar of the OG (transparency, participation, collaboration). The Media and information literacy associates with such factors of HC as: Education, Skills, Information asymmetry, Culture. The Government should control the balance in the social policies to provide conditions for the necessary for the OG qualification of Human Capital.