[GSDI Legal Econ] Name of our working group

[Katleen Janssen]

Dear all,

I would have to agree with Roger that re-naming the Working Group to 
'socio-technical' might actually increase confusion rather than reduce 
it. Yes, everything is linked to technology, but on the other hand, many 
technological discussions also have a non-technical impact, so from that 
point of view, both groups might need to be called 'socio-technical'.

On the other hand, while I agree that the WG is about more than legal 
and economic issues, renaming it to "socio-economic" does in my opinion 
not encompass all the previous themes, as this runs the risk of losing 
the legal approach, which is fundamentally different from social and 
economic research (however, I may be biased, as I am a lawyer). Would 
"socio-economic and legal" work?

Kind regards,
Katleen

Roger Longhorn wrote:
> While I agree that there are issues to be covered by the current 
> "Legal and Economic" working group that do not seem to fall within 
> either the 'legal' or 'economic' definition, such as the work that I 
> do in GI/GIS?SDI Ethics, the name "Socio-Technical" does not grab me. 
> Just looking at the title without any prior knowledge of what this 
> work group has done in the past, I find the 'technical' bit confusing, 
> especially as there is already a Technical Working Group.
>
> I would perhaps prefer the label "Socioeconomic Working Group" (or 
> "Socio-economic" - both spellings are used widely and interchangeably 
> in the field) as this is a term that encompasses bopth the original 
> legal and economic themes, as well as other more socially oriented 
> themes, such as ethics, governance (especially the role of GI/SDI in 
> e-governance), etc.
>
> I'n not sure how the 'technical' bit fits in, here, as I would have 
> thought that anything that is truly 'technical' should be handled by 
> that W.G. Technology certainly plays a role in most aspects of 
> society, including economics and governance (which includes and 
> involved legal issues from policy formulation through to enforcement), 
> but I don't see that this is the main thrust of this W.G.
>
> More comments, please, from other members of the group before any name 
> change decision is reached.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Kind regards
> Oi
> Roger Longhorn
> co-Chair
>
> Francis Harvey wrote:
>
>> I would like to add my support of this proposal for a working group 
>> name change. Once the focus on "Legal and Economic" issue made sense, 
>> but the broadening of research activities suggests that  these terms 
>> are out of sync with many activities that do not, and possibly could 
>> not, find a rubric elsewhere in GSDI.
>> "Socio-Technical Working Group" seems quite encompassing. It remains 
>> to be seen if the loss of the terms "legal and economic" is 
>> acceptable to other working group members and the proposed terms are 
>> significant enough. In contrast to the other working groups, the 
>> hyphenated name makes sense to point to the dual nature of this work. 
>> Having "Technical" and "Social" working groups would prolong a 
>> division that many researchers studying SDI work hard to bridge or 
>> even transcend.
>> Francis
>>
>>
>> On 4 Jan 2007, at 18:42, Nama Raj Budhathoki wrote:
>>
>>> What about changing the name of our working group?
>>> Legal and economic issues are certainly important, but naming the 
>>> group as "Legal and Economic Working Group" seems to be bit 
>>> restrictive. It seems to exclude other equally important issues: 
>>> organizational, institutional, policy etc. I would propose to name 
>>> it as "Socio-Technical Group" to include all these issues, including 
>>> legal and economic ones.
>>> Since the other working group is "Technical Working Group", naming 
>>> it as "Socio-Technical Group" would also complement with this.
>>> When we have two groups: one technical and another 
>>> non-technical(legal and economic), I feel that we are missing 
>>> something there. Even seemingly pure non-technical issues are 
>>> connected with technology. The technical and non-technical aspects 
>>> are so interwoven that naming the working group as legal and 
>>> economic (which sounds purely non-technical to me) does not fully 
>>> capture the essence of this group. I suggest that "socio-technical 
>>> working group" gives more sense!
>>>
>>> Nama 
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Nama Raj Budhathoki, PhD Student and Graduate Research Assistant, 
>>> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Legal-Econ mailing list
>>> Legal-Econ at lists.gsdi.org <mailto:Legal-Econ at lists.gsdi.org>
>>> http://lists.gsdi.org/mailman/listinfo/legal-econ
>>
>>
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>>
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>>  
>>
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-- 
******************************************
Katleen Janssen
Legal researcher
K.U.Leuven - Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and ICT
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B-3000 LEUVEN - BELGIUM
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[e]  katleen.janssen at law.kuleuven.be
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