· The road to e-democracy (and other tales) ·
In April, The Economist published a special report, The Electronic Bureaucrat.
The report is mostly about providing government services online (yikes, what a scary project that would be) but there were a few things I took from it that were relevant to online democracy and online activism.
On the government and public service's adoption of technology:
"The benefits will be biggest in countries where officials and politicians are open to pressure and where the citizens are public-spirited to start with. E-government is no magic bullet, but it gives citizens and lobby groups more power to scrutinise government and highlight waste and dishonesty."
On providing e-government to communities that do not have access to the internet:
The hardest question for government is how to deal with the part of the population that will not or cannot go online. Glyn Evans, who runs the e-government effort in Britain's second-biggest city, Birmingham, says he has to deal with a portion of households that are "transient and chaotic", whereas central government in Whitehall imagines a world of "middle-class nuclear families" who move as a single unit. One possible solution would be to give up on this section of the population. If e-government enables the most articulate and productive members of society to save time and money and enjoy better public services, that may be worth having. It may even free officials' energies to take more trouble over the rest. Many governments have adopted that approach by default, although few would admit it.
A second possibility is to try harder to harness technology. Even the poorest of the poor may be able to use a smart card or a mobile phone, giving them a louder voice and a fairer deal. Some time this year the world will pass the point where more than half its population will have a mobile phone. Although mobiles are used mainly as phones and for text messages between customers, they are also powerful computers, offering the previously dispossessed a way into business and finance—and into interacting with public services. M-government (the latest buzzword, now that e-government has lost some of its lustre) allows citizens and the state to deal with each other through pared-down web pages, barcodes sent as pictures and simple text messages.
In some countries digital television offers another way of reaching the computer have-nots. So far, digital-television applications have involved things like voting in game shows or calling up information about a programme. But in principle there is no reason why the same mechanism could not be used by citizens to interact with their governments.
On online consultation with the public:
As you might expect, the place that makes the most advanced use of technology in promoting public participation is America, where officials now invite online comments from outsiders when they draw up legislation on subjects like environmental protection. A Department of Agriculture draft on organic-food standards, for example, prompted more than 250,000 comments. Yet the expertise mostly comes from a narrow range of specialists.
According to Cary Coglianese, an American e-government expert, imagining that online consultation will breathe new life into democracy "is a bit like imagining that giving automobile owners the ability to download technical manuals and order car parts online would turn a great number of them into do-it-yourself mechanics". Greater involvement by experts may make for more sensible rules, but it will not turn the system of public administration on its head.
The final paragraph is a hard point for me to take on board, because I believe that online consultation between government and citizens will help rather than hinder this country. Don't show those figures (250,000 comments) to the politicians or they will freak out as they build a mental picture of their workload skyrocketing (or, rather, the workload of their aides and government departments). Perhaps I'm being naive here, but considering the level of citizen participation in the parliamentary process today (i.e. very low), surely a large and diverse pool of opinions can only be an improvement for democracy in this country?
Hat tip: eGov AU
Friday June 27, 2008
Categories: Technology
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