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Comments
for Parliament and E-Participation Workshop Thursday,
November 29, 2001. By Thomas
B. Riley On behalf of the Parliamentary Centre and the
co-sponsors of this workshop, the Public Policy Forum, the Canadian Centre
for Management Development, the Commonwealth Centre for Electronic
Governance and HRDC, I would like to welcome to today’s workshop. This workshop is the second in a series looking at
the role of the on-line citizen in the policy making process. In this workshop we shall be looking at the roles of
parliamentarians and the public service in the policy making process. Some
of the questions to be discussed and examined will be the determine what
are the roles of each of these institutions.
Another important question is: How are Members of Parliament and
Senators, as Parliamentarians, going to take the role as leaders in the
policy making process- a role
that the public expects from this body? The rise of new information technologies in the last
decade has created new interactive environments between the citizen and
its governments in many nations around the world.
The Internet, in particular, has created a forum for widespread
sharing of information and knowledge amongst information and groups.
This phenomenon has led to a burgeoning interactive citizenry that
is now used to quick access to information and to interacting with each
other and organizations. This
has led to an expectation from the public for more direct input from
government whether it be the delivery of a service online, getting
information form government or being able to interact with a public or
elected official. The
important point for us to note at this juncture is that there have been
significant cultural shifts in the past decade, which have partly been
driven by new information technologies.
For the purposes of these workshops, one of the important aspects
of the changes to be understood is the evolution of the massive amounts of
information now to be found online and how the knowledge generated from
this information can be contributed to the policy and decision-making
process. Any online
consultation process must concentrate on the knowledge that can both be
imparted from government and gained from the citizen. It is also important to acknowledge that while there are
online consultation processes and tools
being developed by many governments the traditional consultation
mechanisms are still very much in place and continue to be used.
In fact, there is no hard evidence to date to indicate that
e-democracy processes have had any significant impact on governments to
date. However, as citizens
are using the Internet and wireless communications to share information
and knowledge amongst each other a hesitant conclusion can be made that
such capabilities are contributing to the democratic process, as the
capacities and potentialities of an informed citizenry are growing.
However, the idea of an informed citizenry is still a limited one,
confined to those who have direct interests in government policies or
programs, are educated and have the wherewithal to access and use the
available tools to share this information Thus, some important lessons are being learned from
the examination of this question of the degree to which citizens can be
drawn into the policy making process through the development of online
tools. In looking at the whole question of e-participation,
it is worthwhile to first look at the distinctions between e-government,
e-governance and e-democracy that I make between these concepts. E-government - constitutes the way public
sector institutions use technology to apply public administration
principles and conduct the business of government. This is government
using new tools to enhance the delivery of existing services. E-governance - is the movement of governments
online to electronically deliver their services and programs, provide
government information, and interact with the citizen. This is the
formation of new relationships, and includes the private sector along with
citizens and other levels of government. E-democracy - is about how the citizen
interacts with government or influences the legislative or public sector
process … [it’s] all
about participatory democracy. This is the shift from representational
democracy to participatory democracy. Thus, the first workshop in this series, E-participation and the Policy Making Process, explored , issues, means and ways of engaging the citizen in the policy making process using online tools, looked at a series of issues. Two key presenters at that session, Anne Macintosh, Executive Director of the Institute
of Teledemocracy in Edinburgh, Scotland and Dr. Jeffrey Roy, of the Centre
for Governance, University of Ottawa, who you shall hear from today,
shared their insights on the degree to which government citizen
collaboration is occurring and the issues driving this new development. Dr. Macintosh raised three important issues in her
paper:
These
are fundamental questions to this debate.
However, these is an even more fundamental step that has to be
taken to engage the citizen
in e-democracy and that is to distinguish between e-democracy and
electronic voting. E-democracy
is a subject that has grown beyond the confines of elected bodies to a
subject matter dealing with how citizens are now using new technologies to
not just get information from government or express their view but ways in
which citizens and groups can inform themselves of the issues of the day
coming from government and then use the Internet as a tool to influence
the outcome of government decision making.
But the whole subject matter is at an early stage.
The subject of e-democracy itself can be likened to the early days
of television when election coverage was very rudimentary as opposed to
today’s extensive, almost minute to minute coverage on election night.
The question now is to what extent will the Internet impact on both
public sector organizations and our current systems of representative
democracy? At this stage we can only ask the question as the answers are
far from completion. We can say with some certainty that the new
technologies are going to have a fundamental impact on our political
process. We shall hear more
of this today from many of our presenters. Public
policy documents released by government require widespread discussion,
while the public is demanding to be more involved.
Dr. Macintosh, based on the work of their Institute’s online
consultations in Scotland and England, five main challenges that need to
be addressed, all of which, she says, can potential supported by
appropriate technology. The
challenges are:
In
considering these challenges, governments have to consider how technology
can support the offering of well-structured, understandable consultation,
support the ability of governments to better reach and engage their target
audiences, reach of
governments, support consensus-building within organizations, as well as
analysis and the provision of feed-back.
She also stressed that if any organization makes the decision to go
ahead and develop online tools to engage the citizen then it is vital that
the proper resources be allocated. If
the resources are not forthcoming then an organization should not go
ahead. Ann Macintosh asks, “What is required to truly
engage people in e-democracy? We
need to ensure that information is accessible and understandable, and that
people have an opportunity to respond in different ways. The use of
closed, partially closed and open-ended questions facilitates this. There
also has to be an opportunity for people to respond to specific issues,
since people don’t have the time to read lengthy documents, but there
may be burning issue they do want to comment on. We need to give people
the opportunity to dive into a conversation and just give a response on
one particular issue. There also needs to be timely analysis and feedback.
The increased use of electronic consultation, without timely feed back
will just lead to people being put off by the process and a resulting
diminished contribution.” Dr.
Jeffrey Roy, of the Centre for Electronic Governance at the University of
Ottawa, and whom you shall hear from later this morning, has observed that
there will be a necessary paradigm shift in moving towards the
participatory e-democracy system. I
do not want to pre-empt his presentation today so I shall like to quote
just one more of his findings that: “In
April 2001, the Canada West Foundation conducted an assessment on
e-democracy in Canada and found that we were falling far short of
expectations, in fact were at a primitive stage in thinking about
e-democracy. Government portal sites were not providing necessary
information; there was poor and limited interaction with elected
officials; and, a key point, the portals did not point the way for
citizens to play a meaningful role in policy-making. (See next page for
highlights).” Discussion following the Presentations Following
the presentations, debate among participants focussed on the challenges of
expanding e-democracy services within the Canadian federal government. It
has recognized that, while Internet technology in particular, is creating
a new environment, government is a deliberative institution that cannot
move as quickly as e-governance advocates might like. For a more empowered
citizenry to have an impact on government decision-making, more (and
speedier) decisions would have to be made within the civil service through
regulatory, rather than parliamentary processes. This may conflict with a
system of government traditionally based on ministerial responsibility. At
the same time, even parliamentary government seems to be less effective
with individual Members of Parliament having less and less input on policy
making, while the media as well as think tanks and public opinion polling
seem to have increasing influence over political decision-making. In this
environment it is difficult to determine what impact e-participation would
have. The
long-term impacts of e-governance are particularly hard to predict, but
participants recognized that there needs to be an ongoing conversation
about governance. The
sector with fastest growth in use of e-governance may be local government,
with participants acknowledging that there was definitely change occurring
in how citizens are interacting with local governments, although a greater
burden of service delivery by local governments is also leading to local
level burn-out and a need for more tools and resources for e-participation
to be sustainable at this level. It
was also agreed that e-participation is just one mechanism to engage
citizens. Governments must continue to use other traditional means of
consultation and avoid building up expectations of
e-governance before the technology can truly be put in place to
properly support it. At the same time, experimentation with e-governance
is leading to radical change and a new Internet generation may be
impatient for change and frustrated about the pace of government
processes. In summary, it is clear that the whole process of online consultations is a challenge and I trust that some of these challenges will be met in today’s presentations and discussions. Professor Thomas Riley |
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