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THE RILEY REPORT - August 2005
from Thomas B. Riley RTRiley6@cs.com
www.rileyis.com
www.engagingcommunities2005.org
Following is the Riley Report for August 2005. Please feel free to pass this on as you see fit. If you wish to use any part of the Report in an offline publication please acknowledge the author or contact the author for permission if it is to be fully republished offline. If you are not currently subscribed to the Riley Report (there is no charge) you may email RTRiley6@cs.com and simply put "subscribe" in the body of the text.
This month's Riley Report summarizes a paper presented by Thomas B. Riley at the 14-17 August Engaging Communities 2005 conference engagingcommunities2005.org.0rg in Brisbane, Queensland. This paper was presented at a United Nations workshop on e-Participation as part of the larger conference organized by the state of Queensland, Australia, and the United Nations’ Economic and Social Affairs Division. The paper assesses the state of e-Participation between governments and citizens at large. eDemocracy continues to be a growing phenomenon but has yet to engage any large, significant numbers in societies around the world. The paper recommends a three-tier approach to bring a wider number of people into the eDemocracy tent. The conference attracted 2200 participants with representatives from 35 countries. The full paper on this subject can be found at: www.rileyis.com/publications/research_papers/sharing/EgovRep.html
E-PLATFORM FOR
CITIZENS’ ENGAGEMENT:
A THREE-TIER APPROACH
Introduction
Engaging citizens in public discourse is an idea that is rapidly growing. As e-government programs, applications and services pervade our societies the opportunities for citizens to have direct input into the deliberations of government grow. In our evolving, network e-environment we are moving from a static government to citizen platform, to a government to citizen, citizen to government interaction. The latter is a nascent form of eDemocracy. Many countries in the world have undertaken online consultations with their citizenry. More importantly, many outside groups are now engaging in democratic activities at all levels of society through the exchange of information and knowledge gathered from government web sites and the exchanging of dialogue, information, knowledge and ideas.
Such activity has the potential to influence governments in their decision-making process. However, while thousands engage in some form of participatory dialogue online, much of it is disconnected from government. Many activist and citizen groups have used the Internet and other emerging communications technologies, to garner support for particular issues through referenda or petitions to members of legislatures or public officials. New technologies have also presented opportunities for citizens to use the new media to influence or interact with government. However, evidence to date shows there is little major impact on governments at this point. Consequently, there is a necessity to develop e-engagement policies and mechanisms to bring communities into the wider process of government. Many individual citizens and groups want to influence governments but are often uncertain about how to do this nor do they have the technological skills or desire to do so. This emphasizes the importance of e-engagement.
The paper presented at the Brisbane UN conference addressed some particular methodologies on how to further engage communities in the process of government. To make significant changes that would draw the citizenry more widely into the process requires commitment and attitudinal change. Cost factors also come to bear on this as well as the question of how to engage people for their input and opinion. Referenda, offline and online, could be one first step towards bringing the wider public into the whole process of government. New technology tools are rapidly emerging that make it easier for governments to engage with the citizen at large. However, this raises an even more fundamental question: Does the public want to be more engaged in government or do they simply want the opportunity to make their views known every once in a while?
If governments do engage the public more frequently into public debate over issues of the day, how often do they do this? What mechanisms will be available to facilitate this process? How often should referenda be used and what subject matters should be considered priorities for referenda? What institutions within government need to be set up to make the wider transition to eDemocracy beyond online voting and online consultations? These are just a few questions that need to be addressed and scoped out if we are to move to a new form of democratic participation and beyond online voting (very limited at the moment) and online consultations (at a very nascent stage but growing rapidly with some governments).
Groups and individuals outside government are developing their online tools and methodology to create different forms of eDemocracy in order to influence governments and the issues of the day. Online activists and interested citizens alike also use eDemocracy tools to enhance democracy within their own groups and amongst themselves. Thus, we see a culture of a different approach to traditional democracy developing outside the sphere of government circles (with some input into government, and some politicians making effective use of ICTs to further their political goals) while governments make continuing constructive steps to move into the arena.
Governments are traditionally conservative and slow to move due to the nature of their organizations and the duty to take all interests of society into consideration when undertaking change. For the moment there is a difference in cultures occurring and a wide gap between what individuals and groups are doing online and what governments are currently capable of doing online, especially in their relationships with the public. As we have learned, technology is only a medium and a driver of new and important trends in society to the extent that they are driven by new ideas, i.e., conceptual constructs that contain innovation and creativity. Technology is not the creator of change, but is simply a tool. Usage of technologies, no matter their form, results in cultural evolutions because of the way that people adapt them. Implementation of new technologies may change the way societies organize and administer themselves, but they are never the driver of ideas, only the facilitator. Original ideas come from the mind of one person or from collective debate that then drives philosophical, cultural, societal, organizational, and administrative change. Thus, the usage of ICTs for the purposes of eDemocracy principles, as articulated to date, is only the beginning, and simply one tool, on the road to possible new forms of democracy. It is how we use this tool and the way in which we frame the debate that will result in these new forms and an extension of our current structures of democracy. Whatever the outcome of the debate, it is becoming apparent that the emergence of eDemocracy is starting to have some impact on both governments and society.
It is the continued practice of eDemocracy, the development of new tools and ideas, and a debate on the overall subject of democracy, which will bring us to a possible new plateau of a system of democracy that will reflect our increasingly changing culture and societies. This is not a suggestion to change what we have, but to build on the strength of the forms of democracy that have been developed over the past centuries. The important issue to hand is that there be a vigorous debate and discussions about the nature of democracy, and how all our new technologies can be used to produce a more engaged and interactive citizenry. There is also a pressing need for concrete strategies and actions to bring people into the process.
Such an achievement will take commitment and hard work by many sectors of society, not solely governments or legislative bodies (the latter being the most resistant to change due to the structure of political groups, who prefer to be the direct conduit to the citizen, as it helps their election to legislative bodies). Any movement forward can only be an improvement for elected officials, public sector officials, and the public itself. This is a difficult transition to make as, traditionally, most democratic governments have relied on interest groups, experts, and academics to assist them with amendments to legislation, the input of new legislation, regulations, or public policy. There is a three-tier approach of key practices that can be implemented by different stakeholders to ensure significant e-Participation, from online political debate, input into the evolution of government programs and decision-making on vital social and cultural issues of the day.
For e-Participation to be effective for different communities in society it is important that governments, Ngos, civil societies, unions, associations and other diverse groups bring citizens from all levels into the process. This means that each of these groups develop specific strategies and policies based on what groups and individuals they are trying to reach. The first tier is for government to develop effective strategies to widen their sphere of consultations with the public. The second tier would be for groups in society to connect with government and the citizenry by developing means to engage in wider e-consultations both with government and through other organizations. The third tier would be for organizations, such as Ngos, civil societies, associations, unions, lobbyists or professional bodies to engage with their members through online dialogues and consultations. The overall impact of this broadening of the e-Participation process could lead to wider interaction between not only governments but between wide networks of people in the world. The broader paper on this issues suggests a strategy for governments to widen their current online consultations. Full details can be found in the paper
at:
www.rileyis.com/publications/research_papers/sharing/EgovRep.html
Thomas Riley is available for consultations, preparation of reports, presenting workshops or delivering speeches at conferences and seminars on e-government, e-governance and e-democracy. Please contact me at the email address below for further details.
Thomas B. Riley
Executive Director and Chair
Commonwealth Centre for E-Governance
www.electronicgov.net
Visiting Professor, University of Glasgow
President, Riley Information Services Inc.
www.rileyis.com
email:
rtriley6@cs.com
Author: Time's End
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