e-Government

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e-Government

• ENVISIONING e-DEMOCRACY

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e-Government Potential Uses
e-information
e-services (basic)
e-services (advanced)
e-input (from citizens)
e-democracy
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e-Democracy...Potential

• promote political equality by equalizing access
  to political information
• promote open government and facilitate input
• strengthened sense of citizen engagement social
  cohesion
• opportunities to reinforce/build communities of
  shared interest
• educational potential helping make better
  citizens

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e-Democracy...Potential

• more responsive government services
• horizontal departmental integration and vertical
  connection to clients
• flatter organizational designs and greater
  autonomy for front-line staff
• greater accountability of politicians and public
  servants
• information on performance more easily available
  to wider audience

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e-Democracy...the Obstacles

• elites
• public and private elites have powerful role in
  the current policy process
• lack of political will to really open up
  decision-making to outside players
• lack of familiarity and comfort with ICTs among
  public sector leaders
• general public
• lack of interest, knowledge, willingness to
  participate in the policy process
• lack of familiarity and comfort with ICTs among
  public (especially older generations)

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e-Democracy...Dangers

• will reinforce existing inequalities
• digital divide
• centralization of control over information
• surveillance
• privacy issues
• security issues
• will eliminate intermediaries between governments
  and citizens
• promote fragmentation and the loss of social
  cohesion

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e-Democracy...Dangers

• will eliminate intermediaries between government
  and citizens
• legislators
• political parties

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e-Democracy...Displacing Representative Democracy

• ...Parliament may have the most to lose in terms
  of the impacts of the new technologies.
  ...legislatures will be squeezed between a more
  demanding public and a wired-up political and
  permanent executive. As the new technologies
  make plebiscitary democracy and instantaneous
  bureaucratic responsiveness more and more
  possible, there could be less reliance on
  representative democracy. Whether ICT ends up
  weakening or strengthening Parliament...will
  depend on how quickly and in what ways technology
  is used in the parliamentary process. Paul
  Thomas, 2000

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e-Democracy...Dangers

• faster democracy?
• Bill Gates ...information technology allows for
  business at the speed of the thought.
• government at the speed of ___________?

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e-Democracy...Dangers

• A computer lets you make more mistakes faster
  than any invention in human history with the
  possible exceptions of handguns and
  tequila. Mitch Ratcliffe

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e-Democracy...Dangers

• government at the speed of civic engagement
• meaningful exchange and public deliberation
• forging compromise
• developing social cohesion
• governments ability to make tough decisions
  stick
• Is good democracy too slow for the Internet?

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e-Democracy...Dangers

• will eliminate intermediaries between government
  and citizens
• legislators
• political parties
• make democracy faster
• digital reasoning is binary yes vs. no choices
• political reasoning in a pluralist democracy must
  be complex, nuanced, and accommodating of
  differences

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e-Democracy...Dangers

• promote fragmentation and the loss of social
  cohesion
• citizenship becomes more privatized than
  community-oriented
• governments focused on service delivery (rather
  than participation) reinforcing a shallow
  conception of citizen as customer
• harder to make tough decisions stick (social
  capital)
• isolated individuals more exposed to manipulation
  by political and economic elites

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e-Government

• Final Thoughts...

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Assessing the Impact

• Trying to assess the true importance and
  function of the Net now is like asking the Wright
  brothers at Kitty Hawk if they were aware of the
  potential of frequent flyer programs. Brad
  Feren Chief Imagineer Walt Disney Co.

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Assessing the Impact

• ...the uses and impacts of ICTs will be shaped
  and conditioned by economic, social and political
  forces more than the inherent attributes of the
  technologies themselves. To date the impacts of
  the new technologies on Canadian democracy have
  been more incremental, contradictory and less
  positive than proponents of electronic democracy
  and government have predicted. Progress towards
  stronger democracy will depend less on technology
  and more on social development, political
  changes, the structures of government
  institutions and the priorities of
  government. Paul Thomas, 2000

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• The coasts of history are strewn with the wrecks
  of predictions. James Bryce, 1893