The culture, policies and practices of government and the public service are heavily influenced by three key features that are, in general, common amongst bureaucratic organisations. Firstly, as outlined in Role of Government: Internal, bureaucracies maintain formal and strict hierarchies. Secondly, these hierarchies consist of precise and unambiguous divisions of labour. Thirdly, bureaucracies maintain comprehensive sets of rules, both explicit and implicit, which both shape and are further embedded by the extant methods of decision-making and agenda-setting. Though efficiency has been a primary goal for bureaucratic organisations for quite some time, the rapid economic, social, and political developments of the past three decades have provoked questions as to whether the operations of the state may be improved by adopting private sector approaches. Some governments have found private sector-esque reforms attractive, most evident in the growing tendency to view citizens as customers; indeed, the rationale behind many eGovernment initiatives has been the endeavour to offer ‘customer-oriented’ service delivery. While reform aimed at increasing the flexibility, responsiveness and innovative capacity of government is admirable, perceiving citizens as merely customers or consumers, rather than interlocutors capable of meaningful collaboration, is misguided and deleterious to democracy. The appropriate ‘external’ role of government can be divided into three interdependent categories: general policy and approach, citizen-centric initiatives, and fostering partnerships with the third sector.
General Policy and Approach
First and foremost, to establish the foundation necessary for eDemocracy to flourish, it is critical that governments declare commitment to the principles and practices of open government. Contrary to the rationale behind many existent eGovernment initiatives, particularly in Australia, open government is not merely about leveraging technology to increase efficiency and reduce costs. Nor is it concerned with providing information in a top-down and rigid manner. Rather, it is a new approach to governance that acknowledges that information and data should be free, easily-accessible, interactive, easily found and searched, based upon open standards, properly tagged and machine-readable, and capable of being freely transformed and reused. Results from eDemocracy initiatives trialled so far in the United States have demonstrated that greater effort must be placed into making released information more accessible, with agencies also needing to be much more creative in the way they attempt to engage and interact with citizens. Additionally, Digital Engagement team within the United Kingdom Cabinet Office has emphasised the need for establishing community internet centres, which would provide assistance aimed at overcoming the extant digital divide within society. Open government is a transformation of the scope through which the state views citizens, information, and the role of government in enhancing democracy. It is only from this basis that greater reform and further implementation of eDemocracy measures can occur.
The relinquishing of control and authority by the state is a core tenet of eDemocracy. While there is a significant role for government in developing eDemocracy and broader democratic reform, it is critical to note that the primary function of the state should be that of a facilitator rather than a director. In practical terms, online consultation should be conducted in an independent and ‘arm’s length’ manner. Citizen-driven contributions should be lightly moderated so as to exclude illegal, discriminatory, grossly-offensive content, and blatant ‘flaming’ or ‘trolling’, yet no content should be ruled out on the basis of ideological- or opinion-based differences. Citizens will either not engage, or disengage, if they perceive their freedoms of thought and expression are being infringed upon. Deliberative engagement, however, benefits from a more structured presence, or as Desquinabo and Ferrand affirm, a ‘convener’ over a ‘host’ (pp. 179-81). A deliberative ‘host’ merely offers a basic platform from which deliberation could occur, whereas a ‘convener’ provides funding, structure, streamlined processes, planning, and methods through which the results of deliberation can wield meaningful influence over policy. Thus, within the broad field of eDemocracy, it is prudent for the state to adopt varying roles dependent upon the particular initiative being developed and the outcomes that are desired.
Moreover, it is critical that elected representatives and the public sector not only acknowledge praise and criticism, but also respond to it in a meaningful way. Furthermore, state-run online platforms for civic engagement and education are not substitutes for initiatives administered by civically-oriented third sector organisations. As such, a primary goal of government activity within the field of eDemocracy is to foster vibrant state-citizen-third sector partnerships, supporting accountability and engagement initiatives, such as Open Congress, Open Australia, MAPLight, and Our Say.
Citizen-centric Initiatives
The key to understanding the appropriate role of the state in regards to citizen-focused eDemocracy initiatives, particularly in the area of civic education, is the theory of ‘nodality.’ Nodality can be defined as “the property of being in the middle of an information or social network.”[1] The idea of ‘nodality’ is also commonly referred to as ‘centrality’ with the most practical measure of centrality being ‘degree centrality.’ Degree centrality gauges the number of connections a given node, or website, has with other nodes; the more connections a node has, the more central it is within a network. For this theory to be relevant, it is important to demarcate the two types of centrality – indegree and outdegree centrality – as determined by the direction or flow of information and users. Those websites that maintain indegree centrality are those with many external nodes linking to them, with an incoming flow on information or users. In contrast, nodes of outdegree centrality possess more outgoing links, and thus direct users or information outwards to other nodes.[2]
Government departments have a tendency towards attempting indegree centrality, as they seek to possess control and maintain authority. Empirical evidence has demonstrated that this is likely counter-intuitive to fostering online engagement, as citizens have not been receptive to this approach (pp. 36-37). In contrast, government agencies should be seeking to attain high outdegree centrality, in effect functioning as a hub, linking citizens to a broad and diverse range of information and data, utilising a variety of media. The aim of fostering more informed public opinion and improved dialogue between citizens, the third sector, and the state should be paramount. Moreover, outdegree centrality “gives a stronger impression that policymaking is pluralistic and inclusive because the department considers a wide range of organisations and information sources to be worthy of a link.” (p. 37)
Two reports, both from the Department for Communities and Local Government in the UK, are particularly valuable in highlighting practical policy initiatives that governments can pursue in this area. These recommendations have ranged from facilitating national networks of civic organisations and nation-wide ‘take part’ citizenship campaigns, to government-sponsored ‘hack, mash and innovate’ events that transform public sector information into apps and online software. The reports can be accessed here and here.
Third Sector Partnerships
The involvement of the third sector and local community groups in eDemocracy is absolutely fundamental. Direct contribution from these organisations, fostered and assisted by government, increases the independence of eDemocracy initiatives, as well as their quality and capacity to offer more localised programs that better reflect individual and community needs. Those two nations where there has been a whole-of-government approach to eDemocracy – with leadership at the Prime Ministerial and Presidential levels – have also been host to the flourishing of online ‘info-philanthropy’ and third sector community engagement programs. The United States and United Kingdom are each replete with examples of profoundly successful initiatives; to name just a few:
UK
TheyWorkForYou uncovers the views, voting records, speeches, and so on of Members of Parliament.
WhatDoTheyKnow assists citizens with Freedom of Information requests.
FixMyStreet provides an easy way to have local issues swiftly brought to the attention of councils and local governments.
WriteToThem establishes a more straight-forward and streamlined process for citizens to interact with their elected representatives.
PledgeBank links citizens together to achieve positive local and community-based change.
No. 10 Petitions, designed by the third sector and implemented by the government, provides a platform for online petitions and is now the largest non-partisan democracy website by number of users (5 million unique users).
DemocracyClub acts as a hub where volunteers can cooperate toward delivering civic society projects.
US
Code for America ties together public servants, web developers and programmers to developed civically-oriented online tools and apps.
MAPLight highlights connections between campaign contributions and legislative votes.
Open Congress similarly tracks political donations from industry and allows cross-tabulation with the voting records of members of Congress.
The Sunlight Foundation has a broad range of initiatives aimed at making government information more accessible, policies and decisions more transparent, and elected representatives more accountable.
GovernmentDocs provides a searchable database of government data and information that has been retrieved via Freedom of Information requests.
Poligraft allows individuals to easily discover the sources of influence behind particular political issues or debates by plugging in news articles on the given topic.
Clearspending monitors government spending and gauges how accurately government departments are documenting their own expenses.
Lobbyist Registration Tracker is a searchable database of lobbyists, and also charts trends of influence and new lobbyist registrations by industry.
Follow the Unlimited Money uncovers where the money behind political campaigns, communications and advertisements originates from.
Government need not compete with the third sector in the field of eDemocracy; indeed, elected representatives and public servants themselves can leverage these initiatives to further state-sponsored endeavours towards the enrichment of democracy. It is not necessary for the state to control the methods through which politicians or bureaucrats engage with the citizenry. In fact, it is arguable that the more neutral platform provided by the third sector is more amenable to enthusiastic citizen engagement and deliberation. The role of the government, in the most simple of terms, is to provide support for these initiatives – predominantly via participation in them – and fill those gaps where the third sector is not yet present.
[1] Christopher C. Hood and Helen Z. Margetts, The Tools of Government in the Digital Age (New York: MacMillan, 2007), 5.
[2] Stanley Wasserman and Katherine Faust, Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 169–219.