Government agencies, national and local and Parliament, could set up a database for citizens to register topics that interest them. They would then receive a note by email when a body was considering something that fell into the nominated areas and inviting public responses It isn't advanced technology but gives citizens the opportunity to participate more fully, says Steven Clift, who has spent the past 10 years studying and encouraging e-democracy. Clift runs the PublicUS website, a forum for the discussion of moves worldwide related to e-democracy. He also uses the site to sell his consultancy and lecturing services.
The NZ Futures Trust brought him to Wellington and Auckland ealier this month, where he gave public seminars and spent a day with the State Services Commission’s e-government unit. The unit’s head, Laurence Millar, says he was interested to hear what Clift had to say.
Millar, however, played down any local moves to e-democracy in a recent interview with Computerworld (April 12, page 3) and some respondents to the government’s draft ICT strategy are pointing with disappointment to its almost non-existent profile in that document.
The New Zealand government seems to see its interface with the people almost entirely in providing services, says one.
“E-government typically starts off being seen as a technical project, all about keeping servers running and about security,” Clift says. “This brings in the consultants, who see dollar signs in re-engineering government systems.”
To persuade governments to spend money, these consultants must present appealing prospects of monetary savings, so they talk about shortening queues for services, “about getting people 'out of line [queues] and online', and the development tends to get focussed that way.”
Millar also pointed to the inequities that ICT-mediated public consultation might create for those without access to computer and internet facilities. Clift suggests too much attention is paid to “digital divide” arguments and they can become an excuse for inaction.
“We should be getting some people involved in new e-democracy moves now, even if it’s only 10% of them,” he says. They will help iron out problems with the systems and establish what works, and what doesn’t, with the local population so when the other 90% can participate, they will find a smoother ride and a service that is more relevant to them."
Email communication with government bodies can evolve naturally into online discussion among groups of people on specific topics. Local government in St Paul, Minnesota has several such forums, Clift says, “and the mayor sometimes contributes.”
Greater than the digital divide is the democratic divide as indicated by the number and type of people who “don’t bother to turn up” even at the general election voting booths, he says.
"We should not regard e-democracy as a thing of the future [when] in global terms e-democracy is now," he says. There are a number of good examples of online participation with comment sought through government websites from the White House down. Televising of local government meetings, via cable, is widespread in the US.
At least one New Zealand council expressed interest at one of his seminars in webcasting its meetings.
But e-democracy isn’t so far enough advanced that big strides can't be made for very little effort, says Clift. In that way, a country like New Zealand “could shoot to the top in one or two years” in the discreetly competitive e-government business, he suggests.
He agrees any type of e-government service has to be promoted. This can be done by a lead-in that is of immediate benefit to the user. “You can get someone reading an online local government newsletter because it offers a convenient way to sign their kid up to a sports team.”
Newspapers, too, can refer readers to government reports and forums through a direct link — printing a URL or preferably having it on their website for one-click access. What he calls "competitive interest" may engender some reluctance to do this.
"The media is facing tremendous competition for eyeballs [from rivals, including internet news services and advertising] but I think the biggest problem is evolving a proactive and responsible linking policy," says Clift.
Newspapers have run into trouble before for “deep-linking” into websites, which some owners of the destination sites see as interference with their right to lead the user to the same page in their way, probably going past advertisements in the process.
But he suggests such policies can be devised and are worth the work. "A newspaper which gives its readers online access to the source material behind the story will be respected and could well gain readership," Clift says. (Computerworld, of course, does it all the time.)
Autor: Stephen Bell
Quelle: Computerworld New Zealand, 30.07.2004
