Online: Engage the e-citizens: It is time to adapt government to the digital age
by: Daniel Stedman-Jones
Guardian, Online supplement, 15 Mar 2001
By the start of the millennium, the government had caught the e-commerce bug. Thoroughly impressed by the way companies were using the internet to provide information for their customers, take orders and even supply the service itself, government departments set about the same task. Efficiency and improved service delivery was the mantra. "We want to be customer focused," said e-envoy Andrew Pinder, after his appointment as the government's ambassador in cyberspace.
Within the limits of this ambition the government has been reasonably successful, and last month's launch of its portal, UKonline ( www.uk online.co.uk ),** makes a creditable first stab at delivering information to the public via the net.
But the truth is that this site is a computer simulation of e-government.
The challenge is to create new, vibrant 21st century political institutions which are democracy-driven, rather than treating the business of government as a version of e-commerce. This obsession with customer service has meant that the real potential of information and communications technologies (ICT) to transform democracy through the sharing of knowledge and information has been overlooked. The danger is that e-government is heading in a direction which is not as "joined up" as it could be.
The dominant influence of business and the private sector undoubtedly has many benefits. The aim of focusing services and their delivery more firmly around users is hard to argue against. UKonline may well reduce the hassle associated with government bureaucracies. The portal represents a genuine attempt to make citizens' relationship with government more relevant to their everyday lives.
Yet treating the citizen as a customer is not enough. As citizens, we share in the ownership of our government through the franchise and taxation. This ownership creates expectations which go beyond mere efficiency.
The problem lies in the false distinction that is often made between e-government and e-democracy. E-democracy is often confused with online voting, which offers a different way of participating with existing electoral systems. Former Bill Clinton adviser Dick Morris turns the idea into a gameshow with Vote.com, which promotes the idea of the instant referendum. He even fancies this could work for the justice system: "You be the jury and make a difference in real cases," screams a banner on his site.
The idea of e-government, on the other hand, is not understood at all and is usually met with a blank stare. What urgently needs to happen is for government services themselves to be built around the citizen, which would transform the way we are governed. This has started to happen but needs to spread across often reluctant departments and agencies which are intent on simply recreating themselves as a "virtual Whitehall".
The new forms of consultation that could be developed through ICT and the greater transparency that they allow would make governments more accountable. This has already started to happen. For example, the recent controversy over the use of depleted uranium ammunition came from the Ministry of Defence's publication of previously classified documents online. This is a good example of real e-democracy in action, but unfortunately the government does not appear to be extending this open style of thinking to its whole online strategy.
This idea of "transformation, not automation" is vital to the success and legitimacy of e-government. Urgent questions need to be answered about the way e-citizenship might look. As we approach an election where so-called voter apathy is expected to be a major issue, might e-government not provide a way of engaging people in the political process? This would go well beyond saving them a trip to the polling booth with a couple of mouse clicks and open all sorts of avenues of participation politics.
A start has been made to address some of these questions. For example, on the UKonline site there is a citizen's space where people can express their views and concerns about government. In theory, at least, these comments will be fed back into the development of services. There have also been innovative developments such as the creation of "citizen's panels" to consult a representative sample of people on government policy. Good, but not enough. All government departments, agencies and local authorities have to pro duce e-business strategies, so why is there is no equivalent requirement to produce a strategy for the e-citizen?
This may sound like a recipe for government-by-focus group, and there is certainly that danger. But democratic governments can only sustain their legitimacy by meeting the expectations of their citizens. The concerns raised by the phenomenon of "voter apathy" mean the search is on for new ways to reflect the concerns of an ever more sophisticated electorate.
People are less and less likely to vote the last election produced the lowest turnout in decades. They are even less likely to be a member of a political party. Citizens are choosing different outlets to express their beliefs. These have ranged from the very public fuel protests and anti-globalisation demonstrations, to the private support of humanitarian aid.
ICT is not a solution to the concerns raised, but it does offer the chance to channel these energies. It can start to close the gap between what governments do and people's everyday lives. That is why e-government means more than just a website it has the power to transform our lives.
* Daniel Stedman Jones is the author of the Demos report, Transformation, Not Automation: The E-government Challenge, sponsored by EzGov
** This is a typo! Correct address is www.ukonline.gov.uk (MB, Local Online)
19 Apr 2001