E-Deliberation in Irish local government: Developing the SOWIT model

1. E-Deliberation in Irish local government: Developing the SOWIT model Vanessa Liston (TCD) Clodagh Harris (UCC) Mark O’Toole (Kilkenny County Council)

2. Challenge Can we enable citizens’ political participation in a way that enables inclusion, social learning and political co-operation towards the development of sustainable policy?

3. Rationale • “An obvious precondition of participation is that citizens need evidence that their participation can change policy outcomes, and evidence suggests that low participation rates are linked to a perception that participation has little impact” (The Power Inquiry, 2006)

4. Context Participation in Ireland

5. Citizen Participation in Irish local Government Local government participation limited to a number of committees and through the planning process’ (Meldon et al, 2000:6). The 2008 Green paper – Stronger local democracy – options for change considers petition rights, town meetings, participatory budgeting and plebiscites as means as strengthening the connection between citizens and the local government

6. Citizen Participation in Irish Local Government: Baseline study • Data on public submissions and citizen consultation events is maintained internally by individual local authority departments • It is neither centralised nor published

7. Participation Table 2: Submissions received to development Plans process

8. Numbers attending Kilkenny Table 3: Numbers attending meetings for Kilkenny Development Plans process

9. Citizen participation • Need for deeper and wider citizen participation. • Wider - ‘any growth in the numbers involved in political participation’ (Power Inquiry, 2006) • Deeper - ‘any change which allows a more direct, sustained and informed participation by citizens in political decisions’ (Power Inquiry, 2006)

10. Web 2.0 technology Web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. (Wikipedia) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TkeV_JgZq4&feature=youtu.be

11. Social networking in Ireland • 64% of young people(16-24) use Facebook for social networking • 1.9 million users of Facebook (+500% since January 2009) • Youtube 1.3 million users • Twitter 180,000 users

12. Online gov-citizen interaction • Online LAPs • lap.kilkennycoco.ie • lap.finalcoco.ie • wiki Government organisations tweet and publish to Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Flickr. Draft Sectoral Plan : Web 2.0 to connect with citizens

14. Aim of the SOWIT project • Create a model for enabling online citizen engagement in policy development processes that • Measures impact • Is inclusive [towards sustainable policy] • New view of representation: builds on innovations in deliberative theory by Iris Young, John Dryzek and Andre Bachtiger. • Is integrated to the policy development system

15. Proposed model rooted in deliberation theory

16. Habermas: criticisms • Impartialism: • Emphasis on consensus • Abstract and narrow (Held, 2006) • Promoting a single form of reasoning above others • Equality : • Rhetorical standards act as a barrier to the full participation of all citizens. • Common Good: • Restrict the scope of discourse. • Ideal deliberative environment does not exist (Young, 2000)

17. Innovations on which SOWIT builds A: Iris Young • Move away from common good towards harnessing social differences as a resource. • For sustainable policy outputs deliberation must be oriented towards: including the broadest range of views present in society and; enabling discussion with the aim of understanding and accommodation.

18. Innovation B: Dryzek’s Discourse Representation Representation of discourses in policy ‘Policy should resonate with discourses in the public sphere’ (Dryzek, 2010) Meta-consensus Agreement on the domain of reasons and considerations pertaining to the issue at hand as well as the nature of the choices to be made • Normative • Epistemic • Preference

19. Innovation C: Bächtiger’s Sequential Approach Good enough deliberation: • Relaxes Habermasian criteria, including sincerity • Rational discourse allocated to one point only in sequential deliberation • All communication types allowed at earlier points

20. Deliberative Model

21. Dryzek’s deliberative framework • A public space, without barriers to communication • An empowered space, hosts deliberation among actors in institutions that produce collective decisions (e.g. Council). • Transmission: a means by which deliberations in the public space can influence decision making in the empowered space • Accountability: a process in which empowered space answers to public space • Meta-deliberation: deliberation about how the system should be organised • Decisiveness: the extent to which the above five elements determine the content of collective decisions.

22. Components • Public Sphere • Social networking • Contact with representatives • Evolving learning framework • Aggregate output and sentiment reports on monthly basis for Council meetings • Discourse ‘representatives/influencers’ emerge for dialogue sphere when a policy draft is open for consultation • Dialogue Sphere • Discourse influencers deliberate in the dialogue sphere on draft policy • Distance between discourses is scored and visualised • Aim is to incentivise co-operative behaviour towards problem solving and inclusive policy proposals • Feedback loop to public sphere • Empowered Space • Output of dialogue sphere is input to policy deliberations in Council • Final Council policy is scored for similarily/difference to deliberated citizen policy draft. • Provide direct feedback and accountability link to public sphere

24. Preliminary consultation Draft compiled Public Consultation Manager’s report Council Proposed SOWIT policy process Feedback Revised policy SOWIT Public Sphere SOWIT Deliberation Sphere SOWIT Public Sphere SOWIT Public Sphere

25. Questions