The Governance of e-Democracy: From Consultation to Participation

1. The Governance of e-Democracy: From Consultation to Participation John Morison Connex Seminar , QUB 23rd September 2005

2. The Governance of e-Democracy: From Consultation to Participation • Consultation imperatives • Government consultation practice • Better consultation - a recommendation

3. 1. Consultation Imperatives • “Crisis” of democracy • Modernisation • New protocols for decision- making

4. Perceived irrelevance of state structures Reduced use of formal democratic process – election turnouts of less than 40% Marginalisation of minorities, sense of disempowerment a. Crisis in Democracy: A disconnect between formal electoral process and democracy

5. Democracy and decision-making Distinctions between: • Traditional, incumbent democracy • Radical, transformative democracy “democracy is a struggle over power, and as such, it provides an entirely different experience to those who hold power and those who do not”

6. Traditional, incumbent democracy Aggregative Procedural Top-down Formal and electoral Blind as to informal inequalities Justificatory and legitimising “thin” Frameworks

7. Integrative, Direct, Bottom-up, Aspirational, Informal and substantive Challenging and empowering “thick” process Radical, transformative democracy

8. e-democracy as “widening and deepening” democracy? From simple e-voting to an electronic agora?

9. b. Modernising Government in the Europe (and beyond) An international phenomenon OECD Briefing on Public Sector Modernisation (2003) http://www.oecd.org/publications/pol_brief

10. Big-scale changes in the “project of government” “Steering not rowing” D. Osbourne and T Gaebler Reinventing Government (1992)

11. “Government to Governance” • Globalisation – multiple sites of government, • nodes in a network rather than layers of a pyramid • Multi-format government • public, private, civil society, partnerships etc.

12. “The restructuring of government should follow the ecological principle of ‘getting more from less’, understood not as downsizing but as improving delivered value” A Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (1998) at p. 74.

13. Modernisation in the UK a style of government aimed at - reinvigorating public services - introducing new concepts of efficiency including elements of private sector efficiency, but without ceding control to the same extent as with earlier versions of privatisation - Ensuring that the public sector will operate in a way that is “as efficient, dynamic and effective as anything in the private sector”

14. Modernising Government: Key ideas • Consumer focus • measuring outputs, targeting resources, monitoring satisfactions • benchmarks and good practice codes • Cost transparency • Cross-cutting • joining up government • project based • Multi-format, (public and private and Vol.) • partnership ethos

15. Modernising Government: Key ideas • Central coordination/control • Cabinet Office, PM’s Delivery Unit, Office of Public Service Reform • Developing ICT • Online services • Consultation mechanisms

16. Modernisation as a “brand for other reforms • PSAs, “Best Value”, Beacon Councils and “earned autonomy”, duty to promote “community well-being”, “community plans” Health – foundation hospitals, Compacts with Vol. sector providers, • Civil Society as a “space of dialogue and debate”

17. Modernisation – next phase “it is by embracing customer satisfaction as the key driver for public services – finding out what people actually want from their services and using that information to drive change programmes – that we can help public services catch up with the best on offer in wider society”. Public Service Reform: The Key to Social Justice. A Speech to the Social Market Foundation by the Rt Hon John Hutton MP, Minister for the Cabinet Office on 24th August 2005 (available at http://www.smf.co.uk/index.php).

18. Engine for modernisation = www.ukonline.gov.uk - Online Services- 100% target - Consultation mechanisms- fine-tuning market led service delivery mechanisms

19. c. New Protocols for decision making: evidence-based policy-making

20. 2. Government Consultation – existing practices in the UK

21. Consultation register

22. A .pdf!

23. A managed process

24. Can we do better? Democracy and the nature of decision-making

25. Technologies of communication

26. Technologies of Democracy: Modelling democratic decision-making

27. Democratic sufficiency

28. 1. Support dialogue (i) • Two way communication

29. Support dialogue (ii)…. ii. Hearing many voices

30. 2. Hear all voices – software that explores problems/plans solutions

31. 3. Sharing information for informed decision-making

32. 3. Count each voice equally - measuring needs and preferences b

33. 4. Share the authorship of outputs – writing documents

34. Example: Simultaneous global teamworking

35. Design an open, equal democratic space - integrated systems for this are coming soon…

36. Recommendation: online civic debating systems • Funded by Government • Independent • Citizen orientated • Sufficient cheap bandwidth for useable ICT information support

37. A neutral public space for endogenous, genuinely participative decision-making

38. HEA e-consultation projecthttp://www.e-consultation.org/. j.morison@qub.ac.uk