Category: Civic Participation

Digitalisation and Democracy: Key Issues in E-Governance and E-Participation

24/03/2023 

Background

Innovations in digital tools and technology afford governments new ways of engaging and involving citizens in political processes. The emergence of new technologies makes it possible for governments to communicate and interact with citizens more directly and enhance the access to government services – often referred to as e-Government. However, in this digitised world, Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) can also support the participation of citizens in political processes, decision-making, and in the shaping of public services – often referred to as e-Participation. 

This research brief outlines several key issues in e-Government and e-Participation, and the prospects of creating a more inclusive digital relationship between citizens and governments. After explaining and analysing these two concepts, this research brief focuses on the challenges of digital exclusion and a growing digital divide.

E-Government: Improving Access to Public Services

E-Government is today a global phenomenon. According to a United Nations 2022 report, digital technologies continue to play a global role in supporting basic public services, as well as fundamental services in education and health (United Nations, 2022). As an earlier analysis of e-Governments rightly pointed out, the aims and strategies for implementation have varied greatly from one country to another (Weerakkody and Choudrie, 2005).

In a UK context, The Digital Strategy of 2017 emphasises the Government’s ambition of using “digital to improve services” to transform “old government infrastructure” with a view to provide personalised services to citizens (DCMS, 2017). Or, in other words, to build “online services so good people prefer to use them”. This ambition continues in the Digital Strategy of 2022, which states that such digital transformation does not merely benefit citizens, but provides an important, emerging market for innovative UK businesses (DCMS, 2022). Some of these initiatives have included the Home Office’s digitalisation of immigration systems, HM Revenue & and Customs’ transformation of tax systems, and the initiative “Data saves lives” which seeks to transform health care across the UK through the utilisation of data. Other e-government initiatives include the digitalisation of employment services, social security benefits, personal documents (passport and driver’s license, car registration, birth and marriage certificates), and enrolment in higher education.  

Councils are also employing technology and various digital tools with the purpose of securing several wider benefits, including reducing the costs of customer contact, sharing resources across public bodies, managing increased demand, as well as planning for broader impacts of demographic change (Local Government Association, 2016).

The overall benefits of the digitisation of public services have been framed in terms of increased efficiency, cost savings for government and business, increased transparency, and also greater participation by citizens in the political sphere (European Commission, 2022). It has also been articulated in terms of a greater “information flow” from citizen to government, government to citizen, and within governments themselves (Salesforce). Recently, proponents of a further digitalisation of public services have highlighted how such a transition may aid in boosting wider sustainability efforts and accelerating the low carbon transition (Global Government Forum, 2021).

It should be noted, however, that much of the research on e-Government initiatives have focused on the “supplier side”, and has so failed in appreciating the citizen’s perspective and satisfaction with such initiatives. This was highlighted in a 2016 study by Weerakkody et al. which sought to measure the relationship between user satisfaction and “system quality”, “information quality”, “trust”, and “cost”.

Although e-Government services promise a great range of benefits, it remains the case that they have partly failed in “attracting large portions of citizens” (Sundberg, 2019). Some researchers noted that e-Government initiatives, rather than seeking to promote the values of democracy, have been designed with a primary eye towards technical and economic factors, while crucial democratic and social aspects have merely been partially considered.

E-Participation: Including Citizens in the Political Process

The notion of “e-participation” is usually understood as a subset of e-government, but emphasises the possibility and desirability of citizen participation. Although the academic and practitioner literature frames this concept in different ways, it usually centres on the idea of utilising “information and communication technologies (ICTs) to engage citizens in decision-making and public service delivery” (DESA / Le Blanc, 2020, p. 4). Given the relationship between greater citizen involvement and democratic process, e-participation is subsequently framed as an essential dimension to “e-democracy” (Hennen et al. 2020), and associated ideas, including “electronic democracy”, “digital democracy”, “teledemocracy”, “virtual democracy”, and so on.

It is important to note, however, that such digital means is not meant to replace traditional government-citizen relationships. Instead, they offer the possibility of “complementing or contrasting” traditional communication channels.

The effects of ICTs for increasing public participation in democratic processes and public service delivery have been helpfully summarised by Hacker and van Dijk (2000). ICTs:

• Enhance the speed and scale of providing information, thus making citizens more involved;
• Make political participation easier by removing obstacles;
• Create new ways of engaging specific groups (including, especially, vulnerable groups);
• Give a greater voice in formulating government agendas;
• Enable political agents to more directly respond to citizen needs and concerns. 

More concretely, the power of e-participation can be divided into three functions, which imply the utilisation of different tools; monitoring, agenda setting, and decision-making. In terms of monitoring, citizens can through digital means monitor, question, and advise political representatives. Citizens may also employ “e-petitions” to influence the setting of political agendas and priorities. An e-petition feature was officially introduced on the Downing Street website in 2002, with the aim of giving citizens a more direct way to influence the central government and its initiatives. According to current legislation when 100,000 signatures have been reached, a proposal will be debated in the House of Commons. Since its introduction, 36,000 proposals have been submitted.

Citizens may also participate in political decision-making through crowdsourcing for law proposals and policy-making, internet consultations by political parties, participatory budgeting, as well as e-voting. In the United Kingdom, TheyWorkForYou (theyworkforyou.com) enables citizens (over the age of 12) to monitor the activities of the House of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, and the Northern Ireland Assembly. It provides information on individual MPs, including the number of written questions and participation in debates, and appearances and expenses. Although this tool provides a good insight into political processes, the ability of citizens to interact with political representatives and systems remains limited (Korthagen and Dorst, 2020).

We can see here that the idea of e-participation covers a variety of aspects, with some of them including more citizen agency than others.

Whether e-participation, and e-democracy more broadly, is effective remains a contested issue. Although citizens can more easily express opinions in this digital arena, the evidence is scarce when it comes to citizens positively affecting policymaking. This may be because the government, when it is including citizens in public deliberation, is not legally required to act on such initiatives (Leston-Bandeira, 2019).

Even though e-participation offers a valuable extension to wider participation efforts from a government perspective, it faces ongoing challenges; it may lead to “thin” participation and “echo chambers” (Hovik and Giannoumis, 2022, p. 7), and e-decision-making can be dominated “by an ignorant majority of participants unaffected by the issues at hand” at the expense of smaller groups that are strongly concerned about the specific issue.

E-Government, E-Participation, and Digital Exclusion

Recent governmental initiatives aimed at digitalising public services and involving citizens more directly in political decision-making may transform the citizen-government relationship as traditionally conceived, and may introduce the beginning of a “digital democracy” with “digital citizens”. At the same time, such efforts need to acknowledge and combat the digital divide, avoid the rise of “second class digital citizens” (Hovik and Giannoumis, 2022, p. 7) and ensure that digital engagement does not reinforce existing inequalities.

Multiple challenges face those that seek to access digitalised public services. A study centred on a public library in Oxfordshire, housing a “digital helper” volunteer programme which offers one-on-one assistance to people using the internet and computers, found that those struggling to access online, governmental services typically lacked a “digital footprint” (Allmann and Radu, 2022). That is, they lacked pre-existing accounts, including an email address to sign up for an account to access a service. However, as part of this signing up process, one needs to submit a number of digital documents, and many people lack the resources to scan “documents and then download them from email” (2022, p. 89). For other services, such as Universal Jobmatch, you may need multiple devices to confirm your identity through a two-factor authentication process. A library can offer free computers but when digital systems assume the access to multiple devices, then “free public access immediately becomes insufficient” (Allman and Radu, 2022, p. 90). Moreover, without a sufficient level of digital skills, people may not only struggle to access such services, but are also at greater risk of online harms, including sharing sensitive information with unreliable platforms.

Likewise, e-participation faces several challenges, many of which mirror the challenges to democratic participation in general: lack of voices for marginalised groups, a sense that such participation does not lead to meaningful impact (causing “participation fatigue”), a lack of administrative capability to manage meaningful participation initiatives, and so on. In addition to a lack of digital literacy and computer access, many people lack the skills necessary to analyse political and policy proposals. Indeed, such skills go beyond navigating social media and other online platforms. In this way, meaningful participation may only be “mastered by very small groups of individuals” (DESA / Le Blanc, 2020, p. 16).

References

Allman, K., and Radu, R. 2022. Digital footprints as barriers to accessing e-government services. Global Policy, 14(1): 84-94.

DCMS. (2017). UK Digital Strategy 2017. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-digital-strategy/uk-digital-strategy.

DCMS. (2022). UK Digital Strategy 2022. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uks-digital-strategy/uk-digital-strategy. 

DESA, and Le Blanc, D. 2020. E-participation: a quick overview of recent qualitative trends. Available at: https://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2020/wp163_2020.pdf

Epstein, D., Newhart, M., Vernon, R. 2014. Not by technology alone: The “analog” aspects of online public engagement in policymaking. Government Information Quarterly, 31: 337–344.

Global Government Forum. 2021. The twin transition: digital transformation in government can also boost sustainability. https://www.globalgovernmentforum.com/the-twin-transition-digital-transformation-in-government-can-also-boost-sustainability/.

Hacker, K. L., & van Dijk, J. (2000b). What is digital democracy? In K. L. Hacker & J. van Dijk (Eds.), Digital Democracy: Issues of Theory and Practice (pp. 1–9). London: Sage.

Hennen, L., van Keulen, I., Korthagen, I., Aichholzer, G., Lindner, R., Nielsen, R. 2020. Introduction. In Hennen et al. (Eds.) European E-Democracy in Practice. The Netherlands: Springer Open, 1-8.

Hovik, S., and Giannoumis, G.A. 2022. Linkages Between Citizen Participation, Digital Technology, and Urban Development. In Hovik et al. (Eds.). Citizen Participation in the Information Society: Comparing Participatory Channels in Urban Development. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 1-23.

Korthagen, I., and Dorst, H. 2020. Parliamentary Monitoring. . In Hennen et al. (Eds.) European E-Democracy in Practice. The Netherlands: Springer Open, 151-162.

Leston-Bandeira, C. 2019. Parliamentary petitions and public engagement: an empirical analysis of the role of e-petitions. Policy and Politics 47(3): 415-436.

Local Government Association. 2014. Transforming public services, using technology and digital tools and approaches. Available at: https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/transforming-public-services-using-technology-and-digital-tools-and-approaches.

Salesforce. Of the people: Advantages and Obstacles of Making the Transition to E-Government. https://www.salesforce.com/solutions/industries/government/resources/advantages-and-obstacles-of-e-government/. 

Sundberg, L. 2019. Electronic government: Towards e-democracy or democracy at risk? Safety Science, 118: 22-32.

Weerakkody, V., and Choudrie, J. 2005. Exploring E-Government in the UK: Challenges, Issues and Complexities. Journal of Information Science and Technology 2(2): 25-45.