E-Democracy Projects

This is a draft briefing prepared by Terry Grunwald terry@makingthenetwork.org as part of a project for DirectSupport http://www.directsupport.org.uk. Please don't link here without asking - this page is likely to move. However, more project ideas here >.

E-democracy projects aim to make sure that as many people as possible can use the Net to participate as active citizens - whether in traditional politics or specific areas where they wish to have some influence or make a contribution.

While online forums are growing in influence, it is clear that the existing Internet population is not a microcosm of society. Therefore, to ensure that no one is left out, those committed to e-democracy need to provide ways in which under-represented populations within each community can join in.

Why might centres get involved in e-democracy projects?

• Participation in e-democracy projects helps make centers a part of the fabric of the community. Through these projects they build a sense of community in their localities and communities, view them as a centre for community activity and influence.
  
• One of the key problems about e-democracy projects is that too few people know about them and those that do tend to be a small group of seasoned contributors. These efforts need broader participation and a fresh point of view. Centres can broker and support these connections between local citizens (especially from disenfranchised populations) and policymakers.

What do E-Democracy Projects Do?

• Take laptops to community organisations, sports clubs, lunch clubs, youth clubs, community centres, pubs, small businesses and other places where hard-to-reach people naturally congregate to demonstrate the active citizenship opportunities of the Net.

• Connect new users with a variety of online forums where they can 'give voice' to their views on issues that directly affect their lives.

• Create on-line forums, surveys, and content which supports and promotes greater involvement in public policy.

• Sponsor on-line active citizenship events and archive them on the web for future reference.

• Publicise opportunities for citizen input both electronically and in 'live' hearings, forums, workshops, etc. around the UK.

• Provide web-based multimedia opportunities for local people to tell stories about their lives that have policy implications.

• Provide opportunities for people to follow debates and access information to enable them to become more informed on the key issues of the day.

Resources

Parliament Live. Live Webcasting of Parliamentary debates includes the House of Commons Live, the House of Lords Live, Westminster Hall Live, and Select Committees Live. Citizens can search for a MP, find documents, and view a daily schedule of live events. Participants are asked for feedback and suggestions for improvement. There's also an Explore Parliament Junior website for school children with quizzes, puzzles, and competitions with prizes.

CitizensConnection.com has a series of short, large type, easy-to-read articles on 'How Society Works' on issues ranging from Equality to Employment. Other features include Skills for Citizens, campaigning, getting funded (including web fundraising), Young Citizens. And Just Do Something which allows citizens to search a database of board level opportunities throughout the UK.

Open.Gov.Uk is a first entry point to UK public sector information on the Internet.

EpolitiX bills itself as the Politics Portal. Here you will find political news, interviews with key figues and the UK's largest collection of MPs' sites, including links to those MPs who already have websites of their own.

Add Your Voice

CitizenSpace, a feature of Ukonline.gov.uk, provides an opportunity to learn about and participate in consultations by various government departments - and to find out the outcomes of previous consultations. The site also allows people to make complaints or suggestions about public services or connect with Parliament, Cabinet, and Local Government Ombudsmen programs.

The largest European online community is the BBC's messageboards - with discussions on hundreds of topics from TV soaps to learning English. The big topics are on The Great Debate with daily conversations on World Views, Parliament, Front Page items. It provides a Virtual Soapbox. The BBC also holds Live at 6 Forums . People are encouraged to email comments and questions on 'hot' issues that will be posed to politicians and other policymakers. The actual forums can be viewed on streamed video using REALNetworks.

The Women's National Commission website ensures that women's views are taken into account by the Government and are heard in public debate. Their most recent consultation was on Supporting the Cost of Home-based Childcare.

FaxYourMp.com is simple to use. Go to the site, type in your postcode and it tells you who your MP is and provides a form into which you type your letter, add your name, address and email address. The system emails you, just to check that you are who you claim and that you want to send a fax to your MP. Once you have given the OK, the fax is sent automatically. The service is free.

E-democracy.gov.uk web site has been created to support the Government's consultation on e-democracy which was launched in July, 2002. People have 3 options for participation: they can send an email, fill in a questionnaire, or participate in a Ukonline discussion forum.

If you want to find your MP or bookmark a one-stop web site for the official links to information about Parliament, the Monarchy, UK National and Local Government, UK Devolved Government, or EU organisations, go to the Hansard Society's Useful Links Section. If you are unsure which Government Department you want to get in touch with try their topic index.

The Democracy Forum is an online public space provided by The Hansard Society for the debate of issues concerning parliamentary democracy in the UK. Their most recent consultation (July, 2002) was SeniorSpeak which enabled discussion between older people, their families, carers and associates on the subject of long term care and related issues. Previous topics have included everything from Domestic Violence to Family Tax Credits. The consultation is open to all citizens, but there are rules of debate which all participants are asked to follow.

The Hansard Society also periodically offers an E-Democracy Coordinators Training Course. It is run entirely over the Internet and runs 5 hours a week for 5 weeks. The big catch: At £495 plus VAT it is quite pricey.

Especially for Young People

Yourturn.net is aimed at 14 to 18 year-olds and is packed with real-life stories of teenagers who have made a difference, together with opinions, factsheets, multimedia games and video-clips.

ActionZone, is the youth network of ActionAid. This site is all about DOING something in the fight against poverty. 'Find out what we're up to and take action now! ' It uses contemporary graphics, hip-hop symbols, and celebrities to stimulate young people's activism and offers games, auctions, and an opportunity to 'shout up'. Issues: People's Right to Food and AIDS/ HIV.

Learn more about E-Democracy

Democracies Online promotes online civic participation and democracy efforts around the world through information exchange, experience sharing, outreach, and education. Sign up for DO-WIRE , a free e-newsletter which describes what is happening with democracy and the Internet internationally. Their E-democracy Resources section provides a treasure trove of information on online consultations, electronic voting, online advocacy and lobbying. Steve Clift is the international guru of e-democracy and his articles on the site - especially the one on how to launch an Online Public Commons - should be the starting point for any community effort.

Read this 1998 article on The Impact of Telematics on Local Governance and Delivery of Services by Richard Stubbs the visionary director of Newham Online.

The International Teledemocracy Centre of Napier University in Edinburgh aims to develop innovative ICT-based applications that will strengthen public understanding and participation in government. It partners with business, government, voluntary organisations, and schools on customised projects. Resources include tools for (1) electronic consultation, (2) electronic petitioning, and (3) electronic elections and voting. Their site also includes a useful set of links.

CitizensOnline is a national charity that promotes access to ICTs particularly for people excluded from it for social or economic reasons. Their Everyone Online project targets a number of disadvantaged communities across the country where levels of Internet connectivity are amongst the lowest in the UK. The first pilot is based in the electoral ward of St Stephen in Brannel, near St Austell in Cornwall, and will be followed shortly by the second in Audley and Bignall in Newcastle under Lyme.

The Teledemocracy Action News+Network is an e-magazine that provides articles on 5 main categories of e-democracy:

• Voting From the Home: Mail/Phone/Computer
• Deliberative Polling/Deliberative Democracy
• Computer Assisted Democracy
• Electronic Town Meetings
• Affiliated Organisations/Institutions/Discussion-Chat Groups

Books and Articles

Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy Deliberation by Stephen Coleman & John Gøtze for the Hansard Society. This excellent book includes a wealth of useful information including case studies from around the world and a useful discussion of Appropriate Technologies for Online Engagement. They include:

• E-mail (one-to-one)
• Instant messaging (one-to-one, few-to-few)
• Mailing lists and newsgroups (many-to-many)
• Forms (one-to-one and one-to-many) (from guest books to weblogs)
• Chat rooms (one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many)
• Linear/threaded asynchronous bulletin boards (many-to-many)

Models around the World

A number of local councils have web-based discussion forums. Examples include Cumbria (discussion forum) and Lewisham (Have Your Say pages), and Swansea (Your Views Sought).

To give local councils and citizens a taste of the possibility of e-government transactions, see the Do It Online section of Ukonline.gov.uk. Here are some of the functions people can perform via the Net: do a tax self-assessment or apply for tax credits, get a TV licence, find local child care, nominate someone for an honour, get a passport, choose a tradesman to work on their house, or get a fishing licence. What can they do online in your locality?

Minnesota E-democracy (US), the granddaddy of e-democracy, was established in 1994. It is a non-partisan citizen-based organisation which seeks to increase citizen participation in elections and public discourse through the use of ITCs. Debate is vigorous, civil, and has an impact on real world governance. Read an article by Lincoln Dahlberg called Extending the Public Sphere through Cyberspace: the Case of Minnesota E-democracy which shows how this effort structures discourse to overcome many of the problems that presently limit democratic deliberation.

ThinkNet is a Discussion Forum for the Scottish Highlands. It aims to serve as a 'virtual think tank' to enable local communities as well as business and public sector representatives to get into discussion about major issues facing the Highlands.

The first Scottish Youth Summit Virtual E-conference was held in the summer of 2000. Over 1,000 young people across Scotland took part in nine separate conferences across Scotland. However, many more young people took part during the day through the E-Conference part of this website, giving their views and comments on a wide variety of issues, such as drugs, alcohol, smoking, Europe, bullying and other issues of importance to them.

Parables to Policy (US) is a project of the Southern Rural Development Initiative which records life stories of rural people and makes them available on the web using audio clips and graphics. Listen to the stories of the Appalachian people of a coal-mining area of Kentucky or the Gullah people of the Sea Islands off South Carolina. Then view a Dialogue among policymakers in response to those stories.

Lessons Learned

From Steve Clift, 'We have found great success with two rules - 1. No one may post more than twice a day. 2. All posts must be signed with the persons full real name and city'

From Doug Schuler (US) author of the book Community Networking: 'Democracy doesn't just happen· It requires investment, conceptually, institutionally, and materially. Conceptually, a society needs to cherish the notion of democracy and to consider it as an everyday responsibility· Institutionally, a society needs processes and agencies that promote democracy and are sustainable and capable of evolving to meet changing circumstances· Materially, a society needs to support those institutions with reliable funding that can be used for personnel, books, printing, computers, buildings, or scores of other needed goods and services. '

From Ann Beamish, author of Communities On-Line: Community-Based Computer Networks:

• Community networks will never and should never substitute for face-to-face contact with neighbors and fellow residents. They can, however, become electronic 'third places' providing additional environments where people can get together, meet and talk and arrange for meeting face-to-face.
• The technology has its constraints: without the cues or social pressure of the real world, conversation is too easily dominated by a small but vocal group. These perfectly legal, but often perfectly annoying, people can monopolize conversation, frequently driving away the more reasonable participants in exasperation.
• There is an important place for moderated discussion. Many successful discussion groups have a host or moderator who generates conversation when things get slow, redirects the thread when it becomes aimless, calms things down when conversation gets too heated, and encourages the many lurkers to participate.

Reality Checks

A Pew Foundation study in the US found that a majority of the audience of online election campaigns cite convenience, not a desire to tap new or different information sources as the primary motivation for using these sites.

This gloomy notice once posted on the Brixton Online web site said it all. 'Unfortunately, due to constant abuse of this forum (including moronic semi-literate racist nonsense from people outside Brixton), we have decided to take it off-line and replace it with a more secure registration-only system at a later date.' To avoid this scenario, check out Steven Clift's article that provides a step-by-step guide to starting an civil online discussion.

This Reality check comes from the Bowling Together Book cited above:

'Anyone studying the experience so far of online public engagement in policy-making will come up against three unavoidable truths:

1. There are very few examples in any country of the internet being used to involve citizens in policy deliberation.
2. Where examples can be found, they are of an experimental nature; online public participation is still in its infancy.
3. Almost all of the cases one finds are frustrated by the same two problems:

• too few people know about them;
• governments fail to integrate them into the policy process or respond to them effectively'

Can your centre help fill this gap?

October 2002