By almost every measure, public confidence and trust in politicians and political institutions is slipping.

The RED unit of the UK Design Council looked at the problem from a local and practical perspective and wanted to find out what MPs could do differently in their constituency to rebuild our democracy and public faith in it.

In this short project they carried out two weeks of user research, ran a design workshop with 15 MPs and spent an intensive week working alongside the constituency office for Doncaster North.

Their report sets out ten practical things every MP can do to rebuild democracy in their constituency.

Download report (pdf, 1.34 mb, 25 pages)

An online ideas store to help cultural websites stand out from the crowd has been launched by Culture Online, part of the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), reports the eGov Monitor.

Called ProjectsETC, the new site aims to encourage information-sharing between institutions and focuses on the overlapping areas of education, technology and culture.

The site – www.projectsetc.org – includes case studies, practical guidance and comment pieces about real issues facing the cultural sector in the digital age.

Subjects covered include the truth behind web statistics, search engine optimisation and how to make websites accessible. The new site – part toolkit, part confessional and part advice centre – aims to help professionals working on interactive projects.

A series of podcasts has also been launched, exploring the issues behind the creation and management of digital resources.

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Next week is the 10th anniversary of the birth of e-government in the UK. Michael Cross of The Guardian looks at how it came to be, and asks what progress – if any – has been made.

“In 1996, a green paper called Government Direct (“e” was not yet a business buzzword) set out a vision of citizens paying their taxes, receiving benefits and taking part in the democratic process via new electronic channels.”

“A decade on, after spending several billion pounds building websites, the government is only now getting to grips with many of the challenges the green paper set.”

[...] “For all the talk of radical reform, however, government bureaucracy of 2006 is much the same as it was when the Spice Girls were in the charts. The latest rebranding of the e-revolution, under the name Transformational Government, is wrestling with the same questions raised by Government Direct – how to orient services around the user, how to authenticate citizens’ identities electronically and how to share data in a legal and ethical way. We are no closer to creating a one-stop death notification service for the bereaved.”

Back in 1996, Colin Muid (one of the authors of the 1996 report) says, “We were saying ‘let’s clear up this mess’.” And what about now? “Now? We’ve got a digital interface to that mess.”

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With Europe’s population ageing rapidly and the demand for healthcare growing, healthcare services need to become more efficient. However, little hard evidence is available on the contribution of eHealth solutions. Now one EU project, eHealth Impact, has demonstrated that eHealth can provide enormous benefits – if the technology is properly implemented.

Electronically enhanced healthcare promises to reduce costs, improve quality and efficiency and treat more patients with the same resources. However, to date, no reliable data has been available to support this claim.

Now that data exists. The eHealth Impact project, which finished in May 2006, conclusively demonstrated that there is over a 2:1 ratio between economic benefits and costs. In other words, the benefits gained from implementing eHealth systems are more than two times greater than the additional cost of implementing them. “An eHealth system might cost more, but the benefits far outweigh the costs,” says Alexander Dobrev of the project team.

“But that ratio needs to be treated with caution,” he warns. “This is the cumulative average from ten of the best eHealth implementations we could find in Europe.”

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People & Participation is the first publication of Involve, an independent organisation focused on the practicalities of giving more power to ordinary people.

“There have been many books and pamphlets about democratic reform. What is unusual about this publication is that it provides much needed practical detail, drawing on the experiences of many hundreds of practitioners who have used new methods to involve the public in issues ranging from local planning to nanotechnology. Its starting point is that deepening and strengthening democracy depends on success in learning lessons about why some kinds of participation lead to better and more legitimate decisions, while others do not.”

“The book shows that greater public involvement can greatly help in addressing some of our most pressing problems, and countering the risks of distrust and alienation. But it also warns that too much participation today is superficial, an exercise in ticking boxes as opposed to good democratic governance, or using public consultation to justify decisions that have already been made.”

“To their credit hundreds of public agencies have taken the lead in trying to involve the public more actively. The priority now is to build on that experience and to build confidence that public involvement can lead to better, and more legitimate, decisions.”

To download a free copy click here.

Falling voter numbers in elections across the European continent suggest people are increasingly disenchanted with the political process. Could an enhanced webcasting system, tested by local authorities in four countries, solve this ‘democratic deficit’ and help to bind communities together?

Martine Ruzza certainly thinks so. A member of the eParticipate project, part of the eTEN programme facilitating e-services for European Union citizens, she highlights the praise heaped on its system, and the resulting webcasts, by participants at the June 2006 ‘ICT for an inclusive society’ conference in Riga, Latvia. This event also generated a groundbreaking declaration on e-democracy.

“One-way internet portals are no longer good enough,” says Ruzza. “People want two-way communication with their local authorities, so they can consult documents, provide feedback and so on. Our system addresses all these requirements.”

The project, which ended in September 2006, builds on an open and interactive video platform developed by the UK company Public-i. Though based on webcasting, this platform offers far more than the streaming of sound and vision over the internet. Its main feature is ‘contextualisation’ – providing additional information on the speakers filmed at events. So a webcast may include textual details on their name and function, plus a biography, photos and email address.

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eUser, a Europe-wide survey of citizen needs for eGovernment and other public online services, funded by the EU, finds that 55% of those who have used eGovernment services are positive. Early efforts by Member States have led to a good start.

Nevertheless, a considerable proportion (33%) of users experience at least one significant obstacle when using or trying to use online government services. These include locating the relevant online service in the first place; using eGovernment efficiently; dealing with poor or patchy quality of content; and limitations in service functionality.

To remedy this situation, European governments must intervene on both the supply side – tailoring services to user needs and the user side – developing eSkills and awareness of online advantages.

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The relationship between late modern governance and new information and communication technologies (ICT) is complex and dynamic, catching the attention of scholars across disciplines.

The book “Democratic eGovernance : approaches and research directions” by Olsson, Jan and Åström, Joachim (eds.), brings together research within informatics, political science, media and communication studies and history, and provides a critical perspective on approaches and research directions from an inter-disciplinary perspective. The collective aim of the book is to develop a more comprehensive understanding on the conditions for Democratic eGovernance by pulling together insights from a variety of disciplines.

Taking on this challenge, the book summarises empirical researchand theoretical questions ranging from the invigoration of formal politics to the “explosion” of informal politics, from global trends to local responses, and from political ideas to technical practices. In its concluding part, a strategic inter-disciplinary research agenda is developed by combining thet hree intellectual virtues of Aristotle: episteme, techne and phronesis. This book is essential reading for all who have an interest in late modern governance, ICT and the possible futures of democracy.

‘Facilitating Active Citizenship’ is the title of a status report on eParticipation in the UK and Germany, published by the British Council in Germany in co-operation with politik-digital, a German organisation that monitors the impact of the German-language Internet on citizen-friendly political communication. The study is available in German and English.

The report itself draws few direct comparisons or conclusions, beyond noting that eDemocracy, like any other democracy, is nothing if not participative. For the most part, the study consists of well-researched and interesting practical examples from both countries.

An accompanying article on politik-digital digs a little deeper. “It is noticeable that eParticipation in Britain is already much more strongly integrated into everyday political life than in Germany,” writes politik-digital’s Christoph Dowe. “The Scottish and British parliaments provide extensive good practice on getting citizens and politicians talking to each other better. British public service broadcasting has now come to see itself as also being an ‘enabler’, not only delivering information but also creating the infrastructure for citizens to become politically active themselves.”

Dowe ascribes the differences between German and British approaches to attitudes predating the Internet: the British ‘Speakers’ Corner’ tradition of soapbox politics versus the feeling within German political institutions that they “have no legroom for experiments, because they might fail”. In IT terms, he dubs this “the German fear of the beta version”. But as Dowe himself points out, the report is only a snapshot. There is plenty more scope for eParticipation in the UK, Germany and everywhere else.

- Download report in English (pdf, 1.9 mb, 84 pages)
- Download report in German (pdf, 1.73 mb, 89 pages)

The purpose of the eGovernment Good Practice Framework, an EU portal site, is to catalogue good practice in eGovernment and to stimulate the sharing of this information. Supplemented by additional services (e.g. community building tools), this portal provides the vehicle for the dissemination of information and support activities, which will promote the use of good practices.

It does so by transferring knowledge to providers of public services, to formal and informal networks of eGovernment stakeholders, to the ICT business and other multipliers.

The main elements of the portal include an intelligent knowledge database, a community platform and transfer support instruments (e.g. electronic newsletters).

The World Summit Award (WSA) is a global initiative to select and promote the world’s best e-content, started in 2003 in the framework of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

It is an Austrian initiative to make world leaders aware of the necessity to develop and invest in e-content in order to bridge the digital divide and the content gap.

The award is structured in eight categories: e-government, e-health, e-learning, e-entertainment, e-culture, e-science, e-business and e-inclusion.

The e-Governance Academy is an Estonian non-governmental, non-profit organisation, founded for the creation and transfer of knowledge concerning e-governance, e-democracy and the development of civil society.

Its mission is to train and advise leaders and stakeholders in using information and communication technology (ICT) to increase government efficiency and to improve democratic processes with the aim of building open information societies.

The e-Government Academy is a joint initiative of the Government of Estonia, the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the Regional Support Centre of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Australian eDemocracy, a clearing house for information about the topic, is a collaboration between a number of Australian organisations involved in using Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to bring governments and citizens closer together with each other.

Partners include The National Forum (an NGO promoting democratic uses of the Internet in Australia), Cisco Systems and the Queensland University of Technology.

It features regular posts with information relevant to Australian eDemocracy, including overseas intitiatives and developments. The site is run on the basis of a wiki with contributions being provided by sponsoring organisations.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, now contains pages on e-democracy in English, Hebrew, German, Italian and Portuguese.

The English page is by far the most exhaustive.

The e-DC is o­ne of the first interdisciplinary research centres dedicated to the study of e-democracy.

Its main goal is to improve our understanding of how new information and communication technologies are interacting with our institutions of democratic governance, and to study the outcomes that are being produced as a result of this interaction. To attain this goal the e-DC research team strives to pursue interdisciplinary research of the highest intellectual quality.

From its inception the e-DC has been fortunate in being able to rely o­n the support of three leading research institutes: the Research Centre o­n Direct Democracy (c2d) at the University of Geneva, the European University Institute (EUI) at Florence, and the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at the University of Oxford.

The institute’s areas of expertise and close connections with the academic and policy communities offer it many opportunities to not o­nly help develop this exciting new field of research, but also to contribute to its practice.

The aim of the eDemocracy.co.nz research project is to examine the impact of using ICT to facilitate and influence the democratic process in a regional community in New Zealand, namely Waitakere City. Its final aim is to develop a framework for eDemocarcy driven by the needs of citizens.

Specifically, this research intends to:

• Observe and document the processes used within a community for engagement, consultation and development between council, community and businesses and the extent to which this is facilitated and influenced by the use of ICT;
• Identify the normative conditions for engagement and electronic engagement that are required in order to establish an emancipatory framework that could lead to a shift in the locus of power within the context of local (and potentially national) governance;
• Define a typology and vocabulary to describe the role of ICT in the processes of democracy, government and governance within the context of the research. This is required to ensure that the study is grounded in a commonly understood and clearly articulated context.

DEMO-net is a Network of Excellence project funded under the European Commission’s sixth framework programme: Information Society Technologies. The project started 1 January 2006, will be funded for 4 years and has a detailed workplan for the first 18 months.

The overarching objective of DEMO-net is to strengthen scientific, technological and social research excellence in eParticipation by integrating the research capacities of individuals and organisations spread across Europe. The intention is to advance the way research is carried out in Europe with respect to quality, efficiency, innovation and impact to overcome the currently fragmented approach to eParticipation in this important European research area. The network with this overall objective will provide a major contribution to the strategic goals set by the European Council.

The project partners are Aalborg University (Denmark); Agentura pro Evropske Projekty a Management (Czech Republic); Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy); Copenhagen Business School (Denmark); County of North Jutland (Denmark); Fondation National des Sciences Politiques (France); Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung (Germany); Institut für Informationsmanagment Bremen GmbH (Germany); Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (Greece); Napier University (UK); Örebro University (Sweden); Technical University of Kosice (Slovakia); University of Bergamo (Italy); University of Helsinki (Finland); University of Iceland (Iceland); University of Koblenz-Landau (Germany); University of Leeds (UK); University of Macedonia (Greece); and Yorkshire and Humber Assembly (UK).

The E-Democracy programme of the Hansard Society, a UK charity that works towards promoting effective parliamentary democracy, seeks to develop innovative ways of using new interactive technologies to reconnect Parliament with citizens and encourage participation in the democratic process.

The E-Democracy Programme’s research explores the potential for interactive technologies to create new channels of communication and participation between Parliament and the people to enable citizens to scrutinise and influence legislation and those who represent them.

Some of their latest initiatives are:

• Citizen Calling – a pilot initiative with the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, where young people can have their say via mobile phone.
• TellParliament.net – open online consultations being run by Parliamentary Select Committees
• im-local.net – an online resource allowing young people and councils to interact and discuss topical local issues using ‘instant messaging’ technology.

Can governments truly boast of services that rival the private sector’s? Leadership in Customer Service: Building the Trust, Accenture’s annual report tracking the evolution of Internet usage and customer service in government, says yes and no.

Accenture interviewed 46 high-ranking government executives in nine countries to assess government services delivery, and concluded that governments using a wide range of technologies and modes of operation are on par with the private sector. Those lacking integrated technologies for robust, online services have a long way to go to reach service delivery matching that of the private sector.

The report also concluded leading governments recognize that true citizen-centricity means removing — through simplification and re-engineering — as much work as possible from the system for citizens.

In addition to improving government services, greater IT automation must also gain the trust of the public, a theme of this report. For e-government to succeed, governments must build trust and comfort with those services, and tap into the public’s preferred modes of communication, whether by telephone or over a network.

• Read full story (Public CIO Magazine)
• Download report (pdf, 8.5 mb, 108 pages)
• Download executive summary in Italian (pdf, 357 kb, 18 pages)

(via eGovernment News)

How can we put the user of public eServices in the center of the designing and delivery of online public services and content?

The EU’s eUSER project wants to stimulate the availability and usage of useful and easy to use online public services.

The focus will be on the needs of citizens as users of online public services in their interactions with public administrations in general, in the management of their health and in furthering their education and developing their skills.

The project will prepare a state-of-the-art resource base on user needs in relation to online public services and on user-oriented methods for meeting these needs. It will then use this resource base to actively support the IST programme, projects, EU policy and the wider European Research Community to better address user needs in the design and delivery of online public services.

The project website already provides some very interesting statistics, country briefs and reports. Incidentally, the project is run in collaboration with the National Research Council Canada.

Read also this feature article, entitled “What users really want from online public services”, published on the IST Results website.