Technological Support for e-Democracy : History and Perspectives

Tom Gross GMD-German National Research Centerfor Information Technology Schloss Birlinghoven 53754 St. Augustin, Germany tom.gross @gmd.de
Abstract
The interdependence of technology and society is unquestioned and has influenced research in technical sciences as well as social sciences f o r a long time. Especially technologv to support citizen participation and e-democracy can potentiallv infliience a whole political system. This paper discusses the role o f technology with respect to citizen participation and edemocracy. Three core requirements f o r systems supporting citizen participation and e-democracy are specified and it is analysed how the-v are met by current svstems. Community networks are introduced and their evolution is characterised as an example of sociotechnical evolution with respect to citizen participation arid e-democracy.

In this paper the role of technology with respect to citizen participation and e-democracy is discussed. We will start by introducing and motivating citizen participation and e-democracy. Three core requirements for systems supporting citizen participation and e-democracy are introduced. We then analyse how these requirements are met by current systems. Finally, we will introduce community networks and characterise their evolution as an example of socio-technical evolution with respect to citizen participation and e-democracy.

2 Towards Citizen Participation and

e-Democracy
In the book The Republic Plato argues that people are bad judges in political matters, because most of them do not have experience in important areas such as foreign policy, economics or national issues. Plato assumed that direct democracy encourages bad leadership, because people can not be trusted to make the best choice of leaders and because leaders who depend on the popular favour will primarily try to retain the favour with as easy means as possible [ 161. Nevertheless, there has been quite some progress towards direct democracy in modem societies. In fact, in the U.S.A. citizen participation and e-democracy were used as arguments for the creation of the new National Information Infrastructure (NII). Miller [2 I , p. 2 121 writes that [olne of the most powerful arguments for the creation of the new National Information Infrastructure (NII) is that it will strengthen democracy. At the core of the NI1 lies a universal service for everybody in the U.S.A., but similar ideas and approaches are spreading quickly in other countries as well. A universal service can according to Miller [21, p. 1791 be defined as: [A] process of eliminating barriers so that everyone h a s t h e opportunity t o use o u r evolving telecommunications systems f o r meaningJit1 and eflective participation in all aspects of socieq-from the economy io culture, f r o m policy decision making to community life-starting with a democratically established minimal level of guaranteed functionaliq. In theory, this universal service should be the aim of any e-democracy initiative; in practice, there are several

1 Introduction
The interdependence of technology and society is unquestioned and has influenced research in technical sciences as well as social sciences for a long time. In fact, each technology that is introduced-not matter at which scale-changes its environment. Nevertheless, the impact varies among different technologies. Technology to support citizen participation and edemocracy has a potentially huge impact. An interesting case in this respect is reported by Coleman [6] about the Westminster parliament. According to Coleman the Westminster parliament has witnessed at least two what he calls information revolutions. The first infomation revolution was the rise of the printing press, which allowed to print bills in the sixteenth century. Before that, bills had to be read aloud. Coleman reports that this was only accepted with resistance of some members of parliament arguing that the secrets of the parliament should not be disclosed. The second information revolution of the Westminster parliament were the rise of telegraphy, radio, and television. Until 1954, BBC was the sole broadcaster and BBC was forced to broadcast discussions only fourteen days after the discussion really took place. Only in 1978 radio microphones were allowed and only in 1985 cameras were allowed in the House of Lords.

0-7695-0680-1/00 $10.00 0 2000 IEEE

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challenges. A particular challenge of a universal service lies in the fact that the training, experience, and resources vary considerably among citizens. Furthermore, preferences and interests are different. In fact, universal service does not mean that everybody can and should be able to do the same things in an equal way. Rather, the minimal level of service that is needed for meaningful participation should be defined. Miller enumerates five requirements for a universal service. Although he primarily focuses on the situation in the U.S.A. and challenges relating to the NII, the requirements are general and can be applied for other countries as well. A universal service should provide access to the service from anywhere; create an adaptive and adaptable interface for the service; offer flexible training and support; support systems and services for personally and socially meaningful tasks; and make sure that the universal service is affordable. Besides these challenges, the public awareness and desire for citizen participation and e-democracy in the emerging information society have been there for years. Already in early 1994 the MacWorld magazine polled 600 randomly selected adults and found that more than half of the respondents said that online voting in elections is the most desirable service; that sixty percent of the respondents had a moderate or strong interest in participating in online polls; that almost sixty percent liked to take part in interactive, electronic town-hall meetings with political leaders and other citizens; and that almost half of the respondents would like to have electronic contact to elected representatives. Subsequently requirements for citizen participation and e-democracy are discussed.

documents, surveys, reports, and public announcements. Frankenfeld [14] calls this the rights to knowledge or information. On a whole the information can come from the public sector via information gatekeepers or directly from citizen to citizen. The case where no information gatekeepers are in place can be referred to as disintermediation [4].

3.2 Open Discussion Participation

Open discussion has various aspects that are important for citizen participation and e-democracy. Open discussion has to take place in a top-down direction-that is, the citizens need possibilities to contact elected representatives and to have direct interaction with them. Furthermore, the bottom-up direction-that is, discussions among citizens-is equally important. These latter discussions can be held among two individuals, between one person and a big number of other citizens, or among the broad public. Through open discussion the citizens can broaden their understanding by exchanging information, views, and feelings with other citizens. Anonymity is a very tricky aspect, because on the one hand it is often good and important to identify individuals and to make them responsible, but on the other hand there are several situations where it is desirable and legitimate to stay anonymous. Another trade-off can be identified between free speech and censorship. However, a thorough discussion of these aspects would go beyond the scope of this paper. Frankenfeld [I41 calls this the right to participation.

3.3 Electronic Voting

Once the citizens have the information they need and have discussed it, they also need to be able to participate in decision making. Electronic voting is an important aspect and offers many advantages. Citizens do not have to go to the poll and can vote from their homes or from anywhere else. Electronic counting saves a lot of time. However, electronic voting also entails several challenges such as the authentication of the voting person and the guarantee of privacy.

3 Requirements for Citizen Participation and e-Democracy

The above mentioned requirements for a universal service are very general. In this section three more specific core requirements for the technological support of citizen participation and e-democracy are presented. Basically, citizens need to be able to access information, to discuss political issues, and to vote electronically.

3.1 Public Access to Information

In order for citizen participation and e-democracy to work, the citizens need various types of information. They need information with respect to elections-that is, only well-informed citizens will guarantee that good decisions will be taken. Furthermore, they need information about possibilities of their own involvement in policy discussion and decision making. Examples of information about current policy-making are information about current and future committee meetings and votes, text and status of pending bills and regulations, position papers and background research material on current issues. Examples of information on the output of current governments are scientific research results, legal

4 Technological Support for Citizen Participation and e-Democracy

Subsequently we will discuss how public access to information, open discussion participation, and electronic voting can be and are supported from a technical perspective.

4.1 Public Access to Information

Governments and public institutions have been providing information to the public for a very long time. However, with the spreading use of new media public access to information received a new boost. Doctor and Ankem [9] have studied several hundred systems in this

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area and developed a three-dimensional taxonomy. On the first dimension situational (or subject) categories are introduced such as education, governmental process, social services. On the second dimension the type of help is distinguished including advocacy, counselling, directional, factual, and interactive communication. The last dimension takes into account socio-economic identifiers such as age group, educational level, gender, or income. Applying their matrix they found that directional and factual help dominated and that most of the systems targeted towards middle and upper middle income. Public information systems can be technically based on email for personal communication, email distribution lists for announcements and so forth, newsgroups for discussions, the WWW for any type of multimedia information, and WWW conferencing systems (e.g., HyperNews [IS], BSCW [3]) which allow citizens to annotate and discuss WWW pages [5].

4.2 Open Discussion Participation

In 1984 Benjamin Barber [ I ] claimed strong democracy requires . .. a form of town meeting in which participation is direct yet communication is regional or even national. I...] Thus for the first time we have an opportunity to create artificial town meetings among populations that could not otherwise communicate. This metaphor of electronic town meeting or electronic town hall has been applied until today. In the 1970s most electronic town meetings were based on two or more media. Often the meetings were advertised by newspapers and then broadcasted by TV and citizens could participate using the telephone. Therefore, there was not a feeling of a real meeting among citizens. Since the 1980s computers have been increasingly used for the communication. It started with the use of IRC (Internet Relay Chat), a multi-user, multi-channel chatting network. The advantage of IRC is that it is text-based and can therefore be used on any computer. Alternatively, video conferencing systems like CU-SeeMe can be used. For instance, RTZ Software offers a electronic town hall edition of their The Virtual Meeting desktop conferencing software [23]. It provides video conferencing, a whiteboard, a QuickTime movie and slide player, and so forth.

guarantee that each voter can only send one vote and that the voter stays anonymous. For Web site voting the voter logs in on a Web server and fills out the ballot in a Web fonn. This can be done from any computer with a Web browser and a secure connection. The advantage of this second option is that the transaction occurs in real-time and the system can provide online help. Furthermore, the counting of the votes can be done automatically. Problems could occur conceming hackers and technical bottlenecks with the data transmission and the Web server towards the end of the poll. In regional voting centres the voter physically goes to the centre, identifies herself, and then gets a voting terminal with her settings. All the voting centres are connected to a central voting server guaranteeing that the voters can come to any voting centre, but vote only once per poll. The advantages of this third option are personal face-to-face identification of the voter by employees from the voting centre and no requirements concerning the hardware and software equipment of the voter. Similar to option two the network among the voting centres and between the voting centres and the central voting server can be threatened by hackers and lacking capacity of network and computers. For instance, VoteHere.net [26] and election.com [I I] offer software for Web site voting and for regional voting centres. The software from VoteHere.net was actually used in a Republican Party straw poll in January 2000 [ 191. The software from election.com was used for the first Internet primary of the Democrats in Arizona in March 2000 [IO]. The effects of the respective technologies cannot be discussed in the scope of this paper. More information in this respect can be found in [25].

5 Example: Community Networks

In this section we will characterise community networks and discuss their evolution and influence on citizen participation and e-democracy.

5.1 Community Networks

Community networks are an important form of citizen participation and e-democracy. Howard Rheingold argues that virtual communities have the potential to revitalise democracy [22]. In general, community networks are communication and information systems that aim at enhancing community and enriching lives; they are often based locally and driven locally [20]. The Association for Community Networking [ 151 points out that Community Networking projects bring together local people to discuss and decide upon community issues. These projects explicitly focus on the whole community-they want to particularly include those who are traditionally left out (e.g., low-income groups, minorities, senior citizens). For this purpose, they often provide information and training

4.3 Electronic Voting

Predecessors of todays electronic voting systems are punch-card systems that were used in the U.S.A. in the 1960s and 1970s, vote-by-mail, and vote-by-phone [ 131. With Internet technology the voting process can be improved in three different ways: automation of the current process; Web site voting; or regional voting centres [12]. In order to automate the current process, ballots can be requested and distributed via email. The voter then marks the ballot and either prints it out and returns it via hardcopy or returns it via email. The advantage of this option is that it is easy for the voter and the technical requirements are low. The systems has to

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concerning general computer skills, the Internet, and basic research skills. Public access to libraries, schools, businesses, and non-profit organisations is provided for free or low-cost, This point of view and these definitions are shared by several authors.

5.2 The Evolution of Community Networks

The evolution and the future of community networks is discussed in a more controversial way. For instance, Kubicek and Wagner [ I71 argue that: ...more and more local newspapers and other commercial entities like on-line services such as AOL or Microsoft Network have discovered the local community as a lucrative market for information and communication services. It is no longer easy to draw a clear dividing line between the traditional communify networks and their commercial counterparts. This development has repercussions on the concept o generations of community f networks. The authors identify four generations of community networks. Community memories in the 1970s were a public forum, where everybody could freely publish their opinion electronically. The free-nets in the 1980s were the first publicly accessible information and communication systems that provided free email and Internet access for its users. In the 1990s community networks like the Boulder Community Network took a different perspective: it is assumed that most people have a private email account and access to the Internet anyway. Therefore, they mainly focus on providing some public access terminal for less privileged people and on providing all kinds of local information about the community for people within and without the community. Nowadays, a fourth generation of professionalised community networks can be identified, where the basic assumption is that more and more users of community networks take the perspective of customers and consequently expect professional services (e.g., professional contents) and do not necessarily want to contribute themselves. The Digital Cities project of AOL, the Sidewalk project of Microsoft Network, and the New York Today project of the New York Times are mentioned as examples. This transition can be seen as a new form of concentration of information and power and contrasts both the basic idea of community networks and of citizen participation and e-democracy. Whereas the aim of the first two generations was clearly a dissemination of information and power, the fourth generation can be seen as a movement back to a concentration, where the decisions of what kind of information, in which format, and so forth are taken by professional providers. The third generation-that is, the current community networkscan be seen as intermediate forms. This scenario contrasts several assumptions underlying new communities, which are described as fundamentally devoted to problemsolving with principles based on equity, and so forth ~41.

De Cindio and others [8] take a slightly different perspective. They also mention early attempts of community networks and argue that these civic networks provided members of the local community with access to a vast amount of resources and bi-directional communication. However, they argue that this movement split into community networks, which they also call citizen networks and which were often based on bulletin board systems; civic nets which were often promoted by local administrations and offered residents the possibility to inform themselves and to approach city officials; and city nets which served as window-shows for the public administration with hardly any interaction with the users. The authors point out that the first two types (i.e., Civic and Community Networks) clearly emphasised bidirectional communication and user involvement, whereas the third type (City Nets) offers less interaction. However-as opposed to Kubicek and Wagner-De Cindio and others [8] do not see these developments as being mutually excluding. They suggest that the above scenarios should be interpreted as being complementary. A single Network in a town could then comprise several aspects from different scenarios. Furthermore, the authors seem to be more optimistic concerning the democratising power of community networks than Kubicek and Wagner and claim that instead of reducing interactive communication to a new broadcasting medium, we need to transform it in the tool of choice able to sustain the local community-intended not as a mere recipient of electronic services offered by public and private organisations, but seen as a great resource for social development .. . or the transformation of the acronym CSCW, first related to the technologies of Computer Supported Cooperative Work and now used for Community Supported Cooperative Work. However-as opposed to Kubicek and Wagner-De Cindio and others [8] do not see these developments as being mutually excluding. They suggest that the above scenarios should be interpreted as being complementary. A single Network in a town could then comprise several aspects from different scenarios. Furthermore, the authors seem to be more optimistic concerning the democratising power of community networks than Kubicek and Wagner. They argue that Community Networks can and should be developed towards resources for social development. As far as the above mentioned requirements for citizen participation and e-democracy are concerned this means that in community networks public access to information has mostly been supported and will probably be supported in future systems. The future support for open discussion among citizens and between citizens and politicians is unclear. Electronic voting is hardly mentioned in the context of community networks.

6 Conclusions
In this paper citizen participation and e-democracy were introduced, three core requirements for technical support of citizen participation and e-democracy were presented,

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and the current technology was analysed. The last section introduced and characterised the evolution of community networks. Community networks are an essential area of citizen participation and e-democracy. As has been described the evolution, the state-of-theart, and the future of community networks is seen rather controversy among authors. The same holds true for citizen participation and e-democracy. For instance, Coleman [6] enumerates several likely future developments of citizen participation and e-democracy. The public can be consulted on draft legislation. Members of parliament will use web-sites and email much more than they do currently. Information will be provided online by the executive which can be scrutinised by parliament. And, interactive broadcasting will be developed and effect the coverage of and public participation in parliamentary affairs. In the opinion of Dahl [7, p. 3391 the evolving technology is bound to be used somehow, for good or ill. It can be used to damage democratic values and the democratic process, or it can be used to promote them. Without a conscious and deliberate effort to use the new technology of telecommunications in behalf of democracy, it may well be used in ways harmful to democracy. Barber [2, p. 1901 makes a similar point and argues that [dlemocracy can be reinforced by technology and it can be corrupted by technology.

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