Modern democracy in a virtual world

PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION:The way to be heard is online, as government prepares itself for a digital rebirth.

L ast year, Ireland appointed its first Innovation Minister, Michael Ahern, and the EU will soon be launching the first of its eParticipation pilot projects. eParticipation is the name given to the use of information technology for wider participation in public sector decision-making. It is a part of eDemocracy.

Urging innovation on to companies is a core component of many European government policies. So how are governments doing when it comes to innovating in their core areas of business?

"Innovation in the public sector is innovation in relation to technology," says sociologist and eParticipation expert Honor Fagan of NUI Maynooth, referring to Ireland's eGovernment and eParticipation initiatives. "In eGovernance, innovation has centred on the technology of administration. Many Government services have gone online, but it makes no difference to decision-making. When you ask is it creating a citizen-centric democracy or a consumer-centric democracy. . ."

Fagan leaves the question unanswered, but the distinction, once made, is an important one. It asks whether we should be judging Government progress by benchmarks such as efficiency or through indicators of greater public involvement.

The little-known European eParticipation programme, for example, is supposed to be a flagship for innovation in this area. It "aims to harness the benefits of ICT to improve legislative and decision-making processes," according to the EU, and is designed to encourage more participation in government.

The programme, however, offers funding of only €4.7 million between the 27 EU member states, which works out at around 1 cent per inhabitant of the Union. It could equally well be described as a start in promoting a new form of innovative consultation in government, or as a lack of real commitment. Despite the lack of public debate around eParticipation, governments around the world are at least experimenting with different initiatives.

Wikis - online documents that anybody can contribute to - have become a big area of activity in US government-agency work over the past two years. The most famous example is the website Wikipedia, which attracts contributions from thousands of people, helping to build the world's largest encyclopaedia.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the US recently proposed a new initiative, Intellipedia, which is an adaptation of Wikipedia for intelligence purposes. The New Zealand government recently asked the public to help rewrite the Police Review Act through a Wiki.

In the US again, the Federal Trade Commission last year created a blog to chronicle a series of Federal Trade Commission hearings, and the popular website YouTube - the video-clips site - is inspiring government YouTube lookalikes to store videos of different internal processes for new employees to use as learning materials.

Perhaps the most radical choice of innovation in the public sector is the use of virtual worlds. Again, the most enthusiastic agencies looking to adapt Second Life and other virtual worlds for public sector use are in the US.

"There are agencies using virtual worlds such as Second Life for public educational purposes," says Paulette Robinson, Assistant Dean at the US National Defense University and an expert in government applications of virtual worlds. She adds, "NASA, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and CDC (Centers for Disease Control) are good examples of these. Virtual worlds are being used for various levels of training. The US National Guard has developed a virtual world, the Nexus, for training emergency responders across the United States." The project involves simulating local, state and federal interaction in the event of crises.

The perceived benefits of virtual worlds to state agencies begin at the point where we interact with computers.

"A website delivers information in a rather flat manner," says Robinson. "Web 2.0 technologies have interactive components, but the sense of individual presence is missing. An avatar [a virtual-world "character"] represents the person who is operating it in real 3-D time, and provides the opportunity for immersion and transference of oneself into the avatar. The interactions have a more real quality and, with it, the opportunity to feel more comfortable interacting."

In terms of government-related activity these are clearly exciting times.

The question Honor Fagan puts, though, is how far these are taking eParticipation in reality. Fagan acknowledges that Ireland's most significant participation innovation, an e-consultation experiment last year with the Broadcasting Bill, indicated a strong commitment to innovate on the part of officials in the Oireachtas.

To broaden consultation for the Broadcasting Bill, officials set up a website where people could leave comments, and a discussion forum where members of the public could interact on issues relating to the bill.

Overall, the experiment has been deemed a success. "Our research showed up the enthusiasm of people," says Fagan, who headed the team assessing the e-consultation process, "and that this is a new development they can trust."

Padraig Donlon, who managed the process in the Oireachtas, cautions against over-enthusiasm: "We found with the Broadcasting Bill that those engaged with it were those with a direct interest, people from radio and television, which is very far from being the ordinary citizen." They, of course, represent a particularly vocal community. Donlon adds that the majority of the 500 comments left on the consultative website came from a core group of about 50 people.

"We did come up with the e-exclusion-type statistics," acknowledges Fagan, underlining Donlon's point. "It was a middle-class audience."

It is not just the formal government agencies that are involved in innovation. Service providers to government are also innovating.

In the UK, the Open University has been conducting research, under a scheme called the Schome Park Project, on the use of virtual reality for improving the communications abilities of troubled teenagers. One of the key findings of the project is that the participants "have found it very liberating to be able to interact with other people through an avatar", according to a recent statement from the director, Peter Twining.

American doctors are pursuing similar applications. The web-based newspaper reported recently that doctors at the Dallas Center for Brain Health in Texas had found that communicating with sufferers of Asperger Syndrome (a form of autism) in Second Life has improved the ability of their patients to relate.

Looking past the obvious technical difficulties that could be encountered, there's also a question mark over whether more populist politics is possible.

Reflecting on the experience of the Broadcasting Bill, Padraig Donlosounds a further cautionary note: "From a capacity point of view, we couldn't extend it to every Bill, and it is not suitable for every Bill."

To date, eParticipation has been tightly prescribed - it means getting people involved in decision-making. But perhaps that's not where the future of democracy really lies, given that we are accustomed to a representative form of Government. Perhaps eParticipation can work just as well if it creates new channels for government accountability, and US agencies are beginning to travel along that route.

It may not be participation as we thought we knew it, but perhaps it's the kind of innovation we'll end up wanting, should anyone think to ask.