Emerging Multi-level eGovernment Strategies in the United Kingdom: Investigating Certain
Cases where the mergence of ICTs with public-policy implementation presents new
possibilities for effective e-democracy governance in 2008. From the now permanent addition
to the English lexicon, “Googling,” to electronic voting, to political blogging
and online reputation management (NetRep) human activity is exponentially being
transformed by new innovations that concern the citizen and the state in the
digital age. The prolific lower-case
“e,” can be an elusive prefix denoting ICTs, lending itself to hundreds of
portmanteaux as contrasting as eDating and eGovernment. The digital epoch presents important
questions for political scientists in certain areas. In the context of
globalisation and rapid technical advance, across the world today citizens,
organisations, businesses and institutions practice e-utilitarianism as an
evolutionary mechanism of digitalisation. This asymmetrical trend refers to the
digitalisation of human transactions, applications and utilities. The
application potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and
Web 2.0 toward multiple-level utility is exponential. Hence it comes as no
surprise that such applications are in consistent development and execution in
governmental sectors. In particular, the United Kingdom
is a leader in applying e-utilitarianism to its running of the state. The
purpose of this essay is to investigate particular examples of the successful integration
of ICTs with public-policy implementation in the United Kingdom. In broad focus
it investigates eGovernance on national, and local levels covering cases where
forging new relationships with ICTs provides dynamic digitalisation of
bureaucratic processes and institutional structures. This ‘embrace,’ has led to
a more particular focus for political scientists on the potential of
eGovernment to promote eDemocracy. Subsequently, an additional focus of this
essay addresses the transformative elements of eGovernment on the polity and
its democratic processes. These resultants include the decentralisation of
parliamentary administrative processes through ICTs. This partial devolution
occurs as a product of increased transparency of MP’s legislative outcomes,
rise in civil participation, new methods of election of representation, deliberation
frameworks, as well as civil consultation. Thus, an elementary framework for
electronic direct democracy (EDD) with principle roots in classic Athenian
democracy becomes identifiable. The effect of this transformative relationship
between citizen and government is still in early stages of academic study. It
is for this reason that this essay presents hypotheses in conjunction with
available empirical data to explore eGovernment strategies. It attempts to
measure its hypotheses against the questions on the social and political
implications of eGovernment, the scale of EDD participation and the efficacy of
eGovernment outcomes. In particular, the United Kingdom
is a leader in applying e-utilitarianism to its running of the state. The
purpose of this essay is to investigate particular examples of the successful integration
of ICTs with public-policy implementation in the United Kingdom. In broad focus
it investigates eGovernance on national, and local levels covering cases where
forging new relationships with ICTs provides dynamic digitalisation of
bureaucratic processes and institutional structures. This ‘embrace,’ has led to
a more particular focus for political scientists on the potential of
eGovernment to promote eDemocracy. Subsequently, an additional focus of this
essay addresses the transformative elements of eGovernment on the polity and
its democratic processes. These resultants include the decentralisation of
parliamentary administrative processes through ICTs. This partial devolution
occurs as a product of increased transparency of MP’s legislative outcomes,
rise in civil participation, new methods of election of representation, deliberation
frameworks, as well as civil consultation. Thus, an elementary framework for
electronic direct democracy (EDD) with principle roots in classic Athenian
democracy becomes identifiable. The effect of this transformative relationship
between citizen and government is still in early stages of academic study. It
is for this reason that this essay presents hypotheses in conjunction with
available empirical data to explore eGovernment strategies. It attempts to
measure its hypotheses against the questions on the social and political
implications of eGovernment, the scale of EDD participation and the efficacy of
eGovernment outcomes. This essay is purposefully restricted
in two ways and is influenced by Peart’s (2007,
1) similar limitations towards localism in his study
of e-democracy in the USA. Firstly, this essay’s object’s investigation and
analysis are restricted solely to the United Kingdom. There are advantages to
using the UK as a lone subject. Its ICTs infrastructure is amongst the most
advanced in the world - it is one of the highest penetrated regions of internet
activity in per capita. 28 million users are actively online in the UK
constituting sixty percent of the adult population, (National Statistics: Internet Access, 2006: 3). This translates to a higher participation in ICTs transactions per
capita than most countries. In addition, the UK’s established democracy may
also provide a suitable experimentation subject that typifies Western democratic
core principles. Thus, the implications of eDemocracy in the UK can be more
widely speculated for other similar advanced democratic regimes. Conceptualisation In order to begin the
investigation we must provide a theoretical framework of the essay’s key terms
and conceptualise its definitions. Firstly, an important distinction must be
made between eDemocracy and eGovernment. “eGovernment,” refers to “the use of
communication and information technologies for making government operate more
efficiently,” (Kies, Mendez, Schmitter &
Trechsel, 2004: 3). To extend this to application with the notion of
“public-policy implementation”, the European Union’s community institutions
recognise EU strategy for eGovernment execution as: The use of information and
communication technologies in public administrations combined with
organisational change and new skills in order to improve public services and
democratic processes and strengthen support to public policies, (COM, 2003,
567). “Public-policy implementation,” also refers to the
way in which financial and organisational resources are leveraged to implement
policies,” (Manz & Trechsel 2004, 4). Peart (2004, 4) argues that
“e-democracy,” requires a dual conceptualisation: Firstly, whilst referring to
a revolutionary process where ICTs are utilised for practicable means for
citizens to exercise their influence in the governing process, it also refers
to the reduction of transaction costs between the political consumer and
government bureaucracy. Secondly, considering frameworks of institutional structures
and systems theory, e-democracy can also be understood as a transformative
force affecting, “change in the efficiency,” between the input-output
equilibrium of government departments and bureaucratic state officials, (Peart,
2004, 4). “E-Democracy governance”,
as a hybrid concept is to be classified as an enhancement process that extends
areas of classic democratic rule. Where legitimacy, popular sovereignty,
liberty and electoralism are central tenets to democratic raison d’être, this
‘enhancement,’ typifies e-democratic initiatives into three classifications: “transparency,
participation and deliberation,” (Peart, 2004, 5). Transparency
increases coverage and accessibility of information to citizens through ICTs
media. A resultant rise in civil participation in legislation is also observed
where transparent means spur on politicisation where apathy previously may have
reigned. Deliberative democracy or direct democracy also becomes a derivation
of e-democracy where citizens are afforded direct channels to vote on
legislation, respond to political outcomes and elect various forms of
representation through ICTs media. Figure 1 provides a typological grid illustrating
the relationship between public-policy implementation and ICTs. It provides an
interesting hypothesis as whether the immediate possibilities for effective
e-democracy are significant transformations on the current institutional
structure of policy implementation that is a developmental relationship with
e-utilitarianism.
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