When eDemocracy goes wrong

 eDemocracy Blog  4 Responses »
Mar 112011
 

A fascinating piece of research by Andrew Chadwick highlights the difficulties of developing eDemocracy projects in the complex institutional environments of the public sector.

While the data for the research was gathered during the mid-2000s and the study looks at an online forum set up by an anonymous Californian county to discuss fostering and adoption, the problems that arose will surely be familiar to many other practitioners of online engagement.

Chadwick notes there has not been a huge amount of research into looking at how engagement initiatives are perceived by those who operate them, so his work was based on interviews with key practitioners inside the Californian scheme.

Clear and present failure

The plan was pushed forward by an eGovernment co-ordinator and included the involvement of legal staff, the social services agency and the private company which ran the forum itself.

"The initiative was designed to be an innovative blend of online deliberative engagement and service improvement. It thus sits squarely within a 'converged' model of e-government and e-democracy, where citizen opinion is integrated into service design and delivery."

But while the intentions were ambitious, the forum ran for "a little under a year" and over one nine-month period it had just 15 postings in the fostering section ("one of the more populous areas of the site") which received 34 replies.

"Successful applications by prospective foster and adoptive parents did not substantially increase as a direct result of the forum. Due to it being outsourced to a private firm, the financial costs were significant."

And to compound the eDemocracy setback, Chadwick reports that the failure "effectively halted the development of online consultation forums" in the county.

What went wrong?

Reviewing what went wrong based on discussions with those involved, the research identified five key issues.

Most importantly, budget constraints and "organisational instability" created an "unfavourable internal context for projects that could not demonstrate tangible, quickly realisable cost savings".

And in the social services agency, staff cuts meant there was "a lack of internal time" for the project.

For many eDemocracy projects in the current climate, addressing this point is likely to be important – particularly in the context of schemes which invite mass participation but lack the resources to deal with the responses, leaving citizens with no idea what their input might have achieved.

Second, and again familiar to anyone working in the UK political context, there were policy shifts inside the social services agency.

The change (a move from finding families in the community at large toward prioritising care with members of a child's extended family) "hugely contradicted the forum's original rationale just a few months into the project".

It appears the scheme wasn't nimble enough to adjust to this change, or failed to realise what impact it would have on the incentives for, and value of, participation.

Third, there was "political ambivalence among elected representatives" who were not fully convinced of the need for the forum.

Chadwick said his fieldwork revealed "a great deal of ambivalence among the councillors toward engaging the public online".

"Overall, there was a mild but discernible defensiveness on the part of the politicians. This was manifested in two principal ways. First, the forum was dismissed as a sideshow (one representative had trouble recalling it). Second, they typically argued that the established procedures for citizen influence were working well. These were mainly seen as being offline channels, though there was enthusiasm about email contact, primarily because it was seen as a more easily controllable and private form of communication."

Fourth, Chadwick said the role of legal staff in shaping the plan was "particularly surprising" given that previous research has failed to highlight the importance of these issues.

"The fears centered mainly upon the need to balance First Amendment rights to freedom of expression against potential liability issues raised by the prospect of public speech in a government-sponsored online forum. They also encompassed concerns about the personal privacy of participants who were themselves foster or adoptive parents, the prospect of county employees using the forum to criticise policy, and digital divide issues."

Yet it turned out that the forum generated one "questionable post" during its operation, although that may have been partly because of the very low volume of postings.

Fifth, Chadwick highlights the problems generated by the outsourcing of part of the initiative.

There was a " breakdown of communications" between the private company and staff working in the social services agency. Employees from both the public and private sectors said there had been "major cultural differences".

And while many media clients of the forum provider have been more interested in using forums for branding and 'buzz', the public sector seems to have had different outcomes in mind.

If it could go wrong...

It is hard to resist concluding with this summary from the paper, which seems to indicate that if anything could go wrong in the project then it did.

"Entrenched expectations of the e-government program were mostly about service delivery improvements. The e-government team was free-floating rather than embedded in the county executive's office and was therefore unable to drive change. Departmental rivalry and different decision-making cultures were in evidence.

"Ambivalence on the part of elected representatives and liability worries from senior law officers played a subtle but important role in dampening enthusiasm. Technologically aware leadership was lacking where and when it mattered most.

"There was an eagerness to avoid too much sunlight following recent bad publicity, but there was also a desire to go on the offensive and grab media attention. There was fatigue following an enforced case management IT system implementation in a key agency. A dramatic policy switch came in the middle of the initiative.

"Insufficient resources inside the county administration meant that the forum was outsourced to a company that had previously only worked with the private sector. Policy goals were only weakly integrated into the design of the initiative.

"And all of this took place in the fragmented context of a large US county government experiencing budget cuts and downsizing."

The issues highlighted in this paper are, to a greater or lesser extent, relevant to pretty much any eDemocracy scheme and the paper is well worth studying in detail.

 

 Posted by at 10.00am  Tagged with: , ,

Citizen perspectives on political engagement

 Politics Blog  7 Responses »
Jan 102011
 

This post, partner to a previous one on institutional barriers to successful online engagement, looks at engagement issues from the citizen's perspective.

It includes ideas and findings from these academic papers and articles, which are worth reading:

Getting the basics right

If citizens are being asked to take part in an initiative, what are the ground rules for their participation?

One of the key points which crops up in any discussion of public participation is the importance of the final decision-making power.

As Cobb and Hamlett write:

"The usual criticism of such public involvement efforts is that they come too late in the decision-making process to be able to actually influence it; the more cynical claim that such public involvement practices are merely window dressing meant to ratify decisions already made prior to public involvement."

Nanz and Dalferth also make this point, and go further in proposing a radical solution to it:

"Our vision comprises a constitutional framework that establishes public participation in the larger political setting and defines the relationship between participatory arrangements and representative democracy.

"The framework would specify how outcomes of participatory processes are linked with policy action. It would provide different rules for the different aims of the participatory processes: informing citizens; consulting them on a given issue; or directly involving them in policy-making.

"The framework would provide an interface between citizens and decision-makers. It would help dispel citizens' perceptions that they are co-opted or not taken seriously. Public participation must have a meaningful impact on public policy; when it is used instrumentally to obtain public approval for decisions taken beforehand, it does not improve democratic legitimacy."

While a constitutional framework is not really a prerequisite for participation, clarity about what outcomes might result from the participation is hugely important. Anything less is almost certain to generate cynicism amongst those taking part.

Dimensions of engagement

With certainty over decision-making, it is possible to consider some of the other factors which influence the ways in which citizens might participate.

For example, Cooper, Bryer and Meek identified five aspects to citizen engagement.

  1. Who is involved? This covers issues such as the size, depth, and diversity of citizen participation and ensuring it is not just the 'squeaky wheel' which gets the attention.
  2. Who initiates civic engagement? Encompassing factors such as whether it is top-down or bottom-up, grassroots or professional, organised by the government or civil society.
  3. Why are citizens involved? Are they asked to help on policy creation or policy implementation?
  4. Where does the engagement take place? Which level of government is consulting, and through dispersed public hearings or some other mechanism. Each local area has its own biases and culture.
  5. How are citizens involved? Through competition or collaboration, with mediation or without it?

Issues such as these highlight the importance of bureaucratic values and processes in deciding the ways in which engagement does or does not take place.

As Yang and Callahan wrote, "citizen involvement is a manifestation of bureaucratic responsiveness to citizens".

But what other factors influence the way in which citizens might participate online?

Birchall notes that in 2004 Ann Macintosh described 10 key dimensions of e-participation initiatives:

  • Level of participation.
  • Stage in decision-making.
  • Actors.
  • Technologies used.
  • Rules of engagement (privacy, registration, site rules).
  • Duration and sustainability.
  • Accessibility (digital divide and website accessibility).
  • Resources and promotion.
  • Evaluation and outcomes.
  • Critical factors for success.

Meanwhile, Birchall, in his excellent post, lists the useful principles that Beth Noveck used when designing Unchat such as accessibility, free speech, accountability, transparency, facilitation, transcripts for latecomers to catch up and forced exposure to relevant information.

(Update: See also this post for more engagement advice)

Such factors need to be thought through beforehand in order to deliver a good online experience.

Making good websites

However, when it comes to evaluating actual experiences of participation, it tends to be done from the viewpoint of the organisation which ran the project. Zaman makes the important point that:

"To date, research in this area has predominantly been from the organization perspective and lacking in the citizen's (individual) perspective."

This is an oversight, given that members of the public are the intended beneficiaries (Direct.gov.uk is something of an exception in its transparency about feedback). And public perceptions of these websites is a key mechanism by which they judge the success of investment in eGovernment and eDemocracy projects (there might be others too, such as apps built on open data).

Zaman looked at the relationship between the quality of a public sector website (PSW) and citizen involvement, and also whether a citizen's expectations matter in achieving the goal of involvement via PSWs.

The paper concluded that a citizen's prior expectations "will not have a significant direct effect on their satisfaction with PSW".

But there is a positive link between satisfaction with a PSW and both its quality and the citizen's involvement in the political system.

What do citizens get from engaging?

It is also worth considering what citizens get from engaging with government.

Sometimes the benefits might be clear-cut, such as an improved service of which they have direct experience.

Cobb and Hamlett also identify some other less tangible benefits.

"Effective public deliberations, as an integral part of the agenda setting, aggregation, and policy formulation stages of the policy process, will generate public decisions with significantly greater legitimacy than decisions reached without such public involvement.

"De­cisions that clearly embody informed public input of this kind should, additionally, reduce the lev­els of public opposition to those decisions, which may allow for significantly improved implemen­tation.

"There may be a reduction of various forms of policy obstruction, including administrative and judicial delays. There is evidence that even citizens who did not, themselves, participate in deliberating about a specific policy decision find those decisions more acceptable if they know that other citizens were actively involved."

Other benefits include the creation of "civic learning oppor­tunities for participants and observers", covering the range of technical, economic, and political aspects of the issue being discussed.

Participants also learn "the difficulties of balancing goods and evils, making fair trade-­offs, etc" and are shifted away from a focus on personal goals and towards solutions which can work for the common good.

"In this way, deliberative democracy can serve the common good where mod­els of democracy based on narrow self­-interest and negotiation may fail. Thus, participating in effective public deliberations provides a training ground for citizens, a setting in which they are encouraged to develop essential democratic qualities: Moreover, like scientific inquiry, democratic discourse requires certain character traits; perhaps we may call them deliberative virtues. Among these is the capacity to proportion belief to evidence, the ability to suspend judgment when evidence is lacking, a willing­ness to change one's mind when evidence requires, healthy skepticism and distrust of authority, and an eagerness to examine claims critically and cooperatively."

The opposing view is that deliberation doesn't work, isn't necessary anyway and could be harmful if some groups are advantaged over others.

However, after analysing the data from one deliberative exercise, Cobb and Hamlett concluded that the process of deliberation does not significantly shift opinion to the strongly-held extreme views in a "polarization cascade" and nor does the 'mean view' of a group shift further in the direction of its initial bias during the course of a discussion.

"It appears that while the polarization cascade process is a legitimate concern for anyone considering public deliberations, the structure and organization of the specific deliberative exer­cise can be effective in blunting the polarization process."

They also note that in any event, not all polarisation is explicitly bad.

"Missing is the possibility that a polarization effect might derive from appropriately cognitive sources, such as learning and the power of bet­ter arguments."

Participation in the US

Bowler and Donovan, meanwhile, also examined whether participation engages citizens and leads them to have a more positive regard for political processes and democratic practices by looking at American states with substantial variations in their provisions for direct voter participation in legislation.

Looking at the 1992 American National Election Study, they concluded that the data was "consistent with the theory that direct participatory models of democracy may encourage a greater sense of efficacy, and possibly, civic engagement".

"People living in states that use more initiatives tend to have more positive views of their own political abilities and look more favourably on the responsiveness of government."

Bowler and Donovan caution, however, that it is difficult to judge whether perceptions are shaped by the actual policies of certain citizen initiatives or whether they are just a response to the "sound and fury" of initiative politics.

"It is possible then, that citizens may receive a false sense of empowerment from the use of initiatives if ballot measures have no consequence on policy, or if these measures advance policies that are inconsistent with the preferences of most citizens in a state.

"We do not expect that this is the case, however. There is mounting evidence that direct democracy does influence legislative behaviour by encouraging legislators to adopt policies that more closely mirror mass preferences.

"It seems reasonable to expect that a significant number of citizens are aware of this in direct democracy states and, thus, feel a greater sense of political efficacy than citizens in non-initiative states. In an era when cynicism about politics is high, these findings should not be seen as trivial."

 Posted by at 10.45am  Tagged with: , , , ,

Institutional barriers to successful online engagement

 eDemocracy Blog  No Responses »
Dec 272010
 

This post looks at the lessons from three papers loosely grouped around the theme of how state institutions approach issues of public engagement, online and offline.

The papers are:

Experience in Brazil

In his paper, Marques looked at the opportunities for participation on the websites for Brazil's presidency (largely 'broadcast') and House of Representatives (which has more participatory mechanisms).

In the case of the presidency site, he suggests that financial cost and political unwillingness are the key factors preventing greater two-way communication, with a lack of structure and staff also given as reasons.

"In the end, one has reason enough to believe that the little importance given to digital media by the Presidency (at least with respect to opportunities for participation) is a result of a macro–policy of electronic government."

The House of Representatives, however, has both a commitment to public involvement and has set up a committee structure to bring that participation about. But while the institution as a whole might favour greater participation, the same cannot necessarily be said about all the politicians.

"If one can say that the Management Committee made efforts to redesign the site in order to provide deeper e–participation mechanisms, the same cannot be said about all the political representatives who in the end lead the decision–making process which takes place in the House."

Interestingly, each message to a representative that is generated through the website is assigned a unique identifier, so that responses can be tracked and politicians with low response rates can be told to improve their performance.

Marques concludes by noting:

"Promoting political involvement is a complex task that requires an assessment of a variety of activities, circumstances, agencies, and political actors. The civic culture, the depth of democratic problems and the peculiarities of each democratic society are key elements in influencing patterns of political involvement."

The costs of change

The question of institutional and official buy-in leads on to the paper by Yang and Callahan, who look at why some institutions are better at engaging than others.

"[M]eaningful, or authentic, participation is rarely found as many public officials are reluctant to include citizens in decision making, or if they do, they typically involve citizens after the issues have been framed and decisions have been made. Citizens are often frustrated by shallow participation efforts which create more anger toward government and distrust in the ability of public officials to do the right thing."

They note that much involvement can be "passive", requiring little administrative change and not involving a threat to the status quo.

"In contrast, involving citizens in strategic decisions is more risky, requires more administrative attention, and will likely affect administrative order and power. This distinction is critical because many citizens feel that managerial-driven participation efforts are hollow exercises, where managers open the process to the public to demonstrate their willingness to listen and increase transparency, yet they hold on to and control the outcome."

They note recent studies which show that "bureaucratic values are far more important than political factors in explaining bureaucratic decisions".

"Bureaucratic realities require managers to consider the administrative practicality of citizen involvement in terms of resources required, the institutional capacity needed and the potential barriers. Barriers have been attributed to both citizens and administrators. Citizens are often criticized as lacking competence, expertise, skill, interest, and time for meaningful participation. Those who regularly participate often promote their own agenda and therefore are not representative of the entire community. Administrators are often criticized for promoting their own agendas as well as their unwillingness to share power. In addition, administrators may lack the time and financial resources that are necessary for meaningful citizen involvement to take place."

In addition, pressure from external stakeholders can leave public managers in the position of brokers or negotiators between competing interests, while demands that are outside political or constitutional norms can be resisted as illegitimate no matter how much powerful support they get.

And they also note that where the pressure for participation comes from can help determine the kind of participation which is then provided.

"While public managers in local governments have significant control over administrative processes and outcomes, their attitude and actions can be influenced by the expectations and pressures of salient external stakeholders. Public managers will respond more positively to salient groups such as elected officials, the business community, and nonprofit organizations because of the perceived power and legitimacy of their relationship with the administration. The very nature of these relationships predicts the shape and structure of participatory mechanisms, as well as whether the results from the participation will be valued by public managers."

And their 2004 research into the views of US local administrators showed that while public managers might cite lack of citizen capability and time as the biggest impediments to meaningful participation, in fact "administrative lack of time is the biggest barrier".

Spend to save

Similarly, Nanz and Dalferth suggested that the reasons for failing to get institutional support for online participation (or greater public participation of any kind) include the loss of administrative and political control over political processes, the costs for established structures and the need for administrators to learn to integrate new forms of participation into their daily work.

But they say the short-term costs can be covered by the savings which result from more effective policies.

"In the medium term, these short-term costs are mitigated, as decisions are linked to a better-defined expression of citizens' preferences, which ease implementation and preemptively resolve conflict. Financially, public participation is likely to be more costly in the short term, as its organization and implementation requires additional money for public meetings, facilitators and the dissemination of results. Lower implementation and administration costs, however, may outweigh these costs, as interviews with German officials involved in participation processes have shown."

Their paper also makes the sensible case for a proper methodology for choosing adequate methods of public participation.

"Organizers of participatory processes – most often public officials – need to know which method is most appropriate for a specific area and level of policy-making (local, regional, national, transnational). Currently the proliferation of participatory methods and the difficulty in identifying their specificities make the organization of public participation costly and complex. The methods vary along two main dimensions: who participates and how their discussions are linked to policy action. Are the participants selected (for example, randomly, or recruited from societal subgroups) or is the participatory arrangement open to all who wish to attend? Is the chosen method adequate for the particular aim of the participatory process (ie to inform citizens, to consult with them or to create a co-governing partnership)?"

An added complication is that different deliberative methods can also be more effective at different stages of the policy-making cycle.

Simple lessons

These three papers show the need to have an engaged bureaucracy if public engagement of any type is to work.

Marques illustrates how formal institutional buy-in is not enough on its own to deliver engagement, which much also be accepted by the people within the institution.

Yang and Callahan make a similar point, also showing how attitudes inside the bureaucracy are crucial for both shaping the engagement process and delivering forms of engagement which the public then find acceptable.

And Nanz and Dalferth highlight the range of engagement mechanisms which can sit between public and state institution, and the need to be clear about what they aim to achieve.

Half-hearted eDemocracy, it seems, is not a recipe for success.

Update: Via Stephanie Wojcik, see also this work on 'Examining the Barriers to e-Government Adoption'.

 Posted by at 10.38am  Tagged with: , , ,

eDemocracy ideas from the White House

 eDemocracy Blog  No Responses »
Dec 142010
 

The White House is currently running an interesting consultation on what an online engagement platform might look like.

In the post outlining the consultation, the emphasis is placed on "citizen experts" rather than just citizens given that the desired requirement is for "useful, relevant and manageable feedback to government officials".

One of the ways this will be done is through carefully tested questions and structured responses, as well as their distribution to professional networks.

The description of this mechanism seems to suggest that those who take part will not just be participating but having a more meaningful engagement with the process and with officials.

Transatlantic applicability

The US emphasis on experts also reminds me of this Conservative election pledge: "We will pilot a new 'crowd-sourcing' approach to drafting legislation, enabling expert members of the public to play a role."

The status of that pledge is currently unknown, as it isn't specifically mentioned in any departmental business plans.

While the US emphasis is on problem solving and the Conservative policy refers to the drafting of legislation, it will be interesting to see whether the American model has much applicability in the UK.

The ideal system outlined in the American document does sound rather like the kind of thing the Conservatives might have hoped would be built as part of their £1m crowd-sourcing competition... if it hadn't been swiftly dropped without comment after the election.

Government participation

Perhaps the most interesting line in the US statement of principles is this: "Citizen participation demands government participation."

It states that government officials should have a clearly defined role in the process and collaborate with the work being done in order to maintain public trust and prove the value of the discussion.

Having noted in my last post how the big next step for the Your Freedom site in the UK will be the feedback and interplay between suggestions and outcomes, I suspect that having officials maintain a continuous role in the debate might be more effective than simply sending out feedback at the end of the process

It will also be interesting to see how the wiki format for the US consultation works.

Given that the problem they are consulting on is how to consult about problems, perhaps if all goes well they might find they are already using a suitable, if basic, platform.

 Posted by at 10.00am  Tagged with: , , ,
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