Public Net-work

Steven Clift writes "I've written up an article titled E-Democracy, E-Governance, and Public Net-work. It illustrates how governments can do more with the Internet to meet public challenges. While the big bad government should be viewed skeptically in terms of censorship and regulation, it also does a million good things related to the non-techie parts of our lives. The question is not whether the government should use the Internet to involve people in meeting their public mission, but how to apply technology in the most effective way."

Woah, woah, woah

People... getting together... to solve problems. This sounds like it might end up in a bloody revolution! Better put a stop to it now before it's too late. Don't want this democracy thing to get out of hand.

The real problem with "E-Democracy"

...is not communication between the public and the governing bodies; it is meaningful communication. The greatest advantage of the Internet age--I can talk to anyone and anyone can talk to me without filters or gatekeepers--is also the greatest flaw. Ever try to have a meaningful conversation with a crowd of people?

Envision government running like "The Price is Right," with the audience screaming out the policy decisions. =)

I haven't finished the article yet, but I don't have much hope that there is a proffered reasonable solution.

Re:The real problem with "E-Democracy"

was gonna mod, decided to post instead...

so what your saying is that people are not capable of governing themselfs and that we need a ruling class???

No...what they're saying is "e-democracy" falls short of real democracy insofar as real democracy contains a measure of order, brought about by the inherent limitations of communication IRL. (Notice how parliamentary rules have evolved to address this very issue in our various forms of government.) Grandparent poster's point is that 'e-democracy' removes these communication limitations, thereby removing orderly dissemination of the democratic process, leading to mob-dominated chaos. Thus does 'e-democracy' fall short of real democracy. Kindly remove the aluminum beanie. :)

Re:The real problem with "E-Democracy"

"Ever try to have a meaningful conversation with a crowd of people?"

Yeah, I've posted on Slashdot too.

KFG

The article

I went to the article...I saw a lot of neat little graphs.

The conclusion was: To be involved in defining the future of democracy, governance and public work at the dawn of the information-age is an incredible opportunity and responsibility. With the intelligent and effective application of ICTs, combined with democratic intent, we can make governments more responsive, we can connect citizens to effectively meet public challenges, and ultimately, we can build a more sustainable future for the benefit of the whole of society and world in which we live.

It sounds eerily reminiscent of many dotcoms who tried to get into the government services market. There's a good documentary about one of them.

why not direct democracy

Part of the orginal justification of representitive democracy was that it was logisticly impossible to have everyone vote on every topic. But now that electronic voting is an option why do we still need representatives?

Re:why not direct democracy

"But now that electronic voting is an option why do we still need representatives?"

1. Because mob-rule (pure democracy) is a bad idea.

2. Because most people don't even give a shit about who's PRESIDENT, let alone every minor issue our representatives get paid (well) to address.

direct democracy not necessarily better

precisely because it is not feasible for everyone with a vote to be informed on every decision.

your representative has a team of highly specialized and highly dedicated aides whose job it is to know the entire issue.

they have the training and the time to do so. you or i, do not. not reliably, and not for every subject. are you going to pretend that having citizens directly vote on every contract extension for every union is a good idea? or how about directly voting on the budget, or social spending plans?

the collective doesn't have the same burden of responsibility. yes, representative democracy has a flaw (susceptible to corruption) but it also has enough benefits that it's a worthwhile system. it also has a large check (term limits, reelection) to ensure that the citizens have a measure of control over the graft.

Just imagine

If your local governments started putting public information online in a searchable format. Do a simple search on your local govt web site to get minutes of committe meetings, forclosures, law changes, heck, just put all the local laws and requlations in a database that is easily searchable. That would make it much easier for people to find laws and regulations. In my town at least, you either read about the town meetings in the local, and very crappy newspaper, or you have to trudge down to city hall and ask to see it. Not to mention putting on these websites who these elected and appointed leaders are, and what they have voted for and against. Nationwide, any state, county or city.. Would make it much easier to decide who to vote for, and what they have stood for in the past..

Hmm

Where I work, we just did a test-run with the "VClass" software. My boss is big on the idea that such all-in-one software (voice conferencing, whiteboard, app sharing, etc) could be useful for making "Virtual Townhall" meetings, where community members can participate without having to physically show up.

It would make sense to start this government information technology (GIT) revolution on a small scale and work slowly up, ironing out bugs along the way. Who knows, eventually countries might even use the Internet to host referendums for government policies?

How about no, Scott.

What the government already does online is good enough. You can renew your tabs online, file your taxes, and download forms, and probably a few more things. Anything beyond that will involve national ID cards, electronic voting, and everything else that you could possibly not want. Do you really want to trust the government to put your life online? Haven't you looked at the laws that have been passed lately? Does it make you think they have a clue yet? How about in 50 years? Somehow I don't think I'd even trust them then. But then again, by then it will be inevitable. They will be too tempted to use this power to ignore it. So I guess it's a good thing then, being that it's inevitable and all.

Decentralized Democracy

Obviously there are a boatload of issues with security that, hopefully, could be addressed someday. However I have a dream.

That dream is for the day where I, as a voter, get to make my voice heard directly on as much or as little of the government's operation as possible, without one catch-all representative doing it for me. Issues come up for voting, and there would be a place where I could go and see the most popular arguements on both sides and the views of critics and pundits and politicos of my choosing regarding the issues in question if I like, and vote directly on the issues. Or, if I am busy, perhaps I could earmark my representatives by expertise. Perhaps I want to earmark a respected doctor as my representative for medical issues, greenspan as my economic representative, nader as my consumer rights representative... and have their votes count for mine as default unless I actively change my rep for a particular issue or earmark an issue as "manual".

We'd still need a president to handle emergency decisions, diplomacy, and sometimes to override popular views that just are plain bad. But congress and the house of reps could go away completely. The "house of reps" would simply be whoever the people respect enough, either overall or within their area of expertise, at any particular time, to trust with their own vote. No terms or limits or re elections or smear campaigns. Just issues and discussion and participation, directly, on a one person one vote basis.

Maybe someday..

E-Democracy, E-Governance, E-tc.

This ""E-Citizen says "E-Nough!"

Government thinks you're stupid

While the big bad government should be viewed skeptically in terms of censorship and regulation, it also does a million good things related to the non-techie parts of our lives.

Unfortunately, one goes with the other. You let government do "a million good things" for you and its natural instinct is to do even more. For your own good of course. That includes censorship and regulation. Government thinks you can't handle your own affairs, so it'll just have to do it for you, you stupid clod.

Well though out...but is this a pipedream?

I like the *ideas* presented in this guys article, but at this point in time I think its still a bit of a pipe dream. Mostly due to the lack of familiarity with the technology by non-technical people and the paranoia of those technical enough to understand what is going on behind the scenes.

Also, trying to communicate anything meaningful in a public electronic forum is next to impossible any more. There is just too much noise. The only good way to reduce the noise is to make people accountable for their comments and suggestions. But, as we all are well aware, the only good way to make people accountable is to take away their anonymity....which kinda defeats the purpose in the first place.

Omission

The structure is layed out very well, but I have some additions to recommend. Along with citizens should be "special interests", "big corporations". Included with government should be "alterier motives", "barred entrance via campaign costs". These X factors cannot be ignored, granted the scope of this paper isn't a digression on flaws in government, I do believe that flaws are big enough that they cannot be ignored.

I really like the E-Democracy conceptual model. It shows the cyclical role of citizens as they are applied to various facets of leadership.

All in all though I believe that a lack of communication is not the core of the problem in the government. Infact in a democracy a great majority of people don't care to give feedback (vote). Are you suggesting that if voting goes online more people will vote? If this is the case, the government may or may not be ready to embrace it for that reason alone. That's an interesting question.

Other sectors feel the same way

In the tech group, it's easy to say that the Gov't does the "regular daily stuff" ok. However, ask a PETA person, or a Greenpeace person, or any other focus group that is as knowledgable about their topic as we are about tech, and they'll say, "oh the gov't handles tech fine, but as far as MY topic, they're crappy".

Online vs. Person-to-person

Many people are not terribly considerate when online. People are quick to judge, are too sensitive, anger too quickly, they resort to flamewars or trolling, etc. when online. It's easy to do. There's very little accountability online. The reason? Anonymity. Put your picture and a name/address/phone number alongside online behavior, and the 'Net will become a very polite place very quickly. Occasionally, in a large group of people, you will run into a fearless troll, but they can quickly be shunned by the majority and rendered mostly ineffective. Online, trolls can be more effective at disrupting communications. Slashdot works for those that read regularly. Moderation dies off after several hours of posts to a piece of news. For the readers that catch up occasionally, their chance to be heard and moderated up are slim.

Just a Million Good things?

Why not billions and billions of good things? How about Trillions? The Government should only do one thing well, you know, like good Unix design philosophy. This was known in the 19th century: Bastiat pans Socialism [constitution.org]

Net-work

Steven,
Why did you use a hyphen in the word "Net-work"?
It is annoy-ing when peo-ple use hyphens in-corr-ect-ly. Thank-you for your atten-tion.

The good and the bad.

Good:
It would allow the goverment to quickly pass information to the public and give them a almost instant response to that new information. This could save money, speed up goverment projects, and make goverment more democratic and better for the people.

Bad:
It would leave a disproportionate percentage of the poor out of the picture. Its is much harder for a poor person to buy a computer and surf the net, and there are not always computers avaible at public labs and librarys. It might increase the divide between the well off and the not so weel off.

I love my wife!

Anyone interested in meeting up for this topic?

Meetup [meetup.com] has a topic for E-democracy [meetup.com]. From the description, it reads "Meetup with other local citizens to discuss how technology can enhance the democratic process." Who better than Slashdotters to thoroughly engage their fellow citizens on this very important topic?

the government has done some great things

with the net. I can pay my income tax, parking tickets, speeding tickets, postal bills, toll collections, and a myriad of other fees, fines and charges all online.

Props

Much props to Michael for posting another article that has lukewarm response and next-to-no reader interest. Maybe I can pull out some old Decartes book and submit a spin on it...

Not enough dashes

E-Democracy, E-Governance, and Public Net-work

I dunno, think you could have fit more dahes in there. What about Pub-lic? E-Demo-cracy? a-nd? I mean Net-work isn't a real word so why con-fine your-self to the ru-les of pro-per english else-wh-ere? You haven't even be-gun to ex-plore all th-e poss-ibili-ties!

Community networks

Community networks such as this could be a great thing. Meaning, if implemented properly, a virtual town hall type server storing information about community events, problems, ideas, etc. as well as a controlled way to get in touch with community officials and representitives, would be an excellent thing for nearly every community. The main problem however is immediatly evident: How to get every member of the community access to it, even if they do not choose to utilize it. One could argue that the solution is quite simple, at least in my mind. Setup wireless accesspoints in key positions throughout a town, creating a wireless mesh network connecting to a central gateway which would host most of the information. In theory, this is great idea, give everyone a cheap terminal-style computer, at a cost of about $100 per station per home. The terminals could be specialized in such a way that they could only be used to send and get information at the central server, make voting work through this, I bet it'd drive voter "turnout" up if people wouldn't have to leave their homes to vote in a referendum or whatever. People could be more adequatly informed of all the issues, the wireless connection could be used to broadcast informational radio as well, meaning people who do not wish to read up on what's going on around them, can still get that info if they want. This is purely an idealist scenario, and I'm sure it would never happen, but I can imagine the pros and cons of such a setup. Security would be an issue, but just don't give the network access to the Internet. Allow other machines to operate on the network, but filter mac addresses at the server end to only accept data from the terminals. Password authenticate, or some other form of authentication, but don't go so far as thumbprinting or cameras. If such a device could be as readily, and affordably, available to so many people it could really take off. But, alas, it'll never happen, only a utopian society could get it to happen, and no such society exists as of yet.

Watch the movie Startup Dot Com

Anybody interested in getting the government online should watch a really cool documentary called Startup.Com. It's about a real company called "GovWorks" based on the idea of paying various government fees online -- parking tickets, drivers license renewals, etc. Most of the story deals with all their business gyrations and personal conflicts, but the idea itself is pretty interesting.

What struck me about it is the parallel with evolution of information systems in the business world. Companies first started using computers for payroll and billing, then other applications evolved. The interactions described in the article seem far more idealistic, to the point of being pie in the sky, but turning minor government financial transactions into e-commerce might lay the groundwork for the more interesting things.

I doubt that the average American politician would be sincerely interested in a proposal to build an online channel that lets us peons see behind the curtain. But if there were a way for it to evolve under their noses, as the Internet did, it might happen.

Re:Eh?

Your right it's a Federal Republic.

Re:E-democracy *should mean* direct voting

Sure, democracy is great, isn't it?

Imagine if we had direct voting all along. Blacks would still be slaves, women wouldnt be able to vote, children would still legally be property. Maybe you'd enjoy a society where you have to think, act, and live like everyone else, after all, you are here on slashdot.

My point is, the right decision isn't always the most popular one. That's why the USA is a Republic.

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

Direct democracy--no thanks.

It cuts the middlemen (politicians) out and that is always a good things.

Do you have time, expertise, and desire to research and legislate every issue that affects you? I don't.

For all of the flaws in our particular system, it provides a decent compromise. If the majority of the citizenry could be bothered to research and pick out their representatives with a bit more care, I might believe that they could responsibly legislate. But if they did that, they wouldn't really need to, would they?

Re:What did the romans do for us?

I think you mean "These people called Romans, they go the 'house." Romanes eunt domus