Electronic Governance and Electronic Democracy: Living and Working in the Connected World -- The Commonwealth Centre for Electronic Governance

ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE AND
ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY:
LIVING AND WORKING IN THE CONNECTED WORLD

CHAPTER ONE:
ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE IN CONTEXT

The truly revolutionary impact of the Information Revolution is just beginning to be felt.1
Peter F. Drucker

Introduction

Few, if any, developments in the modern history of public administration and government have been as heralded as the coming of electronic governance. It is common to hear predictions that e-government will transform our political institutions, revitalize our democracies and fundamentally change the relationship of governments to their citizens. And there is little doubt that it can have profound, perhaps revolutionary effects.
Whether it does in fact bring about a revolution in governance will be not so much a function of the technology of e-government as it will be of the ideology that underlies its implementation.2

For all its potential, electronic governance is an unrealized notion still in its infancy. Although much has been written and discussed about the use of the emerging tools of information technology in the design and administration of 21st Century government, the concept of e-governance is still early in its evolution, and its final form is yet to be determined. Indeed, e-government is a concept that exists without a firm definition. To some, it represents traditional government "with an 'e'", providing an alternative delivery method for government services. For others, it is a social, economic and political phenomenon which promises to re-engineer the nature of democratic government itself.

To provide context for this report, and to better understand what is meant by the phrase "electronic governance", this chapter will set out a broad overview of the technological developments which have "set the table" for e-government, examine its underlying philosophical underpinnings, posit a working definition, and identify the issues which are central to its effective implementation.

Background - The Technological Context of E-Governance

[It is a] paradoxical fact that communications technologies simultaneously bring enormous enhancements of control to governments, corporations, consumers and voters, and quite a new order of chaos and uncontrollability which brings, in turn, a sense that control is unachievable.3

Overview - From Printing Press to Internet

Information and communication technologies ("ICTs") have always influenced the evolution of society and, as a consequence, the nature of government. Historically, they have enhanced existing social, economic and political interactions, and even introduced new forms of interactivity.
This interactivity is, in both a social and technical sense, the unfastened cork that allows the informational genie to escape from the bottle. It leads to the emergence of new relationships, connections and expectations that are difficult to control or predict, and which can bring about fundamental, even revolutionary change.

The development of human language in prehistoric times, for example, surely among the most innovative of communications technologies, is considered by most sociologists to have been a prerequisite for the emergence of organized human culture. Less dramatically, the telegraph, telephone, radio, television and even photocopier for their part have all effected a greater or lesser measure of change in the instruments of governance.
It is the example of the Gutenberg press, however, that is especially instructive here. Although, as now, the implications of that new technology were no doubt unclear at the time, the printing press was instrumental in eventually bringing about a fundamental revolution in the nature of governance. By providing the ability to crystallize, distribute and popularize ideas, Gutenberg's invention changed the way that individuals interacted with each other and, eventually, with their governments. It made possible the Protestant Reformation and the eventual emergence of the democratic, citizen-based political systems we know today.

Like the printing press, today's new Information and communication technology holds the potential to bring about revolutionary change in the concept of governance, and alter current views of democracy, society and public administration. It is for that reason the Internet has rightly been called the "spiritual successor to the printing press."

This is the promise that today's network-based technologies bring to the art of governance. They represent a second, major phase in the integration of computer-based technology into the management structures of the public sector, a phase which may described in a general sense as "the advent of networked government" and which is primarily marked by the move away from informational monopolies and hierarchies.

Modern societies and governments have traditionally operated on a hierarchical model of information flow and interaction. So, for the most part, have traditional information technologies. This is not surprising, of course, given that technological innovation and societal evolution are synergistic partners that influence and reflect each other in much the same way that mind influences body and body reflects mind.

In the hierarchical model, centralized information flows from a single source down through the system to designated recipients, where it is passively received and acted upon. Feedback filters up through the system through a limited number of channels, and is integrated into the centralized info-source. Revised information, if any, flows back down through the system, and the cycle is repeated. The ability to collect, access and distribute information through a centralized structure involves a very real form of knowledge monopoly and control.

The applicability of this hierarchical model to governance and public administration is not difficult to recognize. Legitimization flows from elected officials to civil servants operating within fixed and hierarchical departmental structures, to an often passive citizenry. Feedback is provided in the form of elections held at regular intervals. In between these times, there is often little interaction between the governed and their government. As well, the information needed to effectively evaluate and direct policy directions is often jealously held within governmental structures that are not easily accessed by citizens.

Figure 1 -Hierarchical Information Exchange

The post-war development of computer technology, not surprisingly, initially reflected this hierarchical model. Large, mainframe computers, inaccessible to the vast majority of citizens, served as centralized repositories of large banks of data that flowed through tightly controlled, linear lines of communication:

Computer applications in 1970 and before focused on automating high-volume bureaucratic routines like payroll (at the far left or automation end of the applications spectrum). Benefits were high because work volumes were high; saving a few pennies per check on the payroll could add up if you wrote a lot of checks. Costs were low because work routines had already been well established; this made the programming problems easier to solve and also ensured that an authority figure (i.e., the boss) was readily available to resolve conflicts during implementation. The benefit-cost ratio and thus the demand for computing dropped off to the extent that work volumes were lower and/or the work was non-routine and raised difficult problems that required extensive negotiations to resolve (to the right, or innovations end of the applications spectrum). Automation made sense but true innovation was usually too difficult.4

These hierarchies were duplicated within commercial organizations, where relatively rigid structures delineated responsibility for product development, innovation and customer interaction.
1. The ARPANET and the Roots of the Internet
  
  This began to change in the early 1960s with breakthroughs in networking technologies, and, perhaps more importantly, the realization that centralized communications technologies were vulnerable to disruption or destruction by nuclear attack and other potential catastrophes. In response to this threat, the United States military sponsored the development of the ARPANET, the first tentative step towards what we know today as the Internet. In order to ensure the viability of communications in the face of the unpredictable, at a time when computing technologies were in a rapid state of flux:
  
  The ARPANET's builders designed it to accommodate complexity, uncertainty, error and change. This was done both through technical choices (such as layering), and by making human beings, with their inherent adaptability, an integral part of the system.5
  
  Decentralization was a central characteristic of the ARPANET, as it reduced the likelihood that communications could be taken down with a single attack on a single, centralized source. Key to this decentralization was the development of packet switching technology in the United Sates and United Kingdom, which allowed data sent along a network to be broken down into packets, transmitted along various network nodes, and re-assembled at their destination. This decentralized means of transmitting information not only served to render systems less vulnerable to disruption, but brought with it a further, even greater benefit:
  
  Most importantly ... standardized data blocks permit many simultaneous users, each with widely different bandwidth requirements to economically share a broad-band network made up of varied data rate links.6
  
  Taken together, this built-in flexibility and switching-based de-centralized information flow allowed users to participate in the process of information interchange to an unprecedented degree, and laid the foundation for the Internet's transformational potential. In fact, the new interactions which resulted from that participation were not at all expected by the designers of the system, who intended to use ARPANET to combine the capacities of various specialized machines. Instead, users eschewed that functionality in favour of what was to become the Internet's first "killer application" - electronic mail. As Janet Abbate states:
  
  The ARPANET's creators were able to answer the question of how to build a large computer network. They had a harder time demonstrating why people should use one. Users played a crucial part in making the ARPANET more than an elaborate experiment in packet switching. Applications created by users became parts of the infrastructure, thus eroding the boundary between user and producer. By adopting electronic mail rather than remote computing as their favored application, users created a system that met their own needs and provided a compelling argument for the value of networking.7
The Characteristics of the Networked Environment

That "value of networking" has arisen from two important factors. First, advances in computing led to an exponential increase in computing power, meaning that applications previously requiring mainframe systems could be conducted on small, local systems. Intelligence could now be distributed over a variety of network nodes. Going hand in hand with this development came appreciation that a de-centralized model of information flow, based on an accessible organizational structure, was a more successful model for information interchange and utilization:

Whereas hierarchy limits access to information with its one?way, top?down stream of command and control, networks increase communication, multiply information, and bring people into the loop.8

Professor Leslie A. Pal neatly summarizes the characteristics of networked interaction as follows9:

distributed intelligence in place of monopolies of information;
flatter structure, as there is less need for layers of knowledge keepers and cultivators;
simultaneous action, as conventional information flow moving through hierarchical layers is replaced by a network characterized by continuous action that can be loosely coordinated and reconfigured as necessary;
an exponential increase in actors and participants;
a structure organized around flexible nodes of information and exchange replacing the conventional hierarchies;
three?dimensional structure in the sense that a network as a whole consists of an almost infinite number of "layers" of other networks;
non-differentiation in potential influence between organizations and individuals, because some individuals can respond more effectively to network?specific needs;
Interactivity, as information flows in all directions and is constantly exchanged, not simply channeled.

It is a popular belief (more arguably, a popular misconception) that networks are also inherently democratizing and open, and that the application of Internet-based technologies to organizations tend to result in more open, democratic structures.

If the history of the Internet has taught us anything, however, it is that the nature of the technology is secondary to the kinds of policy decisions that have been taken with respect to it. There is nothing inherently democratizing about packet switching technology. Indeed, we have seen that the designers of ARPANET did not intend to create a universal and open Internet, but sought only to create a communications network that could survive catastrophic damage. An open network emerged from policy decisions that encouraged participation and human engagement, and from the unique interactions of its early users. A network can, after all, be as easily configured to exclude as to include. As will be discussed below, this is an important consideration in the definition and implementation of e-government.
1. A Changing Hierarchical Structure
  
  The emphasis that is placed on flatter, non-hierarchical structures does not imply, however, an absence of hierarchy:
  
  ...[T]his new metaphor of organization does not assume the absence of hierarchy. All it assumes is that hierarchy is not single stream but fluid and multi-functional, reflecting the many coincident purposes and the disjointed agenda of a complex organization.10
  
  What is integral to the structure, however, is the ability of those hierarchies to shift dynamically depending on the particular needs of the moment. This ability highlights a changing dynamic within the broader society.
  
  For example, individuals more freely move in and out of a variety of communities, defining themselves and their associations in more flexible terms. Bolstered by the capabilities offered by new ICTs, they readily form alliances within small and diverse groups to achieve their personal goals.
  
  Businesses, for their part, have embraced the cause of corporate reengineering, and have adopted the "network values" of partnership, coordination, distributed intelligence and the flattening of administrative and hierarchical structures. As Paul Saffo states:
  
  In a web-based structure, your title doesn't matter: Your power is determined by whether you are a high-quality node on the network.11
  
  Figure 2 - Network Information Exchange
  
  A simple example can help illustrate the practical differences between traditional and network models of information interchange. Consider two classrooms in the same school, one reflecting a traditional hierarchy, the other a networked model. Each classroom has the same level of computer technology.
  
  In Classroom A, class times are limited and scheduled according to a pre-set time table. The teacher lectures from notes which he or she dispenses to the students in controlled quantities at controlled times. Learning takes place, but it does so in a linear and clearly defined way. The tools of learning are available to students only during class, and access to computer data is limited to several pre-elected databases. Students work from their desks, and there is little or no direct interaction between students inside the classroom. To an observer, the environment appears as ordered and efficient.
  
  Across the hall, Classroom B is always open to the students, who can, and do, draw on all available resources at any time. The teacher leads the discussion, provides guidance and support, and is responsible for ensuring that the students grasp the materials. Students are encouraged to collaborate, share ideas, and explore the full potential offered by the technology. They have unlimited access to all electronic information on the course topics, and scurry from desk to desk, with ad hoc discussion groups forming and dissipating rapidly. It is, in effect, an environment of controlled chaos.
  
  In Classroom A, the potential for learning is in large part dictated by the rules that attaching to information access. In Classroom B, that potential is limited primarily by the students' motivation.
  
  While current governmental and educational structures tend to be modelled on the former scenario, current social and economic structures have already begun to reflect the latter. In both scenarios, however, it is interesting to note that the technology is the same. What is different are the underlying administrative systems and processes that are applied to each classroom.
  
  As we will see, the expectations of both citizen and business place powerful pressures on government to create systems which allow for these kinds of interactions in the public sphere. Those expectations find their roots in the evolution of mass information flow from passive receipt to active exchange.

The Emergence of Mass Interactivity

Active and Passive Exchange

What philosophically links new ICTs with the printing press, and distinguishes it from other telecommunications media such as television and telephonics, is their potential to introduce new levels of informational exchange and interaction.

Four important attributes define virtually all media of information exchange. The exchange can be passive or active,12 and the media can communicate to individuals or reach a mass audience.12

Until the Internet, no major communications media shared all 4 of these defining characteristics. Oral language allowed humans full social interactivity in a fundamentally new way, but limited that interactivity to individuals or small groups within a limited geographic area. Written language provided a passive means to capture that communication in a fixed form that was not limited by time or geography, but because of the difficulties involved in reproduction, it was not available as a means of mass communication. The printing press made possible mass communication for the first time, but again in a passive form. Modern communication technologies such as the telephone and television built on those existing paradigms, by providing enhanced individualized interaction (telephone) or enhanced mass/passive communication (television).

The Internet and other networked technologies offer the unique potential for mass, active exchange (or, in other words, mass full interactivity), and encompass all characteristics of existing information technologies.

Table 1 - Major Communication Technologies and Interactivity

	Language	Writing	Printing Press	Television	Internet
Passive		/	/	/	/
Active	/				/
Individualized	/	/			/
Mass			/	/	/

"Active exchange" has social impact because it changes the nature of the dialogue itself. The act of reading a book, for example, demonstrates a passive exchange. Information (static text) flows in a linear, hierarchical way, from the author ("initiator") to the reader ("recipient"), but not from the reader to the author. There is no mechanism that allows the reader to shape or alter that information. Regardless of how the act of reading affects the reader, therefore, the author essentially remains unaffected. Limits imposed by the nature of the exchange mean that the reader's input is only slowly integrated into the process, and the author's reaction to that input equally lags. Although every reader knows that this type of information exchange can be extremely powerful, the systems which arise from the interchange tend to be hierarchical, linear, and relatively unresponsive.

Contrast this passive interaction with the dynamics of human conversation, where an initiator ("author") also delivers information ("a thesis") to multiple recipients ("readers"). The recipients respond immediately, challenging, affirming or evaluating the initiator's thesis, or adding additional information. Faced with new data and immediate feedback, the initiator expands or modifies the thesis, or perhaps even embarks on an entirely new line of discussion. The result is a creative and organic exchange that has the capacity to grow far beyond the boundaries of the original exchange. Not surprisingly, the systems which arise from active interchange, such as conversation and open networks, tend to be non-hierarchical, non-linear and free-flowing.13

Active Exchange and Citizen Expectation

When realized through Internet technologies, active exchange lays the groundwork for a significant re-engineering of government, by providing both the means and the motivation to accomplish it.

It arms citizens and governments with the technical means to change the way in which they relate to each other, and encourages the replacement of traditional hierarchical systems by more fluid patterns of interaction.

The widespread penetration of ICTs into the social and economic spheres has given individuals the ability to change how they collaborate personally and commercially. As a consequence, it has created the expectation that these new patterns of collaboration will come to also define the relationship between citizen and government.

This expectation flows from the fundamental, technology-assisted transition which has taken place in developed economies over the past 3 decades, moving from a supply driven model to a demand driven or customer driven model. This transition has undermined traditional monopolies, such as those enjoyed by government and established businesses, and forced government to respond to strong competitive pressures that were previously insignificant.

As Michael Hammer, former M.I.T. Professor and the leading proponent of the concept of "reengineering"14 states:

This transformation applies even in governmental environments. The word "competition" in the old days didn't mean anything in a governmental environment. Now everyone is talking about it. There are alternatives, such as outsourcing and private contractors. There are customers, known as taxpayers, who are in revolt...

We are experiencing the end of all monopolies and a paradigm shift in the economic sphere at least.15

The tools of technology allow for an active exchange of information, which in turn allows for a significant shift in the government-citizen relationship. The adoption of those tools in the commercial and social spheres places governments under intense pressure to adopt them as well.

Towards a Normative Definition of E-Governance
1. Defining Potential and Creating Reality
  
  It is fashionable to call the current era the "Age of Information", and rightly so. We live in a time when technological advances have transformed our ability to collect, store and manipulate data, and to communicate information in new and innovative ways. It is clear to even the most disinterested observer that networked, Internet technologies have begun to redefine our social and commercial institutions. Not since Gutenberg's development of the printing press in the 15th Century, it is said, has new information and communication technology served as so important a catalyst for political, economic and social change.
  It is also fashionable to state that these new information and communication technologies (ICTs) will fundamentally recast government and public administration. Indeed, that recasting is the essential promise of electronic governance.
  
  What, precisely, then, is this new amalgam of government and technology? The reality is that, in large part, e-governance is at present still a relatively amorphous concept, ripe with unrealized promise. It is a moving target that means different things to different organizations, a target that has not yet coalesced into a clearly recognizable entity.
  
  But because e-government is very much in the early stages of its evolution, the definition that is affixed to it will do much to shape its final form. Moving towards a normative definition of e-governance, therefore, is not simply an academic exercise. It is both a practical step and a profoundly important ideological statement, because from that definition will follow the spring the guiding principles and pragmatic structures that will give e-government its long-term shape.
  E-governance is a tool. And, like any tool, no matter how powerful, it has limited value and relevance in itself. Its value arises from its application to specific goals and objectives.
  
  Equipping an individual with a hammer and nails, for instance, is extremely useful if that individual's objective is to build a house. In that case, the hammer becomes an invaluable instrument that allows the builder to create shelter of a quality and in a way that would have been impossible otherwise. In the context of construction, the hammer has become a tool of transformation. It leads to efficiencies of time, cost, scope and convenience. Where it to be introduced into a hammerless society, it would allow individuals to build sturdy, permanent and weatherproof homes, and could bring about change in where and how the population could live. This in turn can affect migration patterns, and opens the door to new kinds of agricultural, economic and military activity. In short the hammer and nail transforms and revolutionizes the way people in a hammerless society live. Analysts could point to the hammer as a positive and tool of development, and point to the countless benefits that will flow from its introduction into the society. But that same hammer, in the hands of a person whose objective and need is to cook a meal, have very limited utility, serving only as a rather awkward paperweight to hold open the pages of the cookbook. In the context of cooking, it has no transformational value. More distressingly, in the hands of an individual with criminal or malevolent intent, the hammer can become a weapon, and a means by which to destroy rather than build structures.
  
  This lesson of the limitations of technology has been repeated countless times in both the public and private sectors since the emergence of desktop computing in the mid-1980's. Managers and employees, eager to reap the productivities promised by computerization, clamoured for access to the technology. IT departments dutifully complied, investing significant resources in hardware and software and placing computers on many desks. Once there, however, the computers sat largely unused. It was only when those organizations more clearly articulated their goals and objectives, and methodically considered how and why computers could be used to attain them, that real benefits began to be realized.
  
  Like our proverbial hammer, Information and Communication Technologies have transformational potentials when they are applied to appropriate and specific goals of governance. As we have seen, those potentials spring from the capabilities of ICTs to promote active and non-hierarchical information exchange. Divorced from specific and articulated goals, though, ICTs will not bring about the benefits of e-government that are so often touted, such as democratization, efficiency and the transformation of how government works. Inappropriately applied, in fact, ICTs can become a weapon, and have a dampening effect on citizenship and democracy.
2. What E-Governance is ... and is not
  
  In its simplest sense, e-governance can be said to be about the use of emerging information and communication technologies to facilitate the processes of government and public administration. In reality, though, e-governance is really about choice. It is about providing citizens with the ability to choose the manner in which they wish to interact with their governments. And it is about the choices governments make about how information and communication technologies will be deployed to support citizen choices.
  As a composite of the application of technology to government, it falls underneath a large technological umbrella that includes:
3. Public Administration and E-governance as Relational Management rather than Technical Management
  
  Technology is essentially result oriented. A specific technology can be applied to bring about a specific result or results, but the technology itself makes no normative judgments.
  
  The application of modern Information and Communication Technologies permit a wide range of interactivities, both passive and active. Out of those interactivities arise a variety of possible outcomes. These outcomes exist as mere potential within the technologies themselves, but manifest as a result of the targeted application of those technologies in accordance with specific normative choices. Whether those results bring advantage or disadvantage depends on the goals and values of the participants.
  
  For example, the installation of an ICT, a video camera, in a music tutorial classroom gives rise to a number of possible results. It can assist the students to perfect their technique by allowing them to review their performances in a manner that they could not otherwise achieve. It delivers greater efficiencies by allowing the teacher to review the students' techniques outside of class. It also permits more efficient application of school rules by allowing the teacher to identify which students arrived late to tutorials, to observe whether students used more than their allotted time on certain instruments, to scrutinize whether all students were wearing appropriate school uniforms at all times as mandated by school regulations, and to monitor student conversations for possible violations of school rules.
  
  Whether any or all of these results are acceptable or desirable arises not from the technology per se but from the normative values that determine its use. The ability to enforce the music school's rules is only a nascent potential of the video camera. The act of placing a video camera in the classroom does not in itself determine the results that will flow from it, any more than the act of putting government "on line" automatically determines what social, economic or democratic benefits will result. It is the functional use of the technology to monitor student behaviour rather than student performance that turns this potential into reality, and transforms the video camera into a tool of surveillance rather than a tool of learning.
  
  Unlike technology, governance is essentially a normative, relational exercise, rather than a purely functional one. Underlying the structures of modern democratic governance is the philosophical understanding that government's role is to facilitate and relate rather than dictate or create. As a result, government has adopted a triad of roles:
- facilitator (and repository) of political expression and action, both at home and abroad;
- facilitator of economic activity; and
- deliverer of public services
  
  From these roles flow a series of core relationships or interactions, the effective management of which is the bailiwick of public administration. Those defining interactions manifest under four main heads:
- Government-to-Citizen - This encompasses a broad range of interactions, from the delivery of services and the provision of welfare and health benefits to regulatory and compliance oriented licensing. Foremost among these many interactions is that involving democratic legitimization and engagement.
- Government to Business - Government serves as an enabler and broker of economic activity, a consumer of commercial goods and services and as the regulator of both domestic and international trade and commerce.
- Government to Employee - As government facilitates business, democratic engagement and service delivery, so employees represent the facilitators of government. This interaction includes strategic and tactical mechanisms for encouraging the implementation of government goals and programs, as well as administrative elements such as human resource management, budgeting, and accounting.
- Government to Government - Governments depend on other levels of government within the state to effectively deliver services and allocate responsibilities, and engage in ongoing interactions with foreign states and international organizations to further political and economic goals.
  
  E-governance cannot be separated from the reality of governance, but instead must be firmly rooted in it. In other words, if governance is a relational exercise, then e-governance must be cut from the same cloth. Out of relational model of governance, therefore, flows a definition of e-governance as relational rather than technical, as process rather than processing. From this perspective, e-governance is less about automation of government forms and services, and more about the facilitation of defined objectives with respect to government's relationship with its constituencies.
  
  Relationships, whether personal, professional, institutional or technological, are by their nature in a constant state of flux. Much like modern ICTS, they never reach a point where they become static. As a result, the management of relationships is an ongoing process, based on guiding rules and ideological positions rather than specific results. An excellent relationship can quickly become dysfunctional if expected results do not materialize, and the processes and interactions to support it are not in place. If the foundations upon which e-government is built are technical rather than normative, it will be unable to realize its substantial promise.
  
  This emphasis on e-government as process and ideology rather than mere technological implementation is therefore important. A relational definition, while recognizing the obviously important role that technology plays, subordinates that role to the kinds of interactions and philosophies that governments and citizens wish to encourage and support. At the current levels of technological innovation, current ICTs will be rapidly replaced by new and possibly radical technologies that will bring novel issues, problems and interactions beyond the contemplation of the system designers.
  
  Even the implementation of existing technologies will, without doubt, create unexpected problems that must be addressed. When emphasis is placed on process rather than result (on supporting relationships rather than implementing specific kinds of technology), a mechanism is automatically put in place that will assist administrators to maintain goals in the face of unexpected consequences. It seems that with e-governance as with life, success is more mode of travel than a final destination.
  
  Two articulated definitions of e-governance are especially helpful to illustrate this role as a facilitator of relationships.
  
  Christopher Baum, Vice-President for E-government at the Gartner Group, states:
  
  E-government is the transformation of public sector internal and external relationships through net-enabled operations, information technology and communications, to optimize government service delivery, constituency participation and governance.
  
  This definition casts a wide net that goes far beyond electronic service delivery, an area where the e-government spotlight is often focused. Since much of governmental activity is devoted to servicing a broad clientele of citizens and businesses, this is understandable. There is a tremendous temptation, therefore, to speak of e-government and online service delivery interchangeably. In fact, while electronic service delivery is an important subset of e-government, it is important to remember that it is only a subset. When this distinction is ignored, the transformational potential of e-government is lost.
  
  Consider the simple example of a municipal government department responsible for licensing a particular activity, such as pet ownership. Applicants are required to attend at designated government offices to complete the licensing application form and make payment. The application form is then approved and the data on it is entered manually into a computer database. As part of an e-government initiative, the department establishes a web site permitting users to complete and submit the application form online, and make payment by credit card. When the form arrives electronically at the municipal office, it is printed out, approved and passed along to a clerk for manual entry into the licensing database. Although the transaction is ostensibly an electronic one, at least from the applicant's perspective, it has had almost no impact on the internal functions and processes of the department. As Christopher Baum states:
  
  True e-government requires transformation of all the systems involved in processing a transaction, not just those facing citizens and businesses.... "If you just process printouts from the Web, all you've done is built a great big remote-controlled typewriter,"...
  
  The work of Rogers W'O Okot-Uma builds on this theme. He states:
  
  ...eGovernance seeks to realise processes and structures for harnessing the potentialities of information and communication technologies (ICTs) at various levels of government and the public sector and beyond, for the purpose of enhancing Good Governance.17
  
  Okot-Uma adds a normative element to the definition by further defining good governance as the "processes and structures that guide political and socio-economic relationships, with particular reference to commitment to democratic values, norms and practices, trusted services and just and honest business."
  Both these definitions offer important insights into the nature of e-governance. While both emphasize the obvious technological component, they also highlight that e-governance is as much about process and ideological goals.18
  
  Perhaps both these approaches may be recast within the following definition:
  
  E-governance is the commitment to utilize appropriate technologies to enhance governmental relationships, both internal and external, in order to advance democratic expression, human dignity and autonomy, support economic development and encourage the fair and efficient delivery of services.
  
  This chapter has already explored the unique potentials for transformation inherent in modern information and communication technologies. It is submitted that, if ICTs are integrated into government within a normative framework that emphasizes democratic and human values, these transformational capabilities will organically and positively manifest themselves within the sphere of public administration.
  
  It is appropriate to recall that the designers of the ARPANET were unable to predict or control the forces that transformed that network into the Internet. It is equally likely, given the inherently volatile nature of the interactions that arise from active information exchange, that governments will be unable to effectively determine the shape and direction of the transformation that e-governance promises to initiate. This will be disturbing for some, particularly as we move from a centralized and hierarchical system which values certainty and control, to a non-hierarchical model that thrives on a healthy measure of creative chaos.
  
  In the short run, however, developments and directions in e-governance will be shaped by how governments choose to respond to specific issues that impact relationships with constituents. Some of the key issues are outlined below.
Selected Issues in E-Governance
1. Introduction
  
  In this emerging information driven society, architecture and technology is policy.
  
  How individual and businesses transact and evolve is tied to the language and infrastructure underlying this communication.
  
  Proactively bringing together the voices for informed debate and the creation of solutions allows us the opportunity to embed socially responsible policy in the technology as opposed to responding with reactive policies to counteract less responsible infrastructures.19
  
  There is much discussion about the transformative role that technology can play in the evolution of our democratic institutions, the engagement of citizens, and the efficient delivery of services by government. What is perhaps less considered, however, is the profound impact that technologies can have in undermining democratic choice and democratic institutions if it is introduced unwisely or without thought to the implications of its architecture.
  
  Technology can be a harsh master, or a compliant servant. Whether it is the former or the latter in the case of e-governance will depend in large part on the policy choices that are made before it is deployed. Once it is put into place, technology can become deterministic, and direct policy and choices rather than be directed by them. It can also undermine a citizen's ability to give meaningful consent to important aspects of his or her interaction with government.
  
  The issue of privacy, discussed in more detail below, provides useful context for this discussion. Privacy has been identified as a serious concern by a vast majority of users of Internet technologies. Yet the increasing introduction of privacy-eroding technologies has the effect of naturalizing and acclimating citizens to encroachments on their private spaces. Citizens become, over time, used to video surveillance, the use of electronic cookies, and the indiscriminate collection of personal information. In the absence of a privacy policy that proceeds the introduction of the technology, the risks of significant privacy loss becomes very real, and along with that loss comes a potential and fundamental change in the quality of citizenship.
  
  One of the great challenges of e-governance, therefore, is to support the democratic will in driving the architecture of e-government rather than allowing the architecture of technology to dictate the nature of governmental relationships with its constituents.
2. Some Defining Issues
  1. Citizen Expectations
    
    The Internet, in particular, creates an opening for new forms of interaction with the citizen that allow real-time participation in the governmental and democratic process. But as with e-business, once the opening is created and the tools are at hand, it is not so much a matter of choice as a matter of time. Customers and citizens expect governments to get with it; if they do not, they risk becoming irrelevant.20
    
    The inexorable move towards e-governance has been driven as much by citizen expectation as by the technology itself. Citizens in the developed nations, most especially Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, have been relatively quick to embrace internet-based technologies in their personal and commercial interactions. An estimated 60% of North Americans and 50% of those in the United Kingdom, now have access to the Internet. 21
    
    This has resulted in a powerful expectation that they will be able to enjoy same level of services and interaction services government.
    
    This expectation is not absolute, however. Evidence suggests that citizens have serious concerns related to e-government, related to matters such as privacy and access, and are prepared to temper their expectations in order to give governments the time necessary to ensure that these are appropriately addressed.
  2. Privacy, Security and Trust
    
    Privacy is a cornerstone value in every democratic society. It is a foundational right that plays a pivotal role in the exercise of other democratic rights. In the nightmare world of George Orwell's 1984, it is the loss of privacy that destroys personal and political interaction. Privacy is also a right intimately connected to human autonomy and dignity. It is no surprise, therefore, that citizens place such an emphasis on this increasingly scarce commodity.22
    
    Modern ICTs bring with them the transformational capability to intrude upon and destroy the previously private spaces of citizens. E-governmental systems must therefore place particular emphasis on building privacy into the architecture of the technology itself. This requires forethought and planning, both technical and political. The very fact that e-governance is still in its early evolutionary period provides a remarkable opportunity for governments to make appropriate choices before large scale technological systems are put into place. It allows, in the words of Electronic Frontier Foundation case study quoted above, "the opportunity to embed socially responsible policy in the technology as opposed to responding with reactive policies to counteract less responsible infrastructures."23
    
    This proactive management is crucial for two reasons. First, and most importantly, the nature of privacy is such that once lost, it is difficult, if not impossible, to recapture. Such a loss will undermine or devalue all the benefits which e-governance seeks to realize.
    
    Secondly, the introduction of non-privacy enhancing systems can in itself justify the further degradation of citizen privacy. Appellate courts have generally taken the position that the degree of privacy protection to which a person is entitled is a sliding scale of sorts, dependent upon that person's reasonable expectation of privacy in any given situation.24 While in a 'public' place, such as the sidewalk of a street or a crowded shopping mall, a person's expectation of privacy is extremely limited. Should that person object to the presence of surveillance cameras in that public space, the law will afford little or no protection.25 In a hotel room, however, an individual has a much greater expectation of privacy. Surveillance cameras placed there by law enforcement personnel without the individual's knowledge or consent will be viewed as a violation of the right to be secure from search and seizure, under, for example, s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.26
    
    Expectations are of course very different than wishes, desires or consent. Citizens may very much wish that a certain kind of communication channel remain private, even though he or she may have no real expectation that it will because the technology which carries those communications is not private. The law as presently interpreted weighs expectations rather than desires.
    
    In the case of R. v. Weir27 , for example, the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench ruled that although Internet -mail carried a reasonable expectation of privacy, the degree of privacy was less than for first class mail specifically because of the nature of the technology:
    
    I am satisfied e-mail via the Internet ought to carry a reasonable expectation of privacy. Because of the manner in which the technology is managed and repaired that degree of privacy is less than that of first class mail.28
    
    In order to fully meet citizen expectations regarding trust, therefore, e-government must place a high priority on privacy and security. But it must also go further. To the maximum degree possible, it must also place the ultimate control over the collection and use of sensitive personal information, such as medical information, into the hands of the citizen rather than government or third parties.
    
    The use of smart cards, for example, is potentially a very effective tool for sharing information amongst in the health system, for the twin purposes of reducing costs and promoting citizen health and well-being. Centralizing and storing all personal medicals records on such a card promises to streamline administration and prevent costly knowledge gaps in treatment that can lead to misdiagnosis or dangerous drug interactions.
    
    Without appropriate privacy protection, however, these gains may be illusory. Without ultimate control and meaningful consent over who can access these records, and when, it is likely that patients will begin to withhold sensitive information from their medical practitioners in order to avoid disclosure of that information to third parties. In the end, efficiency gains will be overcome by incomplete or inaccurate records, and the necessary relationship of trust between individuals and health system will be damaged or destroyed.
    
    Appropriate encryption technologies will allow for citizen control over personal health data. The decision to use that technology is a political choice that will shape the impact of e-government.
  3. Access and Multiple Channels of Delivery
    
    The evolution from a supply driven economy to a demand driven or customer driven economy, has created a 365/24/7 world. As consumers, citizens expect to able to access business services in the times and in the ways that that is convenient for them, rather than for the supplier. This is also true of e-government services.
    
    In the provision of services, governments must be prepared to provide citizens with response levels equivalent to those enjoyed in the commercial transactions, and by citizens in other jurisdictions. One of the central characteristics of information and communication technologies is the ability to eliminate the constraints of geography. Governments will therefore come under increasing pressure from developments in other nations, as citizens more readily compare political and economic efficiencies enjoyed by citizens around the world, and impose those expectations on local governments.
    
    However, the emergence of different modes of accessing government services does not mean that citizens desire e-government to replace existing forms of interaction, or to be limited to just one form of interaction. Survey and focus group data gathering by the Canadian government, for example, suggests the opposite. Preferences of delivery channels were found to be as follows29:
    
    Over the counter: 17%
    Ground Mail 18%
    Interactive Voice response 22%
    Internet (e-mail) 18%
    Electronic Kiosks 25%
    
    Government must also be wary of digital divides that exclude those who through economics, age or education cannot access government services through electronic means. In the short run, 'low tech' delivery channels must be maintained.
    Of those citizens wishing to access government services over the Internet, 68% expressed the desire for single-window access. This percentage is only is likely to grow as more citizens access government services online. For government, this single-window portal will involve substantial collaboration between departments and strain existing department structures based on non-networked ways of interacting with constituents.
  4. Timing
    
    A key issues to be dealt with is the pace and timing of the implementation of e-governmental initiatives. Although the emergence of e-government is inevitable, it is important that guiding philosophies and policy choices be clearly articulated before new technologies are integrated into government.
    
    In the absence of such articulation, those policy choices, and the ultimate impact of technologies on the government-citizen interaction will be driven by technical and architectural considerations rather than the thoughtful realization of democratic goals and objectives.
    
    This seemingly, is the message citizens are sending to government. In a recent KMPG survey in the United States, 65 percent of citizens said government should proceed slowly out of concern over security, privacy and access issues. Government officials, interestingly, held the opposite view, with some 56 percent saying government agencies should move quickly into e-government services. The survey emphasized citizen concerns about the lack of computer security among government agencies, and about the misuse of personal by information government employees.
    
    This is a sentiment that is undoubtedly shared by citizens in other democracies. It suggests that governments must not allow the technical ability to create the structures of e-government to determine when and how they deployed. Before the technology must come the planning necessary to deal with core issues such as privacy and security, as well as the development of broad-based expertise within government needed to implement technological solutions that further democratic growth.
    
    This expertise is a critical part of the e-government equation and a pre-requisite to the creation of intelligent policy decisions and efficient service delivery. As Paul Hession states:
    
    In equipping professionals and knowledge workers to handle the challenges of information management, we have many problems to solve: lack of formal training in working with a digital workspace; lack of education in formal information classification and indexing; and lack of a framework for even filing their own e-mail.
    
    Without an architectural foundation on sound information management principles, it becomes very difficult to build, enhance, and co-ordinate the knowledge that is needed to deliver the services30.
  5. Citizen vs. Customer
    
    Citizenship is a multi-faceted concept that implies a wide range of interactions with government and with other citizens. Much of the language of e-government, though, is the language of e-commerce and of the marketplace. It is fashionable for governments to speak of clients, customers or consumers, rather than citizens and constituents. Given the entrenchment of ICTs in the private sector, this is understandable. Nevertheless, it tends to place emphasis on the role of service delivery in the evolution of e-government, rather than on its potential as facilitator (and repository) of political expression and action.
    
    But, as Henry Mintzberg states:
    
    I am not a mere customer of my government, thank you. I expect something more than arm's?length trading and something less than the encouragement to consume. When I receive a professional service from government, education, for example, the label client seems more appropriate to my role. (General Motors sells automobiles to its customers; Ernst and Young provides accounting to its clients.) In fact, a great many of the services I receive from government are professional in nature. But most important, I am a citizen, with rights that go far beyond those of customers or even clients. Most of the services provided by government including highways, social security, and economic policy, involve complex tradeoffs between competing interests. If I have rights as a citizen, then I also have obligations as a subject.'31
    
    Government must be mindful to relate to citizens as citizens, rather than as consumers of government goods and services. This distinction is not always clear. There has been a tendency on the part of Canada's government, for example, to define issues of privacy and personal information protection in terms of e-commerce rather than human rights. As Professor Valerie Steeves notes in regard to Industry Canada/Department of Justice discussion paper, Building Canada's Information Economy and Society:
    It is also worth noting that the discussion paper uses the word citizen 10 times, as opposed to a total of 78 occurrences of consumer, business and industry collectively.32
  6. Transparency and Digital Divides
    
    One of the most important potential benefits of e-governance is the re-engagement of citizens with the political process. As Stephen Clift states:
    
    It is within the context of electronic free assembly and association that citizens will gain new opportunities for participation and a voice in politics, governance, and society.33
    
    Traditional hierarchical models of governance have tended to lead to a passive electorate whose only participation in the political system comes at the voting booth during elections. As the percentage of eligible voters who reject participation in even those irregular contacts rise, democratic vibrancy and even legitimacy is threatened. Such passivity and indifference arises from a number of causes. Suspicion of government motivations, disillusionment with governmental processes, antipathy towards the role of special interest groups, and disengagement from the concept of citizenship all contribute to this disengagement.
    
    By making government decision-making and processes more readily transparent, e-government can serve as a means of alleviating widespread cynicism, and encourage more open leadership within government. As Daniel Yankelovitch writes:
    
    ...the essence of the leadership style implicit in the new framework is not that it is more democratic in the process in the sense of shared decision-making, but that it is more democratic in the process that leads up to the final decision.34
    
    At the international level, greater transparency affords an opportunity to break down barriers of suspicion and render political processes more intelligible to political and economic partner.
    
    Working synergistically with increased transparency is the bridging of digital divides, which arise domestically from barriers to digital participation of age, education and socio-economic status, and internationally from limited resources available to many governments.35 In the United States, recent data suggests that the biggest Internet adoption gap exists between rich and poor, rather than between ethnic groups, with less than half of US households with average incomes under $15,000 expected to have entered the Internet population by 2005.36
    
    Unless the digital gap is overcome, developments in e-commerce and e-government threaten to entrench rather than liberate currently disadvantaged groups and nations. Rogers W'O Okot-Uma highlights the need:
    
    ...for requisite efforts by Governments to aim at transcending the digital divide by narrowing the digital gap through incrementally
    1. putting in place the necessary national information infrastructure;
    2. developing and nurturing the necessary human resource to operate the national information infrastructure; and
    3. providing adequate financial resources to implement both the infrastructural and human resource requirements.37
  7. Internal Transformations
    
    Existing government structures have evolved out of traditional modes of information exchange. Tasks and responsibilities have been divided between departments within government, and between different levels of government, in accordance with the needs of information organization collection and storage, and the requirements of service delivery.
    
    As new networking technologies introduce new modes of information exchange, the traditional structures of government will undergo powerful pressures to evolve and adapt. (When we speak of the transformational power of networked technologies, of course, this information-driven reengineering is precisely what is meant.) Single portal service delivery will encourage the organization of government services around the needs of the citizen-recipient rather than the structural framework of government. Citizens are after all, essentially indifferent to existing structures, and are focused instead on efficient service fulfillment. As Michael
    
    Turner indicates:
    
    Even the growing collection of services that will be available on line through the Canada Portal won't fulfill the citizens' expectations for a single window Internet access to government. For this extensive collaboration among different levels of government will be necessary.38
    
    Turner's "extensive collaboration" is the opening phase of a fundamental re-working of the current departmental organization of government. Tapscott and Agnew predict:
    
    New networks of government, civil society, and the marketplace will redefine the nature of public services as boundaries collapse and the focus becomes who can best add and build value39
    
    This implies a blurring of the boundaries between public and private sectors, as individuals turn to business and alternative citizen networks to achieve goals and obtain services previously within the customary purview of government. The danger is, of course, a concurrent diminution in the historic role of government as 'business' goals of efficiency and profit overwhelm traditional social goals of equity, protection of disadvantaged groups and brokering of a broadly defined public interest.

Footnotes:

The Atlantic Monthly; October 1999; Beyond the Information Revolution ? 99.10; Volume 284, No. 4; page 47?57.

A note on terminology. The phrases "e-governance" and "e-government" are often used interchangeably, but they are different in subtle ways. In this chapter, governance and e-governance will be used to refer to the concepts, philosophies and issues that underlie the broad function of government. Government and e-government will be used to refer to the specific, practical structures of government that bring those concepts into reality.

G. J. Mulgan, Communication and Control: Networks and the New Economies of Communication (New York: The Guilford Press, 1991), p. 4.

Eight Imperatives for leaders in a Networked World: Guidelines for the 2000 Election and Beyond, The Harvard Policy group on Network-Enabled Services and Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, page 4.

See Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2000) page 219

Paul Baran, 1964b, "On Distributed Communications Networks" IEEE Transactions on Communications 12: 1-9, page 6

Ibid, page 219

Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps, The Age of the Network: Organizing Principles for the 21st Century (Essex Junction 1994)

Virtual Policy Networks: The Internet as a Model of Contemporary Governance?, presented to Inet 97; proceedings mirrored at http://www.botany.uwc.ac.za/mirrors/inet97/G7/g7_1.htm

James R. Taylor and Elizabeth J. Van Every, the Vulnerable Fortress: Bureaucratic Organization and Management in the Information Age (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1993) page 207

The End of Government Monopoly. Government Technology, Volume 12, Issue 15, November 1999, page 31

There are other secondary characteristics, of course, such as limitations of geography and location, or the ability to effect real time communications, but these are less relevant to the discussion here.

This is not to say, of course, that all conversations or networks are of necessity non-hierarchical and free-flowing. In a work environment, an employer may use insist on linear lines of oral communication and restricted network access, issuing directives and discouraging employee input or ideas. It is to say, however, that active exchanges, such as conversation, are ripe with potential.

Defined as the radical redesign of business processes for dramatic improvement

Government Technology, Volume 12, Issue 15, November 1999, page 21

Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York: Basic Books)

Electronic Governance: Re-inventing Good Governance, a paper by Rogers Okot-Uma, August, 2000, Commonwealth Secretariat, London, UK, page 5

Ibid, page 2

Architecture is Policy Case Study: Cooperative development as a means for a standards-based Implementation for Privacy on the Internet Electronic Frontier Foundation Tara Lemmey, Executive Director, Contributing authors Microsoft Corporation, Saul Klein Ernst & Young, Topher Neumann, http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/19990406_EFF_MS_P3P_Paper/index.html

Don Tapscott and David Agnew, Finance and Development, December 1999, Volume 36, Number 4.

Source: NUA Internet Surveys.

More than 80 per cent of Internet users are concerned about threats to their personal privacy when they are online, according to a study conducted by Privacy and American Business. Source: "E-Commerce and Privacy: What Net Users Want," conducted by Privacy and American Business, cited in TechWeb News, June 23, 1998.

See note 19.

See, for example, R v. Wong, [1990] 3 S.C.R. 36.

In this regard, consider the increasing use of video surveillance in the United Kingdom, and the recent example of the use of special face recognition software by Ontario police to scan the faces of all customers entering casinos, in order to identify criminals. In response to criticism of this practice, a police spokesman stated ``Certainly in casinos, it's well-known to the population that they're subject to video monitoring upon entry.... There's no reasonable expectation of privacy in any way.'' Source: Torstar News Service, January 16, 20001.

Ibid

[1998] 8 W.W.R. 228 (Alta. Q.B.).

Ibid [1998] A.J. No. 155, para.77.

From Presentation Notes, Now that We're Connected - What's Next, Michael Turner Assistant Deputy Minister, Government Telecommunications and Informatics Services (GTIS), Public Works and Government Services Canada, Integrating Government with New Technologies 2000, Ottawa December 4, 2000

Canadian Government Executive, Issue 3, 2000, page 20.

Harvard Business Review

"Censorship and Privacy Issues as Communications become Increasingly Digital", in Adapting to New Realities: Canadian Telecommunications Policy, David Conklin, ed., University of Western Ontario Press, 1998

Democracy is Online 1.0, http://www.e-democracy.org/do/article.html

Rosell, Steven et al. Changing Maps, Governing in a World of Rapid Change. Carleton University Press. 1995 p. 252

For example, Three Russians out of four have never used a computer and among those who have the number of regular Internet users is tiny, according to the ROMIR survey center quoted by ITAR-TASS January 28, 2001

See Income and Age, Not Ethnicity, to Remain Largest Gap for US Digital Divide, Jupiter Communications, June 15, 2000

Op Cit Electronic Governance: Re-inventing Good Governance, Rogers Okot-Uma

From Presentation Notes, Now that We're Connected - What's Next, note 29, supra.

Finance and Development, December 1999, Volume 36, Number 4.

Last Revised: 12 September 2001

ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE AND ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY: LIVING AND WORKING IN THE CONNECTED WORLD

CHAPTER ONE: ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE IN CONTEXT

ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE AND
ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY:
LIVING AND WORKING IN THE CONNECTED WORLD

CHAPTER ONE:
ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE IN CONTEXT