Factors Affecting the Spread of Electronic Democracy in the Australian Public Service

Abstract

Rather than being driven by technological change, the policy process has lagged behind in adopting new means of ensuring quality control and accountability. As computer systems become more open and interchangeable, so might policy formulation need to become more collaborative and inclusive. Ultimately, these changes may be made necessary by the rate of change of social and environmental conditions. Policy itself may be more mutable and less durable than previously, and require more interactivity.

The Australian public service offers fertile ground to study such trends. Australia is a well developed but relatively small country, with a long tradition of consultative processes. Despite growing inequalities, commitment still exists to universal entitlements and participation. Within the Australian public service, a number of projects can be seen as pilots for electronic policy formulation. The LINK mailing list has been successful in opening up the discussion of internet-related policies in a collaborative way. Within agencies, intranets and groupware have the potential to open up internal policy processes.

One of the goals of the recently released Framework and Strategies for Information Technology in the Commonwealth of Australia is to improve governmental planning processes by effective use of information technology. There is also a commitment to meeting client needs. Because the `business' of many government agencies is to develop effective policies, it should be possible to compare `traditional' consultation processes with more open, electronic techniques.

The author suggests a new approach to policy accountability which considers and makes explicit both social and financial measures. The relative contributions of both could then be looked at objectively. Difficulties arising from this perspective are discussed, including the problem of `self awareness', whereby agencies do not realise the value of the data they are gathering. The potential of several government projects, including newsgroups and mailing lists, are discussed from this perspective, along with factors inhibiting experimentation with such approaches.

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