The Internet is already impacting on our domestic lives, and is starting to transform working environments as well. Some of these effects will be far reaching, with implications for organisational and communications behaviour. Depending on your viewpoint, these changes are either: a powerful force for progress; a rationale for reinforcing the status quo, or stand independent of wider social and political issues.
Warnings about the erosion of the public sphere through commercialisation, particularly of communication technologies are not new (Thompson and Held, 1982, pg 5) On the other hand, some communications researchers, while concerned about concentration of ownership and control, believe it is possible to use these technologies to broaden participation in policy-making to achieve social goals. (McChesney, 1996, pg 99)
Convergence is now a widespread phenomenon which embraces many areas of contemporary life, social and technical. I believe a ‘fractal’ pattern is emerging, to adopt a term from chaos theory. That means similar forms are observable at every level of analysis, from the personal to the organisational to the national.
Thus, the dangers and the opportunities of the current communications revolution are observable within any particular arena. Direct democracy in Switzerland might offer lessons for improving a medium sized business in Australia. This paper looks at the modest stirrings of electronic democracy in the Australian public service, and the factors affecting it, and draws conclusions relevant to other sectors.
I will describe a model of accountability that explicitly recognises social goals and provides a link between internal public sector processes and a broader concept of ‘electronic democracy.’
The public sector is relevant because of its power, both as an agent and as a model. The public sector is the instrument of government, which is, we trust, the instrument of the people’s will.
‘The proper economic role of government is larger than merely standing in for markets if they fail to work well. In defining and protecting property rights, proving effective legal, judicial and regulatory systems, improving the efficiency of the civil service, and protecting the environment, the state forms the very core of development.’(World Bank, 1991)
As a model, the public sector is expected to have the highest standards of ethics, the noblest ideals of service, and be the most progressive in its people management practices. The concept of industrial democracy has emerged as an empowering concept which can improve overall performance.
Industrial democracy has been defined as:
‘The free and open sharing of information and ideas coupled with informed decision making’
(Industrial Democracy Plan 1993-97, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet)
This begs the question of who ultimately makes the decisions. Ask any public servant how realistically this has been implemented. In practice, industrial democracy allows staff to have a say through mechanisms such as regular staff meetings, performance feedback, training. staff suggestion schemes, circulars, and consultative committees for specific issues such as occupational health and safety, equal employment opportunity, enterprise bargaining, and, of course, industrial democracy.
Industrial democracy is relatively recent, and has to be understood in the context of a rapidly changing public service culture. Although my comments are based on the Commonwealth public service, and my Canberra colleagues and experiences, similar trends are evident at state, territory and local levels. In an excellent paper about the Internet, Denis Strangman (1996, pg 2) reminds us of the days when control and adherence to procedures and inflexibility dominated all activity. He gives the example of Commonwealth cars having the air conditioning units removed for the Canberra fleet, because it wasn’t allowed in the regulations.
Industrial democracy contradicts the very definition of a bureaucracy:
Bureaucracy:
‘organisations with a pyramidal structure of authority, which utilise the enforcement of universal and impersonal rules to maintain that structure of authority, and which emphasize the nondiscretionary aspects of administration.’(Peters, 1989, pg 4)
A variety of pressures have made hierarchical structures increasingly dysfunctional. As the complexities of society have increased, so has the number of tasks for government. Telecommunications, environment, health insurance are all examples of areas that require oversight and at least coordination, but more realistically also regulation, of market operators. With bigger government, demands for accountability and participation in decision making have also grown.
This growth in government function has also pushed the decision level further down the bureaucratic tree.(Peters, 1989, pg 4) Coupled with this has been the spread of technology. Not so long ago in the public service one phone was available for 30 people, and all trunk calls were operator connected. Now there is nearly one PC per person in the Commonwealth public service. For most of us, to be at work is synonymous with being logged onto the LAN. At least 30% of Comonwealth public servants have Internet email access, (Strangman, 1996, pg 3) and full WWW access is increasing by leaps and bounds.
Moreover, the pace of change has accelerated, meaning that the pressure is on for decisions to be made faster. Policy in particular, is no longer made in board rooms, sealed from the outside world, but through broad consultation processes.
Modern merit-based bureaucracies provide great security (at least until recently) for public servants, but this can reduce their responsiveness to the public. And inevitably, every organisation put together with a burning mission will eventually burn out, as individuals grow complacent or cynical and more concerned with their own well-being than with broader social goals. (Peters, 1989, pg 135)
These trends work against accountability. Formal measurements of accountability are most often considered in relation to administrative matters such as personnel management, or purchaser-provider situations. The social accountability of the decision making process is primarily pursued through program evaluation, where feedback from clients is an important factor. (MAB, 1993, pg 10) Thus, the responsiveness of the overall policy development and implementation process is dependent on the quality of the data gathered at all stages.
It is inevitable that pressures for cost-effectiveness will eventually put the decision making process under greater scrutiny. In major cases such as the mad cow disease scandal or the blood contaminated with AIDS virus in Europe, the costs to the government of compensation can be astronomical. It’s better to get it right the first time.
Accountability is the link between industrial democracy and electronic democracy, which is another layer in the fractal pattern. What is ‘electronic democracy’? We can define it in common sense terms as use of electronic media for information sharing and participation in decision making. Clearly, electronic democracy implies there must be accountability for the decision making process. And whereas industrial democracy is largely focussed within an organisation, electronic democracy implies an empowerment both within organisations and across structures of all kinds.
These issues are of immediate importance in Australia. Jobs and incomes are less evenly distributed than ever before. (Gregory and Hunter, 1995) This is quite evident in the capital, Canberra, which has a topheavy concentration of public servants. Senior levels of the public service draw on a narrower social base than the rest of the public service, (Bunn and Ranald, 1993, pg 214-215) and Canberra has the highest average income in Australia. These facts, together with the planned, garden aspect of Canberra, have led to it being widely considered a privileged enclave, remote from the pressures of the ‘real’ Australia. Recent scandals with the Aboriginal Legal Service are a sad reminder of just how far from accountable a publicly funded agency can be. Several layers are implicated, none of which was concerned enough about its own accountability to take action.
The exploration of both industrial and electronic democracy, therefore, is important if it contributes to increasing accountability. I will use some examples within the Commonwealth public service to illustrate the possibilities and pittfalls of electronic democracy. The measures of accountability I propose recognise the importance of agreeing on social goals, and utilise the potential of interactive technologies to determine and monitor progress towards these goals.
The forms of electronic democracy initiated in a public service context have until recently been limited to newsgroups, subscribed lists, email messages, and papers placed on the Web for comment. Some organisations, such as the Department of Finance, are using electronic bulletin boards to discuss departmental practices. (personal communications) These initiatives are used both for communicating quickly within the organisation, and for bringing in expertise beyond the public sector. Denis Strangman, (1996, pg 4) monitor of the PUBSEC list, notes that ‘if you were looking for one quick way of more fully integrating academia into the policy process then I could think of no better way than through email discussion groups.’
The Educational Network EdNA and the Community Information Network in the Department of Social Security offer feedback loops via mechanisms such as email, newsgroups, on-line surveys or visitors’ books, and the placement of public documents on the Web. EdNA is also setting up subscribed lists, which offer the opportunity for more specialised and detailed discussion about the development of the service. While it is emphasised that it is very early days for both of these, the general feeling is that there are clear efficiencies through the collaborative atmosphere such mechanisms create. (Graham Adcock, Technical Director, EdNA Task Force, personal communication)
The CIRG-L list, established for the Commonwealth Internet Reference Group, and the LINK list organised through the Australian National University, both demonstrate the the vigour which can result when bureaucrats are allowed to freely cross-fertilise with academics and other interested groups. Many international messages which have the potential to affect Internet development here are forwarded on through LINK. CIRG-L has now gone a bit quiet, after a redefinition of its scope.
Various threads on these lists clearly show the increasingly common overlap between policy and administration, as in recent discussions on LINK (available at LINK Archives [HREF1]) over the publication of Family Law cases on a readily accessible Internet site. Public servants also seek to be set free to use electronic technologies to their full potential, in order to be effective (see for example the CIRG-L Archives [HREF2]). That is, they are not always able to apply the information they have gathered electronically, due to the restraints of a what is still a very hierarchical system.
Both the CIRG-L and LINK lists have been open to any subscriber, which increases their chances of being responsive to wider issues. Their archives provide the important dimension of transparency, and increases their value to researchers and the public. Both of these qualities may be considered essential for improved accountability. What is not always available is the vital third dimension of evaluation.
That is, evaluation of the usefulness of both internal and external forms of electronic collaboration and consultation are often lacking. A huge amount of information flows over the networks, but its contribution to other processes is not generally clear.
The introduction of intranets may address the evaluation issue within individual agencies. Within Commonwealth departments, as in private enterprise, the use of groupware and intranets is growing. Research into computer mediated communications indicates that the computer itself must help to manage work loads, and that 'designing for interactivity means encouraging relatively small task-oriented groups and committees of interest'. (Hiltz and Turoff, 1985, pg 681)
Intranets allow departments to capitalise on the creative anarchy and collaborative culture that operates across the Internet. Groupware assists with ‘communication, collaboration, and coordination’, at least according to one popular groupware vendor [HREF3]. Such advances build on the documented benefits of collaboration and collaborative learning. (Slade, 1996) The ability of electronic communications, such as email, to bypass social cues such as status and gender is also said to encourage the offering of views, (Sproull and Kiesler, 1986) far more than the standardised meetings and hierarchical committees which meet to advance industrial democracy.
Although there is recognition of the need to foster collaboration, much of the intent of introducing new technologies has to do with functional empowerment, or efficiency, rather than democratic empowerment, which is about participation in the conditions of work and setting goals. (Clement, 1994)
In this respect, the public service is becoming more like the private sector. The fractal pattern of convergence applies, particularly as management in the public sector increasingly follows employment patterns common in the private sector. That is, with secure tenure rapidly fading, short-term thinking for quick-fix solutions is becoming more common. Managers will often not be on hand to reap the consequences of their actions, and this diminishes concerns about accountability. It also leads to a blurring of the role of the public sector, and both the obligations of public servants and ‘the rights of citizens which distinguish public sector functions from commercial functions in the marketplace’. (Bunn and Ranald, 1993, pg 211)
Other factors moderate both industrial and electronic democracy in the public sector. Security of data is a major concern, and has led, for example, to threats in one department to close down the X 400 email gateway. Breaching of policy guidelines in email messages is another concern. A response posted to a list has a quasi-official status, because it may be widely dispersed, committed to writing and probably archived. Comments made over the phone or even at a meeting, on the other hand, are often less guarded, because they are not generally recorded. Also, public servants are well trained in the protocols for acceptable pronouncements in these media. For example, email messages sent to Ministers are sometimes passed back to the department with the status of ‘Ministerials’, requiring a long, tedious, (and expensive) process before they can be discharged. Suitable protocols could be developed to allow a suitable reply via email, from an officer trusted to have sufficient knowledge and sensitivity to respond appropriately.
But many good, common sense applications of information technology never get implemented, or take much longer than expected. Part of the problem is the failure to recognise that information is a political resource within organisations, not just a tool for productivity. (Keen, 1981, pg 28) Implementing truly open systems which allow learning to take place within and across levels is difficult within a government department. There are even greater difficulties with extending this transparency to the public. 'We must control who we communicate with', summarises a not uncommon attitude. This approach may, at times, be justified, but it conflicts with the concepts of accountability and electronic democracy.
Consider the three levels at which most documents are worked on: the personal, the team, and the corporate, or departmental. In theory, once a document reaches the corporate level it is accessible to the public. In practice this is unlikely, because the public usually doesn’t know it exists, and Freedom of Information requests can be awkward.
Public servants do not consider themselves, generally, directly accountable to the public. Their accountability is indirect, through the government of the day which has the intermittent approval of the public to pursue its agenda. However, if more focus was placed on obtaining broad consensus about, and then achieving, particular social goals, openness of communication would become less fearful.
Such broad consensus could well lead to cost-efficiencies, as expensive damage control could be minimised. In this context, I propose a model of accountability in which social goals are measured by their responsiveness, transparency, and evaluation.
Cost-effectiveness + social goals met = accountability,
where social goals are assessed through a process of responsiveness, transparency, and evaluation
Interactive technologies, firstly within organisations, and then applied more broadly to embrace public participation, can quietly contribute to these processes of responsiveness, transparency and evaluation. One senior public service manager was quoted as saying: ‘If it isn’t measured, it doesn’t get done.’
The E-mail Task Force in the United States [HREF4] is measuring the effectiveness, efficiency and relative cost benefits of e-mail based enhancements when compared to existing, paper based business processes. It is not clear whether they are taking into account the broader benefits this technology can provide. However, just as many environmental costs and benefits are not yet committed to paper, so the social ecologies of new communication technologies have yet to be fully documented and valued. Research on their social impacts and potential is still a new field.
Trials like the American one could easily be extended to the policy process, particularly in departments where policy development is their main business. Improving departmental and agency planning is one of the strategies for the Australian government IT draft blueprint.(OGIT, 1995) This would bring a whole range of activities under the umbrella of cost-effectiveness, and could encourage wider experimentation with electronic democracy processes.
There is no lack of research on excellence in organisations: the terms empowerment, decentralised, social responsibility, collaborative culture and honesty of communications rank highly. (Grunig, 1992, pp 219-250) The clear challenge is to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of such qualities, including those relating to electronic democracy.
In conclusion, there is yet enormous scope for demonstrating the potential of the current revolution in communication technologies to elucidate and attain social goals. At every level in the fractal pattern, research on communications applications needs to take the broadest possible approach to questions of effectiveness and efficiency. Within the public sector, the need for responsiveness, transparency and evaluation should be built into performance contracts and program proposals. Refinement of measures for such qualities is needed. These measures could then be applied by any organisation wishing to maximise its intellectual and technological resources and outcomes.
The above discussion of electronic democracy in the Australian public service indicates the potential for broader application of interactive technologies. Clearly, if allowed to proceed, these changes will make government, and public policy, more open and accountable.
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World Bank World Development Report, 1991 New York: World Bank.
LINK archives
CIRG-L archives
Groupware - Communication, Collaboration and Coordination, 1995, the Lotus Development Corporation
Report on Governmentwide Electronic Mail for the (US) Federal Government
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