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HOW IT ALLOWS E-PARTICIPATION IN POLICY-MAKING PROCESS 1

How IT allows E-Participation in Policy-Making Process

Sourav Mukherjee

Senior Database Administrator &

PhD student at University of the Cumberlands

Chicago, United States

HOW IT ALLOWS E-PARTICIPATION IN POLICY-MAKING PROCESS 2

Abstract

With the art and practice of government policy-making, public work, and citizen participation,

many governments adopt information and communication technologies (ICT) as a vehicle to

facilitate their relationship with citizens. This participation process is widely known as E-

Participation or “Electronic Participation”. This article focuses on different performance

indicators and the relevant tools for each level. Despite the growing scientific and pragmatic

significance of e-participation, that area still was not able to grow as it was expected. Our diverse

set of knowledge and e-participation policies and its implementation is very limited. This is the

key reason why e-participation initiatives in practice often fall short of expectations. This study

collects the existing perceptions from the various interdisciplinary scientific literature to

determine a unifying definition and demonstrates the strong abilities of e-participation and other

related components which have great potential in the coming years.

Keywords: E-participation, e-governance, Citizen, e-democracy, public-work, ICT tools, e-

empowerment, e-engaging, technical tools, duality of e-Participation, levels of participation.

HOW IT ALLOWS E-PARTICIPATION IN POLICY-MAKING PROCESS 3

How IT allows E-Participation in Policy-Making Process

In this information-age, led by Internet content, resources, innovation in software and

technology and interdependence to multiple other systems in getting the society changed. E-

participation, E-Governance, ICT tools, e-empowerment, e-engagement are the interrelated

concepts or models help us effectively manage, participate, govern and pursue the public work.

Regardless Of the omnipresence of e-Participation programs, endeavors of social media-centered

and citizen-guided political discussions are extremely limited. Therefore, there lies a very little

chance to control, study and realize the desired debate regarding the traditional e-Participation

and a free or natural citizen debate on the social media platforms. Currently, the interest has

made a radical shift towards harnessing the informal channels part of the universal e-

Participation solution. Still, the unspoken belief of the duality of e-Participation is yet to be

studied, investigated and hypothesized. To implement such “duality of e-Participation”, requires

a robust social software foundation to empower decision makers in getting access to the

government entrance relevant resources regarding the continuing citizen debates on the social

media platforms.

Literature Review or Background

In the last couple of decades, a steady need to consider the innovative application of ICTs have

been evolved to play a part that may enable the broader audience to participate to independent

debate, the places where the roles are wider, broader and deeper. This understanding has

stemmed in several secluded e-democracy guides and research studies. It is crucial to strengthen

this work and distinguishes the degree of participation, the technology utilized, the phase in the

HOW IT ALLOWS E-PARTICIPATION IN POLICY-MAKING PROCESS 4

policy-making process and numerous issues and restrictions, including the possible benefits. E-

democracy is widely used in the ICT model to support and encourage democratic decision-

making processes. In a few countries, e-democracy is used synonymously used with e-voting.

However, the voting process is just a subset of the entire E-democracy process. Voting is not

only the only criteria through which the citizens can impact the policy-making or the decision-

making process. Rather e-democracy may be further divided into two separate areas such as e-

participation and the other is e-voting. E-Voting has been identified to go under many challenges

and difficulties, whereas the e-participation has a greater prospect with regards to discussion and

dialogue between the government, policymakers and the citizens. In many countries, the election

process is a concern to a high intensity of risk, whether it includes tampering with the voting

machines, dishonest vote kiosks/booths, or merely hiding the vote arrangement process of

supervision and public inspection. Nowadays because of the advancement in software process,

hiding malware in the voting device is no way a difficult task. Tampering with the voting results

are far easier and will continue to rise over a period such issue. The malware deployed may have

an algorithm which can efficiently change the votes from one candidate to the other and that may

do its job very easily without being noticed by the others. Hence it requires a malware detector to

quickly identify if the voting machine is free from any such scrupulous software. It has been

observed that most of the time the security improvements are driven by any kind of breaches and

hence it requires policymakers, government agencies, and security professionals to work together

to identify a better option to handle such issues. Due to this reason, e-voting is not preferred. On

the other hand, when it comes to the e-participation there is a large magnitude of government,

corporations using technology and expertise to provide access to policy information. While some

governments and study centers have already carried out several surveys in this area and explored

HOW IT ALLOWS E-PARTICIPATION IN POLICY-MAKING PROCESS 5

that there is no single approach to describe the problem and detailing the outcome. Therefore e-

democracy is involved with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to

connect citizens supporting the independent decision-making practices and improving the

representative republic. The primary ICT method is the internet-based approach, including

computers used in the home, office or in public locations, mobile phones, and television. The

self-governing decision-making processes can be separated into two major groups: one focus on

the electoral process, involving e-voting, and the other adopting citizen e-participation in

independent policymaking.

Discussion

e-governance is the product of information and communication technology (ICT) for providing

government public services, information exchange, communication operations, incorporation of

various systems and services to customers or to other businesses. This is nothing but governance

in an electronic environment using electronic media and tools.

Generally, the goals of the e-Governance are:

Serving the citizens through a better model

Leading towards transparency and accountability.

Enhance efficiency within government

Develop suitable connectivity between business and industry.

Due to the growing use of computers, Internets, smartphones, changes our lifestyle and the way

we undertake and execute any work, learn and respond. Around the world, governments are

HOW IT ALLOWS E-PARTICIPATION IN POLICY-MAKING PROCESS 6

started to realize the benefits of the value of e-governance. If this is designed and implemented

appropriately, the e-governance process can greatly benefit the people in terms of delivering

high-quality government services, simplifying the government regulations, improving the citizen

participation, creating an enabling trust in the government, and so on. For that reason,

policymakers and other officials are looking to implement e-Government in countries around the

world.

Regarding e-empowerment, e-petitions and e-referenda are two possible ways for the collection

of citizen opinions and remarks to control policy. The expansion of online populations of

interest, in which certain policy concerns are debated and different proposals are devised all over

again based on discussion forums, are also some instances of empowerment online.

One of the most common ways to empower citizens are E-empowering. In this policy-making

process, citizens are involved with encouraging active involvement and assisting bottom-up

proposals to sway the political agenda. Since the bottom-up viewpoint, citizens are evolving as

producers instead just users of the policy.

Therefore, I think that the levels of participation do include enabling, engaging, and

empowering.

Stages in the policy-making process are very complicated as it involved multiple parameters as

defined in the below picture to know when to engage the citizens,

• Setting Agenda – identify the problem which we need to address.

• Analysis – define the possible challenges and if there any opportunities associated with

the agenda.

• Create policy – create a good workable policy document.

• Implementation – create a solid delivery plan.

HOW IT ALLOWS E-PARTICIPATION IN POLICY-MAKING PROCESS 7

• Policy monitoring – involves evaluation and review of the policy.

Setting Agenda

Policy Monitoring

Analysis

Implementation Create policy

Figure 1. Stages in the Policy-making process

ICT offers the flexibility to policy-makers to reach directly to the users who are using the

services. Essentially citizens have more influence on policy matter through discussion before

then the policy-making procedure kicks in. Consultation at the phase of an outline policy

document involves citizens to have the communication skills to understand the usual legalistic

terminology of the document before commenting appropriately. Citizens are required to be well-

informed on issues before the above stage is reached and the information must be more accurate,

readable and understandable.

ICT can promote empowerment, involvement and getting government processes more effective

and understandable by sharing information and communication among the people and

organizations within the government. Even governments can improve on the quality and

awareness of the services they provide to the citizens and increase the availability of the services

and the infrastructure.

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This is enabled by e-government applications over the Internet and other communication

networks that deliver services and information to people. ICT can bind people and local groups

with information and resources outside their geographical limits, inspiring information

distribution, knowledge exchange, data, and communication. ICT also encourage the citizens to

participate in the democratic process in the form of electronic forums and bulletin boards which

facilitate participation in the public conversations. To control political and influential decision-

making processes, the organizations in the developing nations like to participate in the

information-sharing process that improves governance and collective energy. Even Though

people and organizations can efficiently use ICT to enhance their information exchange and

communications, robust leadership and executive resources are required to turn information into

organized engagement.

e-participation Tools and Techniques

Because of the versatility of the nature of the tools and technologies, most of the tools, and the

variety of actors in the participation process, it is challenging to identify and realize the

connections between citizens and technology. Such element measures how members are

involved, and which devices will be possible to help involvement efficiently.

Electronic participation services through ICTs should be positioned at the center of the e-

participation process as they form the principle of e-participation. Investigating such tools is

deemed a shred of convincing evidence for the significance of the ICT tools in the achievement

of e-participation developments.

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In the 2000s the European Commission (EC) financed numerous e-participation projects under

the e-participation foundation act, the organizing of ICT, its experience, and the newest

developments in an online collaboration were the common features of the most popular projects.

Sobaci has established a framework for the applicable ICT tools according to the various e-

participation’s purposes and the attributes desired to achieve these intentions, also Phang and

Kankanhalli suggested another framework that offered five ideas of e-participation and the finest

ICT tools to achieve them. One More framework was proposed by Abu-Shanab and Al-Dalou’

that contained three levels and the appropriate technical tools necessary for every level.

Furthermore, they recommended a catalog of performance statistics linked to every level of e-

participation.

Conclusions and Future Study

E-Government is about finding another useful way in which governments work together with the

citizens, administrative agencies, companies, workers, and other participants. It enhances the

democratic process and new proposals to create life simpler for people. The research area of e-

Government is wide, extensive and small, and several scholars are engaged in various study

projects in numerous issues in the area. The difficulty of e-participation practices findings from

the multi-specialties included in this area. A general understanding was laid out about different

electronic policy-making terminologies and their veracity of uses. Finally, more research is

necessary for further awareness, knowledge, and understanding of such growing area, to

concentrate on the significance of mobile involvement and social practices as two indispensables

HOW IT ALLOWS E-PARTICIPATION IN POLICY-MAKING PROCESS 10

tools for the government to improve the involved political practices between the governments

and the citizens. While defining the potential of democracy, governance and public work at the

beginning of the information age is an amazing opportunity and responsibility. With the smart

and efficient use of ICTs and in combination with democratic intent, we can create governments

more approachable. We can also unite citizens to efficiently encounter public challenges, and

eventually, we can build a more workable future for the advantage of the entire society and realm

in which we live.

References

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12, DOI: 10.1080/01900692.2016.1242620.

AUTHOR’S PROFILE

Sourav Mukherjee is a Senior Database Administrator and Data Architect based out of Chicago.

He has more than 12 years of experience working with Microsoft SQL Server Database

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Platform. His work focusses in Microsoft SQL Server started with SQL Server 2000. Being a

consultant architect, he has worked with different Chicago based clients. He has helped many

companies in designing and maintaining their high availability solutions, developing and

designing appropriate security models and providing query tuning guidelines to improve the

overall SQL Server health, performance and simplifying the automation needs. He is passionate

about SQL Server Database and the related community and contributing to articles in different

SQL Server Public sites and Forums helping the community members. He holds a bachelor's

degree in Computer Science & Engineering followed by a master’s degree in Project

Management. Currently pursuing Ph.D. In Information Technology from the University of the

Cumberlands. His areas of research interest include RDBMS, distributed database, Cloud

Security, AI and Machine Learning. He is an MCT (Microsoft Certified Trainer) since 2017 and

holds other premier certifications such as MCP, MCTS, MCDBA, MCITP, TOGAF, Prince2,

Certified Scrum Master and ITIL.