# Problems and promises

# **What assumptions that (seem to) underpin e-participation tools (in the context of eindhoven area) are integrated in the tools?**

# Reaching in
## What are promises?
- (local) Open & accessible to individuals and groups (Bochel & Bochel, 2016) p. 683 allowing for 'reach-in' on a local level.
- Socio/political: local authorities are seen as a purely representative form, participation initiatives will enhance this representative structure. p.684
- Better two-way communication between citizens and (local) representitives
- Formalising the treatement of participation in governments (to adress:)
- perceived decline in political engagement
- enhance the quality of democracy
- empowerment of individuals
- contirbutiong to and improving policy making
- Development of social capital and citizen skills
- facilitate interactions between citizens and governments
- Help underpin the legitimacy and functioning of representative institutions
- Enable a deeper understanding of local patterns of need
- More effective managment of demands
- More reliable, faster and precise handling of routine repetitive tasks
- Faster access to and sharing of data between different parties
- New ways of working that could reconcile the goals of providing a better quality of customer experience while also cutting losses

## What are the problems
- (local) Implementation (of e-petitions) is patchy and not institutionalised . p683
- use of different tools for engagement are highly fragmented p.684
- Responsibility of different tools lie with a variety of teams, making it hard to encourage the people collectively and coordinate.
- There is a lack of two-way communication; representatives often are not part of the online participation; lacking giving a response.

### Other interesting finds
- 4 positions on digital democracy
- digital media being an effective means of transmitting ideas from individuals to the representative decision-making process, enabling individuals to have their particular interests realised through liberal political systems
- deliberative, with digital media supporting the extension of a deliberative democratic public sphere of communication and public opinion formation
- counter-publics, emphasising the role of digital media in political group formation, activism, and contestation, and enabling currently excluded voices to contest the discursive boundaries of the mainstream public sphere
- autonomist Marxist, with digital communication networks enabling a radically different democratic politics in the form of self-organised and inclusive participation in productive activities that bypass centralised state and capitalist systems.
*It is possible to identify elements of at least the first three of these in the arguments of many supporters of the development of e-petitions*
- 3 levels that chracterize involvement in e-participation initiatives (Bochel & Bochel, 2016) (based on Macintosh)
- information – a one-way relationship with government producing and delivering information for use by citizens;
- consultation – a two-way relationship with citizens providing feedback to government, but with governments defining the issues and managing the process
- active participation – where the relationship is based on partnership between government and citizens, with the latter actively engaged in defining the process and content, although responsibility for the final decision rests with government
- Still often a very strong ad-hoc approach

# Comparing online with offline citizen engagement

## Promises

- A citizen who is well informed about environmental policies and initiatives can become part of the global effort for environmental protection.
- E-participation can help to give the necessary visibility to environmental protection initiatives and to promote the engagement and cooperation of citizens and other key stakeholders.
- More participative approaches may be adopted to:
- Maximize the efficiency of public policy
- To develop social capital and community cohesion
- To improve service delivery
- To meet local needs
- To improve information flows and accountability
- To give voice to those most directly affected by public policy
- To address concerns about the ‘democratic deficit’
- Potential for informing, educating, and empowering citizens.
- Technology can aid a peaceful transition from thin democracies (where there are very limited avenues of action for citizens to express their preferences) to strong democracies (where there is a strong emphasis on engaging the citizenry).
- e-participation has three main benefits:
- It offers more opportunities for participation and higher levels of convenience because it is not anchored in time or place.
- It allows a greater range of participants
- It facilitates “better” participation, as new technologies allow participation to be linked to all the relevant information.
- Changes of attitudes or behavior, more trust in political institutions, learning, the building of social capital, etc
- Most outstsanding benefits according to managers:
- increased attention to the climate effects of actions in various fields of life
- better transparency in the development of local measures for climate protection
- an improvement of the image of the city
- a test of new ways of governance
- a user–friendly online interface is a factor for the success of e-participation
- E-participation is in its infancy and, because of this, learning processes improve their outcomes as suggested by Feeney and Welch (2012).

## Problems:
- Often, the adoption of citizen participation is an attempt to change the perceived image of government without deeper changes in the decision-making processes that really incorporate citizens' points of view.
- Public sector managers and politicians can oppose developments in citizen participation initiatives, as they fear losing power and are narrow-minded with regard to innovative processes, novelties, and changes in their everyday work process
- citizen participation sometimes becomes an end in itself (a symbol of responsiveness and ‘good management’), rather than a means to achieve other objectives such as strengthening democracy or achieving better service delivery.
- little empirical evidence to support these positive claims (three man benefort of e-participation: convenient, greater range of participants, linked to relevant info)
- An important challenge for e-participation is to achieve equity in the representation of stakeholders.
- The quality of online discussion tends to be low
- politicians are inhibiting the evolution of e-democracy.
- Although (...) managers seem to know the basic principles for successful citizen participation, they were not applied in practice. Improving the image of the local government and promoting transparency were the most important goals for the managers in this process.
- The same people always take part in (participation processes)
- Strong involvement from local politicians is needed in the participation process.
- More participation by citizens with higher educational and non-immigration backgrounds.
- Lack of time and decreasing motivation of citizens are big obstacles
- The more experienced in the field, the less global satisfaction about citizen participation projects
- More than 40% of local governments do not monitor the results of citizen participation programs.
- Active promotion is critical for effective e-participation.
- The difficulties involved in taking on citizens for participation initiatives are
- The citizen perception of both the lack of effectiveness of their collaboration
- The lack of true interest of politicians in their contributions
- Citizen perception that participation does not make a difference in the development of public policies seems to be an important cause of failure.
- Contrary to the hopes of some advocates, for the moment, the Internet is not changing the socio-economic character of citizen engagement in the EU.

## Extras:
- Macintosh and Whyte (2008) propose a three-layer framework for evaluating e-participation: socio-technical or tool perspective, project or initiative perspective, and democratic perspective.
- Successful online participation requires real commitment, a tailored approach to fit a target group, integration of online with traditional methods, feedback and coherence.

# Why e-participation systems fail: The Case of Estionia's Osale.ee
## Promises
- ICT would revolutionalize democractic participation
- The legitimacy of democratic processes is associated with broad-based citizen participation (Council of Europe, 2009; OECD, 2003), e-participation systems may be expected to be able to mobilize a large or at least a representative group of citizens in order to fulfill the expectation of enhancing legitimacy (Karlsson, 2012).
- The only determinants that are specific to online participation seem to be access to technology and Internet user skills.

## Problems

- Top-down government-led initiatives providing information, deliberation and consultation facilities to citizens have been critized for limited results and acceptance.
- 85% of all projects globally 'fail'
- Stakeholder multiplicity puts pressure on e-participation systems to satisfy the intrestes of various stakholders.
- Implementation is complicated as it is, encompassing factors such as:
- technical complexity,
- resource limitations,
- organizational context,
- structural arrangements,
- top management support,
- user resistance,
- competitors,
- political, institutional, legal, cultural, economic and technological environment, etc
- The limited rationality of human agents has been found to lead to the underestimation of risk (Janssen and Klievink, 2012) and to unrealistic expectations or even ‘pathological enthusiasms’ about what information systems can achieve, given their complexity.
- Public sector has ambiguous and competing objectives, structural and legal complexity, susceptibility to political interests, influence of state and governance traditions.
- These characteristics have also been found to affect governments' aptitude for engaging citizens (Voorberg et al., 2015) and implementing eparticipation (Medaglia, 2012).
- Also effects follow-through

- Decision-makers responsible for democratic engagement tend to oppose citizen participation (Mahrer and Krimmer, 2005). This may be due to fears of redistribution of power (Arnstein, 1969) and losing status and control
- Risk-averse culture of public sector organizations (Voorberg et al., 2015), fears of change (Chadwick, 2011), and institutional resistance
- Tends to be an overrepresentation of younger, technologysavvy and politically active citizens among those using ICT for political participation
- systems need to explicitly define it's purpose and limitations from the outset; as acceptance of e-participation systems depends on their perceived usefulness and ease of use.
- Poor intergration with political processes
- Lack of planning and ad-hoc nature or participation projects
- Many platforms striving to achieve vitrually the same thing;
- top-down managed gov projects less attractive; not systematically promoted as much

## Extras

For the most part, success stories of e-participation have been one-off projects or pilots with a very limited timescale, clear goals, well-defined participation process and extensive promotion efforts to engage users.
One notable exception is the Better Reykjavik policy crowdsourcing system in the capital of Iceland (Lackaff, 2015), which is largely perceived as a success story and has managed to create a sustainable local participation platform.

# Summary from memory
## 5 Promises
**Representativeness**

- More participants, more diverse compared to offline

**Trustworthiness**

- Increased transparency and trust in institutions

**Collaboration**

- Increased collaboration between citizens and public sector

**Community building**

- Increased social capital and social cohesion

**Effectiveness (process/project)**

- Improve outcomes ()

## 5 Problems / challenges
**Complexity**

- Management complexity is underestimated

**Reluctance**

- Unwillingess of politicians

**Clarity**
- Unclear communication throughout process

**Competition**
- Lots of competitor platforms

**Engagement**
- Citizens lack time and motivation