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E-governance
An Introduction
by Megan Crowley, CPPA
If you have used the
internet to renew your driver’s license, order a birth certificate, pay taxes,
or pay for a license, you have participated in e-government services. These and other online services have become
the expected norm for state, county and municipal websites. As Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT) advance, e-government systems continue to
increase, improve and become mainstream.
ICT advancement also
provides both opportunities and public expectations, creating a need to look at
new methods of governing - e-governance.
Because of ICTs, e-governance systems have potential to not only support
public policy, but also assist in the process of creating public policy
by actively engaging the public. So what
is e-governance and how does it differ from the e-government systems we have in
place?
Professor Donald F. Kettl in
his book, The Transformation of Governance, defines government as an
institutional superstructure that society uses to translate politics into
policies and legislation. Kettl
describes governance as the outcome of the interaction of government, public
service, and citizens throughout the political process, policy development,
program design, and service delivery. [i]
Government
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Governance
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Superstructure
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Interaction of government,
public service and citizens
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Policies and legislation
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Political process, policy
development, program design, service delivery
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With this definition,
government plays a role in governance, along with public service and citizens,
with interaction between these entities a critical characteristic of
governance.
These same types of differentiators
show the contrast between e-government and e-governance.
E-government
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E-governance
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Website
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Web portal with links to
government, public service and citizen forums
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Online code, statutes,
regulations
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Online discussions of
policy topics, feedback for program design and improvement
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By implementing e-governance
systems, we can provide the possibility of closer interactions, government to government,
government to public services, government to citizens, and public services to
citizens.
Another way to contrast
these two concepts is presented in the table below.
E-government
characteristics
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E-governance
characteristics
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Services
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Connections
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Efficiencies
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Relationships
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Back office workflow
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Front office interactions
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What is accomplished
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How and why it is
accomplished
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The entity
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The connections between
entities
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Information
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Collaboration and
participation
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While important information
and services are available as outputs on government websites, the
relationships, connections and participation provided via
e-governance can provide
positive and powerful outcomes for citizens, government, and public
services alike.
So how does e-governance
show up? Some possible features
include:
- The ability for citizens to leave feedback to
various government offices
- A subscription based listserv or e-Newsletter
that keeps citizens and other agencies informed.
- Online discussion forums or chat rooms to
discuss policy issues
- e-Meetings for cross agency / cross governmental
participation
- Online citizen surveys or polls for specific
issues with published results
- Online citizen satisfaction surveys with published
results
- Online decision-making - e-petitions,
e-referenda
- Online performance measures with published
results
These features get us closer
to what David Patton, CPPA Director, talks about in his recent article,
What is Good Governance. Dr.
Patton identified good governance as having the following standards:
- Participation - All men and women should have a voice in decision-making, either
directly or through legitimate intermediate institutions that represent
their interests. Such broad participation is built on freedom of
association and speech, as well as capacities to participate
constructively.
- Transparency - Transparency is built on the free flow of information.
Processes, institutions and information are directly accessible to those
concerned with them, and enough information is provided to understand and
monitor them.
- Responsiveness - Institutions and processes try to serve all stakeholders.
- Consensus orientation - Good governance mediates differing interests
to reach a broad consensus on what is in the best interests of the group
and, where possible, on policies and procedures.
- Equity
- All men and women have opportunities to improve or maintain their
well-being.
- Effectiveness and efficiency - Processes and institutions produce results
that meet needs while making the best use of resources.
- Accountability - Decision-makers in government, the private sector and civil
society organizations are accountable to the public, as well as to
institutional stakeholders. This accountability differs depending on the
organization and whether the decision is internal or external to an
organization. [ii]
Not only can ICTs assist in achieving
these standards, but e-governance implementation plans should apply
these same standards, particularly transparency, which can provide a method of
managing the expectations of a participating public.
But by engaging the public
in policy making, are we diminishing the representative relationship? No, say Stephen Coleman and John Gotse in
their paper Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy
Deliberation. The authors suggest
that this practice strengthens the relationship.
ICTs
provide new opportunities to connect citizens to their representatives,
resulting in a less remote system of democratic governance. The alternative to engaging the public will
not be an unengaged public, but a public with its own agenda and an
understandable hostility to decision-making processes which appear to ignore
them. By bringing citizens into the
loop of governance, opportunities for mutual learning occur; representatives
can tap into the experiences and expertise of the public and citizens can come
to understand the complexities and dilemmas of policy making. [iii]
[i]
Donald F. Kettl, The Transformation Of Governance, John Hopkins
University Press, 2002
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