Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee

Inquiry into Electronic Democracy

Discussion paper, October 2002

[Table of Contents]

4. Key Themes:
Strengthening democratic processes through the use of electronic technology

The full ramifications of major technological change are consistently under-estimated, especially in the early stages of adoption. We are not yet in a position to anticipate the long-term effects of electronic technology on representative democracy, or even how those effects will be expressed.

However, it is possible to identify the most important themes about the likely impact as we understand it today. Three themes stand out from the analysis of impact in the previous section:

information – including the activities of identifying, assessing and monitoring;
interaction – including the activities of forming, promoting, interacting, implementing and evaluating; and
decision making – including electing.

For each of these themes, there is a series of questions that can form the starting point for thinking and debate about electronic democracy. The questions posed in this section are meant to stimulate that debate rather than be a comprehensive coverage of the issues.

There is no doubt that this is an important debate.

Electronic technology has the capacity to bring major change, not just to existing processes and participants, but also to the fundamental structure of representative democracy. While some of this change will mirror wider changes in society, there is also a significant potential for unintended consequences.

For example, electronic technology can significantly reduce the transaction cost of mass decision-making and other more direct forms of democracy – essentially the cost of communication.

But does this mean that we should use the technology in this way?

Currently, we delegate decision making to our Parliamentary representatives and hold them accountable for their decisions at periodic elections. We also make a mass decision when our elected representatives decide that an issue is of sufficient importance or controversy to require a direct mandate for change in the form of a referendum. We also require a mass decision to change the national constitution.

Between elections, politicians use a wide variety of formal and informal mechanisms to sound out the feeling of the community, but the results are rarely binding on them.

Is the current balance between the representative and direct elements in our democracy the correct one?

As discussed in more detail later in this Section, representative democracy is not simply the result of practical restrictions on communications and mass decision making. It reflects the view that the majority of decisions require significant depth of knowledge and analysis, more than any one citizen could be expected to hold. Further, it is seen to act as a buffer against short term populism, allowing governments to make difficult decisions in the long term interests of the economy and society, and to protect against a tyranny of the majority destroying the tolerance of diversity that is a mainstay of our political stability.

Are these reasons still valid?

These are important questions. While our democracy will inevitably evolve along side wider developments in society, we need to consider whether fundamental changes should be a deliberate choice made possible by electronic technology or simply allowed to be unintended consequences of it.

Electronic technology will change democracy. This change is already underway.

Nothing can be done to prevent some change from occurring. Democratic institutions will not be able to decide whether electronic democracy will apply within their jurisdiction. They can only influence how it will apply.

The question is to what extent do we try to take an active role in that change, to understand the forces that are at work, to smooth the dislocation that it will bring, and to make deliberate choices about how we see our democracy operating in the future.

4.1 Information

The issues around this theme reflect changes that are already underway in the nature, scope, volume and accessibility of information available to the participants in a representative democracy.

Availability

There is a tendency to assume that electronic technology will automatically result in an increased availability of information relevant to citizens and to democratic entities and institutions. But this will only be the case if the custodians of that information choose to make it available. Further, the sheer volume of information that can be accessed electronically can mask problems with its currency and completeness.

To what extent are the availability, currency and completeness of information key issues in electronic democracy?

Are existing limitations simply a reflection of the immature state of the technology and our use of it, or should we demand new standards on the basis that information is the foundation for informed participation?

What amount of the finite resources available to democratic institutions are we willing to divert to this purpose?

The information management capacity of electronic technology allows information to be narrowcast much more easily, with different messages targeted to discrete audiences.

How will we ensure that participation and other democratic processes are fully informed and not distorted by incomplete exposure of the issues or skewed messages?

Is this a problem to be guarded against, or an opportunity to allow citizens and entities to better participate in only those issues that are of interest to them?

Who decides?

Tools

There is already a staggering volume and scope of information available electronically and it continues to grow exponentially. The tools and processes that are available to discover, access, filter, analyse, store and update that information lag far behind this growth.

To what extent are these tools and processes necessary to the development of electronic democracy?

If they are essential, is their development a matter for the market or do they have some characteristics of a public good, part of the democratic infrastructure that society as a whole pays for and puts into place?

What amount of the resources of democratic institutions are we willing to divert to the development and distribution of these tools?

Reliability

Electronic technology makes information easily and cheaply available from many sources. It allows competitors to emerge to existing information gatekeepers including:

the traditional media;
professions such as doctors and lawyers; and
interest groups that claim to be the peak body speaking on behalf of a particular sector, community or issue.

This means that citizens, entities and institutions have access to alternative views, and can compare the claims of one source against those of another. But this comes at the loss of the editorial function that traditional gatekeepers provide where information is sorted, filtered and tested for its veracity and relevance, often by people specifically trained in the area. One topical example is the debate about how people can assess the reliability of health information available on the internet.

In electronic democracy, how do we cope with questions of the reliability of information, and the noise and information overload that can accompany many voices speaking on the one subject or issue?

Do we need to be concerned about this, or will the market correct for these effects as citizens, entities and institutions naturally turn to trusted sources, even though they may be different from, or more extensive than, the existing gatekeepers?

How should government and other democratic institutions respond when incomplete or unreliable information can spread much faster than they are able to react?

Will unreliable information fuel populism and how can electronic democracy counter such a threat?

Intermediaries

Major technological change is associated with rapid and wide reaching effects on the role of intermediaries. Significant disintermediation occurs with many types of economic activity, areas of employment and even communities being swept aside. At the same time, new intermediaries emerge, creating new economic and social roles that were not needed or not practical in the past.
The processes of democracy involve many intermediaries. The information gatekeepers discussed above are important examples.

While existing intermediaries are quite powerful in their ability to influence democratic processes, in the main they come from within our own society. The forces that shape and control their operation are the same as the forces that cause our democracy to evolve. Electronic technology removes many of the practical barriers to intermediaries emerging from other places, or with views that are outside of the norms of our society.

Which intermediaries will be affected by the change towards electronic democracy?

What should be the policy about new intermediaries?

To what extent are intermediaries from outside Victoria and Australia a risk to the unique strengths and character of our democracy?

If they are, do we deal with this by absorbing them into the diversity of our society or attempt to exclude them in some way?

4.2 Interaction

The issues around this theme reflect the dramatic fall in the cost of interaction – discovery, association, communication, formation, etc – brought about by electronic technology. This change in cost has made new forms of interaction practical and accessible to a much wider range of people and organisations.

The immediate issues around interaction include policy development, moderation, assistance, competition, activism, and security and privacy.

Policy development

Policy development involves the identification, analysis, decision-making and evaluation associated with creating a considered position on an issue, problem or opportunity. Democratic institutions, especially executive government, engage in large-scale policy development across many economic and social areas. Democratic entities and citizens also develop policy in the sense that they arrive at considered positions. However, there is a significant imbalance between the capacity of democratic institutions and entities to develop policy and that of individual citizens. This is not simply a matter of resources or skills, but also reflects the relative isolation of the individual citizen from the debate that generates the best policy, which can often be highly technical.

Policy development is a central democratic process because it:

links together the interests of citizens, entities and institutions; and
frequently forms the basis for decisions that can have major effects over long periods of time, involve considerable resources, and create assumptions upon which other policy and decisions are based.

Policy development is not simply the analysis of objective facts. It also properly involves political considerations, vision and goals, ideology, the attitudes of community or interest groups, the attitudes of citizens, professional judgement, and a raft of other human factors. Successful policy development is essentially an interactive process.

Electronic technology radically changes the opportunity for citizens and entities to participate in policy development. It allows:

greatly improved access to relevant information;
more effective means to disseminate material and proposals for consultation and debate;
the ability to join together with others in debate, and to form coalitions of interest, regardless of geographic and other barriers that apply in physical space; and
new tools and techniques such as collaborative editing that can be used to develop common positions.

But using electronic technology for democratic processes such as policy development also poses some major challenges.

Most important is the question of whether electronic technology will truly bring increased participation or whether it will further entrench the position of already powerful players in the process. Democratic institutions and entities have deep policy development resources and expertise. They are set up to engage in debate over a wide range of topics. Any one citizen could never match this capacity.

Therefore, most policy development involves a dialogue between organisations that claim to represent certain interests associated with an issue.

Electronic technology allows citizens to more easily join together, not necessarily as an organisation, but to pool intellectual resources and to build a network for debate and consideration.

Does this new ability balance the power held by citizens compared with organisations in the policy development process? Or, will other features of electronic technology act to magnify the difference by making the processes more efficient for those with the resources and expertise?

How will citizens determine which areas of policy development they are interested in from the vast array of issues dealt with by executive government and others?

How will they become aware when an issue arises, or develop the capability to raise an issue themselves?

Are the majority of citizens even interested in most policy development beyond those matters that affect them personally or touch their family and community, or do they believe that policy is a matter that they delegate to their representatives in Parliament and democratic entities?

Increased participation could complicate and lengthen the policy development process.

For example, successful policy development typically attempts to gain consensus to a broad direction and set of principles in the first instance. This process often involves a wide group of stakeholders. Once agreement at this level is in place, the process then turns to the detail, guided by the direction and principles developed in the first stage. The scope and number of stakeholders involved in the second stage frequently narrows as the debate becomes more technical and requires depth of specialist knowledge. In this way, policy development can build from the views of the many while benefiting from the expertise held by a few.

Will electronic democracy cause policy development to become bogged down in the detail before a broad direction can be established?

Even if this was the case, do the benefits of increased participation exceed the cost of slower policy development, decision making and delayed implementation?

How might these cost be reduced?

The aim of good policy development is to arrive at the best solution that is practical in the circumstances. This can be quite different from the consensus or majority view because it takes account of other factors such as vision and goals, long term benefits, professional judgement and technical expertise.

Could increased participation in policy development result in a tendency to the lowest common denominator?

How might this be avoided?

One of the advantages of electronic technology is that it gives those with few resources a more equal voice with those who already have the means. This allows minority views to be better promoted, and citizens to have more opportunity to speak and be heard. This new balance is an important potential benefit of electronic democracy.

However, the technology is just as capable of being used for disruptive purposes as it is to improve democratic processes. For example, those with extreme views, or minority positions that were not gaining the support their proponents desired, could use this capacity for a louder voice to flood the communications channel with noise. This would disrupt the process, crowd out competing messages and generate an impact out of all proportion to the support the views may have in the wider community.

How do we balance the desirable effect of giving a greater voice to those with few resources against the potential for some to crowd out the views of the many?

How can we test the validity of views expressed using electronic technology, especially if we allow anonymous participation?

What new checks and balances are required in the policy development process as part of electronic democracy?

Moderation

A civil society allows citizens to express their views without threat or coercion, even if those views are outside of mainstream opinion.

In physical space, there are laws and social norms that guide behaviour, preserving the ability to be heard but avoiding unrestrained and disruptive participation. This balance is constantly being redefined as society and our democracy evolve.

In electronic space, the rules are less clear. This manifests itself in several ways:

the medium is still immature, as is the understanding of how to best operate and behave within it;
the technology allows for anonymous participation to a greater degree than is normally the case in physical space;
the noise generated by a small group can equal that of a larger number of people, distorting the message or crowding out the communication channel; and
the ability for dissenting individuals to split off into a new group is greatly enhanced, fragmenting movements and reducing the pressure to negotiate a common position.

Later in this paper the issue of the new democratic infrastructure that will be required for electronic democracy is discussed. However, for the purpose of this discussion, we can assume that executive government is likely to be the major provider of this infrastructure because it has the characteristics of a public good.

If this is the case, does executive government have a special responsibility in relation to the use of that infrastructure for electronic democracy?

Should the responsibility to provide moderation and other protection be limited to consultation and policy development involving government, or should it also extend to other democratic processes taking place over the infrastructure?

If so, how does government do this without constraining debate?

Should moderation or other behaviour control mechanisms aim to prevent threat or coercion, to keep an interaction on topic, or to place other boundaries around democratic processes?

Who decides what those boundaries should be?

Can we learn from the developing approaches and etiquette for other interaction occurring in electronic space or are the requirements of electronic democracy sufficiently unique to demand new methods?

Assistance

Three elements will be required for citizens and entities to be able to interact as part of electronic democracy:

access – both physical and in terms of information management and interaction tools;
skills and knowledge – about how to use the infrastructure but also about the opportunities and constraints that come with electronic democracy; and
compelling applications – reasons for citizens, entities and institutions to participate.

These issues are further discussed in the following Section.

Competition

Electronic technology dramatically reduces the cost of information discovery, the cost of formation for informal groups of citizens and for formal organisations, and the cost of association for those groups and organisations.

This means that it is much easier for new voices to arise challenging the position of existing participants in many democratic processes including:

peak interest and lobby groups;
political parties;
community associations; and
single issue groups.

Competition not only occurs for membership, but also for other important elements of power in a representative democracy including:

political space – recognition and standing within political processes;
attention – among traditional media and in the new electronic distribution channels; and
credibility – as the sole or a trusted voice.

Such changes have always been part of the evolution of our democracy. However, electronic technology speeds the process and magnifies the effects.

The speed of change is increased because the barriers to competition, primarily cost and access to information channels, are significantly reduced. The effects are magnified because the technology allows small groups or even individual citizens to promote their position as if they had the resources of a large, established player.

Further, electronic technology assists and encourages organisational agility, favouring those entities able to change rapidly and operate in a flexible manner.

Electronic technology will challenge long settled relationships, and speed the processes of transformation in our democracy.

How can we avoid instability as the pace of change accelerates?

Is competition among participants in democratic processes always positive?

Even if it has negative consequences, is it inevitable?

Activism

A robust representative democracy is tolerant of diversity. In order to achieve this, it must also be tolerant of dissent.

The ability to hold and promote a view that is contrary to government policy, the majority view or even to social norms is fundamental to our democracy.

In practice, this tolerance has limits although they are not always clearly defined. For example, it would normally be considered that dissent involving breaking the law or advocating that others did so would be unacceptable. However, some of the most famous dissenters that have been instrumental in the evolution of modern democracies have at least challenged the law as part of their activism.

Electronic technology has a profound influence on activism. For example, it dramatically reduces the cost of formation, allowing citizens and groups to come together quickly and cheaply. It allows for alliances of convenience where groups can agree to act together on an issue by issue basis because it reduces the cost of association. The protests at the World Economic Forum in Melbourne in 2000 are a relatively recent local example.

The technology offers both mass and targeted communication channels that bypass communications gatekeepers such as the traditional media. It changes the availability and security of information associated with dissent. It makes it easy to source information that would not be transmitted by established media channels, and to distribute that information in a secure manner. Indeed, with care, information can be transmitted that is secure from external scrutiny, including from law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Will electronic democracy be accompanied by an increase in activism?

In the physical world, people can often distinguish between activism directed at social or economic change, and destructive behaviour that attempts to achieve change by threat or coercion.

In electronic democracy, how do we distinguish between activism as a positive force for social change and anti-democratic behaviour designed to disrupt society and the economy?

Is there any difference between activism in physical space and in electronic space, and how should we react to it as citizens, democratic entities and democratic institutions?

Security and privacy

The final issue raised in this paper around the theme of interaction is security and privacy.
Here we mean the security and privacy of information, and the question of anonymity.

Electronic technology changes the manner in which information can be collected and processed. It allows information:

to be collected at a very low transaction cost, making it practical to record extensive detail from every interaction;
to be easily analysed and transformed; and
from one source to be matched with information gathered from another.

This information management capacity is a significant benefit of electronic technology but it also raises important privacy issues. Many of these have been widely discussed and new legislation is in place to require certain standards when an entity or institution collects or comes into the possession of personal information. This paper does not repeat that debate but there are still some important questions that remain in relation to electronic democracy.

To what extent are we willing to allow further collection and use of personal information in order to achieve improved participation in democratic processes?

For example, do we want the interaction between citizens and institutions to be conducted at a personal level with the capacity to limit our participation to those issues of interest to us?

If we do not want such a personalised interaction, how will we prevent being swamped by information overload or missing out on key debates?

As we understand the impact of electronic technology today, there is no reason that electronically held information is inherently less secure than equivalent holdings in physical form. The difference lies in the capacity to capture and process that information if security is breached.

Do we need different standards of security for electronic democracy or are they the same as for electronic technology more broadly?

Does all of the responsibility for security rest with entities and institutions or should citizens also take some control over the security of their personal information?

If the information held by citizens is to be as secure as that held by entities and institutions, they require access to strong cryptographic technology in an easy to use form. Many types of this technology are already widely distributed and used such as the private key - public key encryption approach.

What is more important, security of information or the ability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access that information?

While it is difficult to see how such technology could be drawn back, should we even try?

Are the values that are now considered to be a fundamental part of a liberal western democracy, such as privacy, freedom of thought, speech and expression, and freedom of association, so valuable that they must be preserved without question in electronic democracy, or does the technology change the environment so much that we need new rules in these areas?

A further issue in relation to the theme of interaction is the question of anonymity. Electronic technology allows for some measure of anonymous dealing. People can participate in debate and make contributions without needing to identify themselves to other participants or a moderator.
Is this a good thing for democratic processes?

Will the ability to remain anonymous promote participation or simply encourage disruption and deliberate flooding of the communications channel with noise to block out opposing views?

4.3 Decision making

The decision making theme is concerned with how electronic technology can influence key processes of our democracy including:

the weight given to the views of the politically active against those held by the rest of the community;
voting in elections, referenda and plebiscites;
the balance between direct and representative elements, and
the impact of the electronic environment on established democratic institutions.

The politically active

Any democracy has those who:

are overtly politically active;
take an interest in politics and democratic processes but do not participate in political activity on a regular basis; and
profess to be uninterested in day to day democratic processes.

In reality, every citizen is engaged in their democracy because they are engaged in their community, in the economy and in society.

Alienation and powerlessness are direct threats to the stability of a representative democracy. The activities people participate in at a local level build the social fabric of their community and, therefore, strengthen our democracy as a whole.

Even so, politically active participants such as the media, political parties and lobbyists dominate the overt processes of democracy, especially the formal and informal exercise of power and influence. They have a strong role in the decision making process. Citizens are often cast into a submissive role, providing a periodic mandate and then leaving the rest to others.

As discussed above in relation to engagement, electronic technology offers the ability to change this balance. But the technology is neutral and can either improve the relative influence of citizens or further entrench the dominance of the politically active. What we choose to do with it will determine whether electronic democracy will weaken or strengthen our society.

Should we be concerned by the capacity for electronic technology to give further influence over decision making to those who are already politically active?

If so, should we act to curb their power in electronic democracy or to increase the power of citizens and others who do not share their influence?

How can we manage the potential for the technology to be used to swamp decision makers, pushing them toward positions that they might not support after more considered reflection?

Voting

Electronic democracy is sometimes confused with electronic voting.

Electronic voting is essentially a technical issue about how votes are validated, cast and counted.
Electronic voting is not automatically associated with changing the balance between the representative and direct elements of our democracy.

While the issues around electronic voting are not central to the question of electronic democracy, they are important.

Three issues stand out:

the means;
scrutiny and validation; and
substitution versus enhancement.

Even with the advances in electronic technology, paper has proven to be a robust and enduring technology. It retains many cost advantages such as the ability to sustain substantial damage without losing content, resistance to technological obsolescence and longevity.

The advantages of electronic technology arise from its information management capabilities. In the context of voting, the benefits of the technology include:

a capture once, use many times approach to each ballot;
rapid computation reducing delays before results are known, especially in highly proportional systems;
less basis for disputed returns; and
the ability to separate the process of casting a ballot from the requirement to attend a polling booth.

Many of these issues are simply a matter of cost – at any point in the development of the technology, is it cheaper to retain paper ballots and manual counting, or move to electronic systems?

However, there are questions associated with confidence in the voting system.

The current approach is open to external scrutiny along the process from validating an elector through to the declaration of the poll. For example, the requirement to attend a polling place in person forces citizens to identify themselves with their name and address. Ballot boxes are sealed and third parties can test the integrity of the seal. Scrutineers can be present during the counting of votes and challenge errors or irregularities.

On the face of it, these appear to be important safeguards that would be difficult to duplicate in an electronic environment. But this is not the case.

We already allow many electors to cast postal votes and, in some States, local government elections are completely conducted by mail. Electronic technology offers identification technologies that are at least as secure as a personal signature.

Can we identify any unintended consequences that would flow from adopting electronic identification for the purpose of voting?

We already trust electronic technology to transmit critical economic, personal and defence information.

Is there any reason to believe that transmitting ballots would be less secure than the current approach?

We currently use physical scrutiny to check the process of counting votes.

Could electronic scrutiny by external parties play the same role for electronic voting?

If it were decided to introduce electronic voting, what measures would be required to maintain confidence in the electoral system during the transition period?

Are there any intermediate steps, such as the trial in the ACT where votes were cast electronically but electors were still required to attend polling places?

The experience with electronic technology in other areas of activity indicates that the greatest benefits come when it is used to transform an activity rather than to simply automate an existing process.
Does it make sense to mix two approaches as was done in the ACT trial, or should we capture the ability of the technology to divorce action from location?

If we do move to electronic voting, should our objective be enhancement of the election process or simply substitution of electronic for physical means?

Direct democracy

The liberal western democratic tradition is one of representative democracy. We delegate the function of deciding within our democratic processes to Members of Parliament and, through the formation of a government, to executive authority.

However, our system of government has always contained some elements of direct democracy, where voters make a mass decision about a specific question of policy, law or practice, and that decision is binding - e.g. referendum.

The binding nature of the decision is a significant feature. Plebiscites involve a mass decision of voters but the outcome is not binding. We require a mass decision through a referendum to change the Australian Constitution, and the States and Territories all have referendum provisions. Even though a referendum is a mass decision of voters, elected representatives control whether a matter comes to a vote and the nature of the question. Other democracies allow for mechanisms such as citizen initiated referenda.

It is not the purpose of this discussion paper to review the literature on the advantages and disadvantages of representative compared with direct forms of democracy. Some of the papers referred to in the bibliography cover the field in detail.

The arguments in favour of representative forms include:

the depth of knowledge and attention required to make the myriad of decisions associated with government in a modern society and economy;
the dangers of populism, with views being manipulated and decisions being made without full realisation of the long term consequences;
the risk of a tyranny of the majority destroying the tolerance of diversity that is essential in a complex, modern society; and
the need from time to time for unpopular decisions to be made on ethical, economic or social grounds.

While these arguments may be strong in themselves, they have been supported by the lack of any practical and affordable way to increase direct mass decision-making. Referenda are very expensive and have a long lead-time. This naturally limits the extent to which they can form part of day-to-day democratic processes. Electronic technology is rapidly overcoming this barrier.

What is important in relation to electronic democracy is that argument about more or less direct involvement through mass voting now rests on the merits of the case. It cannot be dismissed on the grounds of practicality.

Again, this is an area where rapid changes in the technology could result in unintended consequences for our democracy.

Does the fact that the practical barriers to direct democracy are reduced mean that we should use the technology in this way?

If we do change the balance between the representative and direct elements in our system, what new checks and balances will be required to avoid the long recognised dangers of mass decision making?

Would electronically mediated direct democracy return power to citizens in relation to entities and institutions, or would it allow the politically active to exert even more influence?

Established institutions

Democratic institutions such as the Parliament and executive government carry out most of the formal decision making in our democracy. The manner in which these decisions are made can be transformed by electronic technology.

This transformation is more fundamental than the simple application of the technology to existing processes and modes of operation. For example, initiatives such as:

netcasting Parliamentary sessions;
publishing Hansard online;
making statutes available online;
providing Members of Parliament with email addresses and web site; and
allowing electronic transmittal of submissions and petitions may be valuable in their own right, but they do not change the way in which Parliament operates.

Electronic technology allows for much more pervasive change. For example, Parliamentary procedure is predicated on the physical interaction of Members on the floor of the House. This is considered to be so important that Members who are not in attendance within a set time of a division being called are excluded from the chamber and the vote.

Should electronic technology be used to change this and similar requirements?

Would the cost savings and other efficiencies of allowing Members to vote electronically overcome the benefit that arises from physical interaction in the chamber and, more widely, within the Parliament?

Even if physical interaction is given a high value, should the technology be used to divorce action from location on particular occasions such as a special sitting to deal with an urgent measure?

As part of electronic democracy, to what extent are we willing to re-examine the established processes of democratic institutions?