Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee

Organisation

Smartvoter.org, League of Women Voters California

Representative

Trudell Een, Project Director

The Meeting

The meeting discussed the Smart Voter project, which was established by the League of Women Voters of California Education Fund to:

• provide voters with comprehensive non-partisan information about the contests on their ballot in an easy-to-use format and;

• provide a means for candidates to publish information about themselves and their candidacy directly to voters.

The website was set up for the 1996 election, covering Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties in California, and was the first website to offer personalised election information based on a voter's address. The website allows users to find their customised ballot and polling place by entering their street address and zip code. Users access participating candidates’ Internet home pages that include biographical details, endorsements, political priorities and associated documentation. All candidates in the participating counties are invited to publish on the Smart Voter website. Each page about a contest includes links to relevant news or analysis written by local media organisations or non-partisan groups. The underlying information required to generate personalised ballots, including the location of the polling place based on a voter's address, is gathered from the Election Officials or Registrars of Voters in participating counties. The county Elections Officials also provided the official data about races and ballot measures.

In discussion with Ms Een, the delegation focused on the structure supporting the project, and determined that:

• The website is supported by strong cooperation from county electoral officials, candidates, and the extensive network of active League members around the US. In addition to this networking approach, the organisation has relationships with commercial information providers (such as Capitol Advantage) and community media. These networks allow the League to access a greater range of information than their modest level of resources would normally allow;

• The website attracts strong participation from candidates because of the large number of electoral contests held in the United States, the relatively low-level of resources of some candidates for publishing information online, the significant advantage associated with having one central location for candidate information, and the perception of the League’s Education Fund as a trusted, non-partisan actor;

• While usage of the service began at a relatively low level, its longevity over a number of elections has seen both candidates and the general public increasing their participation. Candidate responses to the website have been positive and local county officials have, on occasion, utilised the website instead of establishing their own electoral portals;

• The project has considered expanding its activities to include debates between candidates; however, simple electronic mail and website services are still considered preferable to more advanced forms of online publication due to their relative ease of access by members of the public.

Organisation

Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley

Representative

Professor Paul Grabowicz, Director of New Media Program

The Meeting

Professor Paul Grabowicz, as an expert on the developing practice of journalism and media industries in the United States, briefed the delegation on the impact of the Internet on journalism and the production of news reporting in the United States.

Professor Paul Grabowicz stated that:

• A wide number of factors have challenged conventional notions of journalism. Examples include the rise of the Internet as an alternative channel for information which challenges conventional business practices and models; the increased speed with which news and current affairs reporting is being undertaken (the 24 hour news cycle); disengagement of young people from political processes and established media vehicles; and, fragmentation of media leading to increased pluralisation and changing notions of impartiality;

• These factors have eroded the traditional approach of commercial media as a top-down channel of communication with strong commercial ties and gatekeeper characteristics. Because of this forms of new media, such as blogs and alternative news sites, are beginning to act in a symbiotic relationship with conventional media, reflecting published stories as well as becoming the source of new stories and issues;

• Politically, new media forms also provide a threat to conventional practices and processes of political campaigning and information control. On one hand, the Internet acts against the centralising tendency of modern “machine politics”; on the other hand, some political figures are beginning to identify the role of the Internet as a mechanism to energise core supporters, raise money and receive feedback from the general public;

• While issues of media concentration are less significant in the United States, government’s role in this new political environment should be to ensure that the issues of access provision are addressed systematically and, further, that government information remains accessible for this increasingly diverse community of commercial and non-commercial journalists.

Organisation

Computer Science Division, University of California, Berkeley

Representative

Associate Professor David Wagner

The Meeting

Associate Professor David Wagner specialises in research related to computer security, especially security of large-scale systems and networks. As one of the authors of a critical report into the Pentagon’s SERVE voting system, Associate Professor Wagner has argued that:

• The closed and proprietary nature of the software being developed by the Pentagon undergoes insufficient scrutiny during qualification and certification, and is therefore vulnerable to various forms of insider (programmer) attacks;

• These systems have no voter-verified audit trails (paper or otherwise) that could circumvent problems and improve voter confidence;

• Fundamental security problems leave the system vulnerable to a variety of well-known attacks (such as denial of service attacks, spoofing, automated vote buying, viral attacks on voter PCs);

• Attacks could occur on a large scale, could be launched by individuals or organisations, and could be undertaken from outside the legal jurisdiction of United States;

• It is impossible to estimate the probability of a successful attack on the system.

In discussion with Associate Professor Wagner, he also stated that:

• While a number of the concerns were unlikely to be encountered, the fundamental design of the Internet technologies underpinning Internet-based voting meant that no system could be developed to provide a guaranteed level of security, and that the design of security systems for these voting platforms was problematic because of the difficulty in estimating the type, nature and intensity of attacks;

• While the Pentagon system which is the basis of the review document was regarded as being advanced in its design, given problems with voting systems during the last presidential election, he considered public tolerance for even low levels of risk as problematic to the integrity of the electoral process, and the legitimacy of elected governments.

In addition, Associate Professor Wagner made a number of remarks with regard to electronic voting machines. These remarks included: a review of problems experienced in the implementation of these machines in California; the inherent risks associated with connecting these machines through the Internet (which may or may not be a design element of electronic voting machines); and the need for electronic voting machines to have paper-based verification systems incorporated within them.

Organisation

Verified Voting Foundation

Representative

Will Doherty, Executive Director

The Meeting

The Verified Voting Foundation has been advocating changes to the standards for electronic voting machines which are utilised in California and around the United States so as to ensure greater transparency and voter security. The organisation engages in public lobbying through its website, encouraging members of the public to sign petitions; it also directly contacts government officials, and engages in legal action against political entities that employ electronic voting machines that it believes are sub-standard.

Mr Doherty stated that the work of the Foundation was motivated by well publicised failures by electronic voting machines owned and maintained by county organisations within the State of California. Some of the failures have included the loss of recorded votes due to equipment failures, changes to machines software outside the legal verification process, over-counting of recorded votes, and the failure by one manufacturer to correct identified problems. Because of these problems, the Foundation maintains serious concerns regarding the effectiveness of electronic voting machines as an alternative to other forms of voting technology, and has been advocating new standards be introduced to ensure that voters can verify the content and recording of their ballots through the use of a paper records system attached to the machine and collected in a secure hopper.

In addition, Mr Doherty stated that the work of the Australian Capital Territory in this area appears to be very positive, with specific reference to the development of their voting software in an open-source model which allows members of the general public, technical experts (such as academics and computer scientists) and other organisations to review the quality and integrity of the underlying voting software. His view was that there are significant advantages in maintaining this software as open source, rather than as proprietary software which suffers from limited oversight due to the commercial-in-confidence nature of this intellectual property.

Organisation

State of California, Secretary of State’s Office

Representatives

Mark Kyle, Undersecretary of State

Marc Carrel, Assistant Secretary of State

Linda Cabatic, Chief Counsel

The Meeting

Given the extensive experience with, and conflict surrounding, the implementation of electronic voting machines in the State of California, the delegation considered a discussion with the Secretary of State’s Office as particularly critical in determining the viability of electronic and online voting systems, and the nature of the regulatory environment which governments need to establish for these systems to be administered effectively. Recently, the Secretary of State deregistered all electronic voting machines within the state over security concerns. This has led to conflict with a major manufacturer, whom the Secretary of State alleges has engaged in “deceitful practices” due to failures of the company to ensure that their machines meet the standards set for official certification.

In discussion with members of the Secretary of State’s office, the delegation learnt that, in addition to the strictly technical problems associated with these machines, the periodic nature of elections and the devolution of responsibility for election management to counties creates specific problems with the distribution, security, maintenance and administration of this equipment. Given that most of the administration of elections tends to be by temporary staff recruited for the electoral process, the technology employed can sometimes be beyond the technical experience of electoral officials. In addition to these administrative difficulties, it was recognised that the resources of the Secretary of State’s office are also limited, and the technical task of developing, maintaining, adjusting, and administering the certification process had placed strains on the office’s skill base, and that management systems for tracking changes to machine hardware and software were still formative. In response to this last area, it appears likely that the information technology and elections units of the office are soon to be merged.

Overall, the response to difficulties associated with electronic voting machines will be to introduce new certification standards requiring the introduction of a paper-based voter verification system. The delegation was assured that, given California represents 40% of the market for these systems, it appears highly likely that commercial providers will respond positively to these new requirements. On the issue of open source code for the systems, it is unclear how this will develop; however, given the tension between manufacturers’ desire for proprietary control and public interest advocates’ call for open source, the current solution has been to place voting machine code in escrow for access by state bureaucrats while this question remains under consideration.

Organisation

Calvoter.org, California Voters Foundation

Representative

Kim Alexander, Executive Director

The Meeting

The California Voters Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan organisation founded in 1994 to advocate for the use of new technologies to improve democracy in the State. The Foundation has published the California Online Voter Guide for every state-wide election since 1994, and has been an advocate of mandated electronic filing and Internet disclosure of California’s campaign finance data.

The delegation discussed a wide range of matters with Ms Alexander, including:

• concerns about electronic voting machines. The Foundation believes that the current approach undertaken in California is problematic and advocates the use of paper verification, open source software to enhance security and transparency, and expresses concerns about the small number of companies that currently provide the systems. Ms Alexander identified the Australian Capital Territory as leader in the development and administration of the systems;

• use of the Internet to increase public awareness of political processes and issues, particularly for the disclosure of campaign financing. Overall, Ms Alexander sees the role of the Foundation as assisting to reduce the “high cost” of voting for people who lack education or understanding of the political process in the United States. Overall, the complexity of some ballot papers in California (which includes lists of specific propositions that must be voted on in addition to candidates) is seen as a deterrent to participation. Thus, online systems which allow personalised ballot information, provide policy summaries, and analysis can be useful for those members of the community interested in political participation yet deterred by the complexity of the political system. In undertaking this work, the Foundation is heavily dependent on assistance from the State government which sees advantages in outsourcing the development of a voter guide to a third-party, namely the Foundation, due to the impartial nature of the organisation, and also to prevent the costs of maintaining this information by the public sector. Overall, the Foundation spends $100,000 per election and receives approximately 900,000 page views in the first five months of 2004;

• privacy issues associated with the use of databases by political parties and candidates represent a problem in the United States, where information collected is sometimes stored insecurely or sold to commercial firms. The California Voter Foundation advocates enhanced privacy legislation to ensure that information collected through the political process is not commercialised.

Organisation

Crossroad Strategies

Representative

Virginia Bramante

Chuck Holmgren

The Meeting

Crossroad Strategies is a private sector organisation based in Washington which focuses on the development of Internet and New Media for communications for political and public relations campaigns. The organisation has specific experience working with democratic candidates (which includes Senators Kerry and Clinton).

The delegation was provided with a tour of the facilities the organisation maintains where its design work is undertaken. As an organisation which tends to focus on political campaigning, the delegation discussed:

• the relationship between electoral and official online websites. Campaign financing laws in United States require a strict legal separation between the work of congressional offices and campaign offices. This means that the websites established by senators and congressmen are not vehicles for political communication during formal electoral campaign periods. In addition, legislation to prevent spam email applies to candidates and political organisations;

• the use of new media in electoral campaigning in the United States which tends to focus on generating revenue through established electronic commerce systems, mobilising supporters of political candidates to recruit other donors and campaign volunteers, mobilising younger Americans who are high users of the Internet but have low levels of political engagement, and distributing campaign messages to activists within the party or candidates’ campaign at low cost;

• emerging trends in the area of political campaigning using new technologies which tend to be used for “social networking” to recruit members, volunteers, and donors; increased use of video within political websites and as stand-alone advertising material (such as direct mail CD-ROMs); and the increasing use of online tracking of users through technology such as cookies, to determine what parts of a candidate’s message are particularly appealing to voters.

Overall, Crossroad Strategies did not identify problems with regards to the use of negative campaigning online (low incidence of deceptive publications online) or spam (which would have been limited due to negative perceptions of this approach to campaigning).

Organisation

America Speaks

Representative

Joe Goldman, Senior Associate

The Meeting

America Speaks is a non-profit organisation which conducts very large-scale community “town hall” meetings, providing research, planning, implementation, moderation and reporting services. These meetings are based on the concept of “deliberative democracy” – statistically representative groups of citizens are brought together over one or more days to hear information about a specific policy issue, discuss the topic under consideration and formulate their own response to the issue. This can include the development of a final statement of report, or voting on issues under consideration. Recently America Speaks has “scaled” this model up using networked computers and large video screens.

In discussion with the organisation’s senior associate, Mr Goldman, the delegation was shown the extremely large scale to which these deliberative events can be applied. For example, the consultation process with New York residents regarding plans for the former World Trade Centre site included nearly 5,000 citizens and was facilitated by hundreds of staff and volunteers. Overall, Mr Goldman considered the process is a particularly valuable and unique way to advance policy deliberation for the following reasons:

• The scale of the deliberations, and their statistically representative nature, makes these events valuable in claiming outcomes which are balanced and have political legitimacy. This legitimacy is also supported by the nature of America Speaks as a third party to the issues under consideration;

• The deliberate inclusion of briefings and background material developed by experts increases community understanding of issues which may be particularly difficult or intractable, thus enhancing community acceptance of recommendations;

• The use of networked computer technology to poll participants during the events feeds back into the deliberations and assists in the production of reports during the deliberation process. This gives participants a greater sense of ownership and connection to policy outcomes;

• The capacity of these events to be scaled to large sizes overcomes problems associated with issues being seen as “closed” or dominated by “insiders”.

In addition, Mr Goldman stated that the introduction of online discussion forums as an adjunct to the physical deliberative events has been beneficial in widening these issues beyond local areas (e.g. the Washington strategic planning discussion or the WTC debate). For this extension of the basic methodology, America Speaks have partnered with other organisations which have specific expertise in the online environment. It should be noted, however, that the use of online discussion forums changes the nature and character of these deliberative processes.

Organisation

Congress Online Project, Congressional Management Office

Representatives

Kathy Goldschmidt

Professor Dennis Johnson

The Meeting

The Congress Online Project was a two-year (2001–2002) program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and conducted jointly by the George Washington University and the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) to examine the use of websites and other forms of online communications by congressional offices. The goal of the project was to improve electronic communication between Members of Congress and the public.

In discussion with the two principal participants in the project, the delegation focused on current use of new communications technologies by Members of Congress. Overall, while Members of Congress have access to staff resources that are generally far higher than would be found in equivalent positions in Australia (each Member of Congress has an average budget for their Washington staff of approximately US$1 million), the Project has identified a range of barriers to the effective use of new communications technologies by elected representatives in their congressional functions. At present, electronic mail and individual websites are standard for Members of Congress, and new mobile information technology devices are beginning to become very popular. Parties, too, are extending and developing the use of new media technologies to organise their legislative campaign agendas, share information between the offices of members and members’ staff, and provide information regarding the use of new technologies.

Overall, however, barriers to the adoption of new media technologies still exist. Some of these barriers relate to rational investment based on the tenure of the individual seats of Members of Congress, with those whose seats are less secure likely to provide more extensive and professionally-presented online information. Other barriers relate to the distributed nature of staffing in Congress, differential levels of skills present difficulties in providing universal training to congressional staff members. In addition, most Members of Congress have yet to embrace the use of these technologies for online consultation in any structured way. The growth of electronic advocacy has created difficulties for elected representatives in managing the amount of electronic mail they receive, with most Members of Congress tending to focus only on correspondence sent via Web forms which allow discrimination based on postal code (electorate). Recent security concerns (such as the anthrax attack) have been particular motivators for some elected representatives to move from hardcopy to electronic communication.

With regard to the appropriate administrative structure that would encourage greater use of new media by elected representatives, the Project’s representatives recommended the establishment of a business unit which combined training and consultation on a mixed charitable and fee-for-service basis.

Organisation

Center for Democracy and Technology

Representative

Ari Schwartz

The Meeting

The Center is a public interest advocacy group which works to promote democratic values and constitutional liberties in the digital age. The delegation met with Mr Ari Schwartz, whose work focuses on defending and building privacy protections by advocating for increased individual control over personal information. He also works on expanding access to government information via the Internet, online advocacy, and civil society.

In discussions with Mr Schwartz, he focused on two key points: potential barriers to increased use of new communications technologies in political and policy processes, and specific policy decisions governments can take to encourage greater democratisation via new technology. Overall, Mr Schwartz identified that new media technologies requires a three-stage process of government change:

1. Publish (transparency in government)

2. Interact (electronic democracy), and

3. Transact (electronic service delivery)

On limitations to the adoption of new technology for democratic activities, Mr Schwartz argued that there were three key barriers to greater political use of new technologies by US citizens: efficiency of the systems to achieve the desired outcomes of users (user design), concerns about the security of online communications and transactions, and concerns about the lack of privacy online. He stated that, overall, citizen privacy needs to be at the forefront of any electronic government or electronic democracy initiative to ensure trust between the public and the state.

When discussing specific practical activities which government can engage in to encourage the greater democratic use of new and emerging technologies, Mr Schwartz stated that the key role for government is the release of information held by government in a format that allows this data to be manipulated, aggregated, and re-presented by members of the community, educational organisations, public interest groups, and political parties. Specifically, he stated that governments can release the vast amount of raw information they hold in manipulatable formats, such as XML, without having to identify a specific purpose to which this information may be used, as community organisations will find uses for information that governments may not have anticipated. An example he cited is the release of Geographic Information System (GIS) data, which has been utilised by local community organisations to create pollution tracking reports or local history maps. Other examples include Congressional release of voting record data to allow third parties to monitor the voting activity of individual elected representatives.

Organisation

Pew and the American Internet Life Project

Representative

Dr Michael Cornfield

The Meeting

Dr Michael Cornfield is a political scientist who has undertaken studies on US campaign politics, public discourse and debate, and the role of the Internet in political processes. He is the author of two books on these subjects: Politics Moves Online: Campaigning and the Internet (2004) and The Civic Web: Online Politics and Democratic Values (2003).

Based on his research and ongoing public surveys conducted by the Pew and the American Internet Life Project (part of a charitable trust), Dr Cornfield provided the delegation with an overview of the current direction of the political use of the Internet in the United States. The key trends identified by Dr Cornfield are:

• The news media landscape has changed substantially with the introduction of the Internet. While most Internet users do not see the online environment as a specific location for political action, a large proportion of US Internet users see it as a very valuable source of news and current affairs information. However, he warned against exaggerating the perception that this environment has created substantially new media forms. For example, the readership level of blogs remains relatively low, with a low proportion of US Internet users presently aware of this phenomenon;

• There has not been a significant adoption of online consultation, deliberation, or debate in the US political context. Political parties are tending to utilise the online environment simply as a new and highly effective means of generating revenue for campaigning. This is particularly prevalent amongst people who tend to donate relatively small sums of money which could not be efficiently collected through traditional channels. Overall, this trend appears to have a significant implication for the way that campaign funding (and the resultant focus of candidates on particular diverse segments of their constituencies) will be conducted in the future in the United States;

• The social networking characteristics of these new technologies is going to be significant for political actors in the medium-term. Examples of the Howard Dean campaign and groups like moveon.org indicate that utilising these “networking technologies” to recruit, mobilise and fund raise is going to be a very significant aspect of political organisation in the future.

Organisation

ChrisCasey Communications

Representative

Chris Casey, Principal

The Meeting

Mr Chris Casey is a private-sector campaign consultant who works with candidates and officeholders to incorporate the Internet into their communication strategies. Previously, Mr Casey worked in the United States Senate for eight years and provided some of the initial work assisting Members of Congress to further utilise new media technologies in their workplaces.

The delegation’s discussion with Mr Casey focused on the following subjects:

• the development of the Internet as a communications tool in Congress organisationally. Mr Casey talked about the important role played by a small group of informed and interested staff members who advocated for greater access to basic infrastructure, such as Internet access and hardware, and were critical in establishing the first Congressional websites;

• current trends in the use of new media technologies in campaigning, such as the increasing prevalence of CD ROMs to distribute video material by direct mail; the establishment of databases within campaign organisations to provide staff members with template letters and responses to inquiries, and to track the subject of constituent communications; the prevalence of alternative journalists (bloggers) within the formal campaigning process (such as at the Democratic Convention in 2004) and; the use of multimedia by campaigns to feed into existing news channels (such as Flash animation advertisements).

Mr Casey also discussed some of the examples of attacks on candidates’ websites during the last few years: examples include the redirection of one candidate’s website (DNS poisoning attack) and a spoofing fraud associated with the growth of online fundraising. Given the difficulties in regulating the online environment, Mr Casey’s view was that these forms of negative use of technology are likely to continue either because of partisan or fraud motivations, placing some strain on the resources of candidates and political parties to protect their websites.

Organisation

e-advocates

Representative

Pam Fielding, Principal

The Meeting

Cyberadvocacy or e-advocacy is the use of new media technologies to advance the political position of commercial or community organisations. This activity takes a number of forms, including direct lobbying through electronic mail, the establishment of campaign websites, recruitment and mobilisation, and fundraising online.

As a campaign strategist, Ms Fielding discussed the work of her organisation with the delegation. This work focuses on the use of existing political database systems (such as Capitol Advantage’s CapWiz product), through the customisation of campaign portals and communication strategies, to affect policy change. In conversation with the delegation Ms Fielding discussed how increasing sophistication of elected representatives’ understanding of new technologies has changed the way in which groups campaign using new technologies:

• There has been a shift from sending mass email across the entire political spectrum to more sophisticated customisation and tailoring of communication from individual citizens to elected representatives. As elected representatives have become increasingly discriminating in whom they receive electronic communications from, this has increased the need for political intelligence that allows messages to be targeted most effectively;

• The use of online portals to create unique correspondence from the public to their representatives via “conventional” communications forms, such as fax or paper mail. This reflects a trend to increasingly recognise that online communications channels need to be incorporated in the overall communications strategy of any advocacy group;

• The need for advocacy groups to develop and sustain their support base through the creation of websites that are easy to use, contain issue-specific news and have strong educative components.

Organisation

Capital Advantage

Representative

Sean Murphy, Chief Operating Officer

The Meeting

A private-sector firm in the Washington area, Capitol Advantage is the United States’s largest provider of campaign strategies and technologies for corporations, non-profit groups, associations, educational institutions and other organisations. The company utilises an Application Service Provider (ASP) model to match the political needs of organisations with its extensive database of elected representatives and related political information. This approach allows small organisations or those without technical expertise to establish unique websites to channel members’ communication through to relevant political actors.

In meeting with Mr Murphy the delegation was given a tour of the Capitol Advantage offices which houses the organisation’s political research staff and its technical staff who maintain the integrated database and portal software. As a commercial provider of political services, the company makes money providing access to its database, but allows other organisations to design specific campaign strategies. This approach is particularly useful given the distributed nature of political representation in the United States, and the organisation has moved in recent years to form partnerships with established media outlets, thus allowing massive syndication of the contents across client portals, and into media channels and Internet search engines.

An example of the application of the information held by Capital Advantage is the partnership with the League of Women Voters to establish www.congress.org This portal is a free service which allows users to send direct messages to specific elected representatives and the media, publish their views on the site, access political information, track legislation and receive alerts, and solicit feedback from others.

Organisation

National Conference of State Legislatures

Representative

Bill Wyatt, Public Affairs Manager

The Meeting

Mr Bill Wyatt is the Public Affairs Manager for the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Washington operations and the organisation’s liaison with the Legislative Information and Communications Staff Section, a network of legislative professionals with responsibilities for public information, media relations, civic education and radio, television, and Internet broadcast.

The National Conference is a bipartisan organisation that serves the legislators and staff of the US’s States, the District of Columbia, each of the territories of US and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The organisation provides research, technical assistance, and opportunities for policymakers to exchange ideas on most State issues.

Mr Wyatt showed the delegation a video training manual developed by the NCSL to assist legislators to embrace the use of new media in their work, and provided an overview of some of the interesting applications of new technology in legislatures around the United States. Key examples included the following:

• Hawaii utilises an email testimony system to reduce travel costs for legislative committee activities;

• Florida has developed a specific website for children as part of its civic education program;

• Arizona operates a public access wireless network through a public-private partnership, which allows anyone who comes to the legislature access to the Internet and legislative information;

• Texas has established the Texas Legislature Online, which provides access to legislative information through Personal Digital Assistants (PDA mobile computers) via a relationship with the Avantgo online information service;

• Alaska has established an Online Press Room, which enables media organisations to download audio clips from the legislature for use in broadcasting;

• Pennsylvania has countered a decline in media coverage of the state legislature by providing large amounts of video over the Internet; and

• Kentucky provides an extensive high resolution photograph archive for use by traditional media channels.

Mr Wyatt indicated that, overall, the expanded use of online channels of communication by legislatures around the United States remains mixed, with a wide variety of projects being undertaken and no single “best practice” model. The availability of resources to move online tend to drive technological adoption, rather than the percentage of their communities that have Internet access. What has been effective in advancing the use of new technologies in the legislatures has been an emerging network of information technology professionals in this sector who regularly meet to share information about their activities.

Organisation

Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement,
Michigan State University

Representative

Professor Peter Levine

The Meeting

Professor Peter Levine is a research scholar whose interests include civil society and public education, and the Internet. He is the author of a book on deliberative democracy (The New Progressive Era: Toward a Fair and Deliberative Democracy) in which he argues for a functioning dialogue between government and the public, backed by changes to election strategies that include non-partisan voting information, civic education and the use of deliberative democracy methodologies (deliberative polling). In addition, he advocates changes to the rulemaking power of the public service and devolution of some political functions (“partnerships”) to local organisations.

In discussion with Professor Levine, the delegation talked about the role the Internet and related technologies can play in encouraging the work of civil society organisations and the creation of public goods, and specifically the role that the government might play in encouraging civic political participation through network technologies. Professor Levine made the following points:

• Real citizenship comes from people coming together to solve their own problems, rather than through the external creation of an artificial sense of community imposed top-down by government;

• Some parts of the United States have seen the expansion of local email listserves (email mailing list software) that allow communities to come together to solve local problems, deliberate and build a sense of local community;

• Schools are a place-based institutional structure that can be utilised as the basis of community networking through activities like the creation of local area websites, the use of Geographic Information Systems to make local maps, and partnering between school programs, charity groups and state resources to match community groups with IT skills and resources.

In addition, Professor Levine discussed some of the wider changes associated with the media environment in the United States:

• During the 1990s there was a proliferation of community-based networking activities which have fallen into decline with the growth of free commercial media online. Current debates regarding alternative media forms tend to over focus on some trends, such as blogs, at the expense of broad scale alternative media;

• Existing quasi-state institutions that have professional and historical commitments to information dissemination will be critical in establishing creative local content projects. In the context of the United States, Professor Levine identified the American Library Association as a particularly important professional association in public debates about the preservation of free access to information and discussion of the establishment of the “information commons”;

• Political parties are beginning to recognise that constituents are interested in the establishment of “uncontrolled” discussion spaces within their structures (e.g. as illustrated by the Howard Dean campaign), and that there is a tension between a desire within these organisations for control and the relatively chaotic process of public debate. Some political actors and organisations have identified, however, that these approaches to public engagement may represent a new way to differentiate oneself in the political arena. Professor Levine stated that considered construction of online interaction between political actors and citizens can facilitate genuine debate and discussion, while also providing the public with an understanding of the constraints in which policy making often occurs.

Organisation

America Coming Together

Representative

Jodee Winterhof, National Political Director

The Meeting

America Coming Together is a “voter mobilisation” effort being undertaken by Democratic supporters to engage voters through face-to-face interaction. The organisation is a Political Action Committee (PAC) under the campaign financing laws of the United States and is therefore legally required to remain at arms length from the official Democratic presidential campaign. The stated objectives of the organisation are:

• to listen to voters concerns

• to communicate with them about these policy issues, and

• to create partnerships with local organisations to mobilise voters

The organisation uses the Internet to recruit volunteers, collect financial contributions, disseminate information to the public, and coordinate its activities.

The delegation met with Ms Jodee Winterhof, the organisation’s National Political Director, who demonstrated some of the technology being employed by the group, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), that contained copies of the electoral database and multimedia presentations to show potential electors. Ms Winterhof made the following observations:

• While new technologies such as the Internet and mobile digital devices are critical to the work of the organisation, the focus of the organisation was to organise volunteers to have personal face-to-face meetings with approximately 10 million voters during the election campaign;

• The reason for this focus on face-to-face interactions was because of the ability to explaining policy-related issues, enrol electors, and capture data about voting preferences and policy interests for aggregation with other sources.

The delegation also spent some time discussing the restrictions placed on political campaigning under the financing laws of the United States, for example:

• Ms Winterhof’s organisation is unable to directly encourage people to vote for presidential candidate John Kerry and is restricted to talking about policy issues;

• The organisation cannot formally coordinate their activities with the official campaign; and

• Data cannot be shared between the two arms of the Democratic campaign.

Organisation

e-thePeople

Representatives

Michael Weiksner, co-founder

Scott Reents, co-founder

The Meeting

e-thePeople.org is an electronic forum for deliberative discussion and political debate. A non-profit organisation, the website is funded by a number of charitable foundations and individuals.

Mr Weiksner and Mr Reents, the founders of the website, discussed the origins and purposes of e-thePeople.org Established in the late 1990s, the purpose of the website was to establish an open forum for public debate on policy issues that was not driven by any particular political agenda or single policy topic. Users come to the website and can engage with existing topics of debate, or establish new topics for discussion. The system is built around an engine which uses measures of topic popularity to bring issues to the front of the website and includes a mathematical formula to degrade the popularity of topics over time. The advantage of the approach is that it is genuinely democratic (rather than a top-down model users determine the topics for discussion), constructive behaviour is encouraged through the popularity ranking system, and issues “cycle” based on the degradation mechanism. The website was established using philanthropic funds at a cost of approximately US$350,000, but now is maintained with a budget of approximately US$50,000 per year. The user base is relatively diverse in terms of geography and political leanings, but skewed towards the 30 to 40 years of age demographic, and tends to be more commonly frequented by males (70%) than females.

Mr Weiksner and Mr Reents stated that the website had been generally successful in meeting their objectives, and that its content had been picked up by mainstream media vehicles at times. The website has not tended to draw in participation from elected officials to the extent that the founders would have liked, and Mr Weiksner and Mr Reents suggested that similar activities in Australia should focus on encouraging a greater role for, and relationship with, existing political institutions. In addition, they indicated that financial constraints were the key limitation to future development of the technology and that their work could be facilitated through greater sharing of official government information through technologies such as XML.

Organisation

Democracy Design Workshop, New York University Law School

Representative

Associate Professor Beth Noveck, Director

The Meeting

Associate Professor Beth Noveck teaches in the areas of e-government and e-democracy, intellectual property, innovation and constitutional law. She is currently at work on the "Cairns Project", an online interactive inventory of collaborative practices in politics, law, business and civil society, and is a founder of Bodies Electric LLC the developer of software for real-time structured and democratic group deliberation on the Internet (Unchat).

The delegation discussed the prospects and development of electronic democracy in the United States with Associate Professor Novak across a broad range of topics. She stated that:

• When considering the introduction of electronic democracy initiatives in government, the most effective way to develop these tools is to focus on civic and democratic values and objectives, rather than take existing commercial offerings and attempt to retrofit democratic objectives to them. She used the example of Unchat software, where the need for structure in policy deliberation required the development of a new software platform. Overall, online policy deliberation can be problematic if it remains unstructured and does not provide participants with an understanding of the constraints in which policy making occurs. She stated that unstructured policy deliberation tends towards overly critical conversations that can fail to enrich our understanding of political issues;

• Electronic democracy initiatives undertaken outside government (e.g. civil society projects) tend to be most effective when they have relationships with existing broad scale media organisations (conventional media). This is because these relationships increase the visibility and participation of these projects, and also serve as a connection between electronic democracy activities and elected representatives and institutions;

• Particular areas of activity which maybe fruitful in developing effective electronic democracy initiatives are likely to come from three sources: alternative publishing models (e.g. blogs), place-based initiatives (which are likely to be related to local government activities), and activities which utilise the social networking characteristics of the online environment.

Organisation

Weblab

Representative

Mark Weiss, Director

The Meeting

Weblab is a New York-based non-profit think tank that encourages and supports innovation on the Internet, with an emphasis on developing the potential of the medium to bring people together for discussion and deliberation. Founded in 1997, the organisation has been responsible for developing online dialogues by establishing simultaneous small discussion groups. Recently the organisation has been involved in a joint project with the America Speaks group to provide an online accompaniment to its deliberative town hall meeting focusing on the renovation of the World Trade Centre site in New York.

The delegation spoke with the director of Weblab, Mr Mark Weiss, who has a background in independent filmmaking (documentaries) and who became interested in utilising the Internet to support discussions about documentaries broadcast on the public broadcasting channel in the United States.

The Small Group Dialogue (SGD) method developed by Weblab involves the following steps:

1. Participants register with the system, and some personal information is captured to assist the construction of diverse discussion groups (email address, age, location, short biography, and possibly other information depending on nature of the dialogue);

2. Registrants are placed in a queue while the software looks at who has registered and creates the groups (roughly 25 members per group) by mixing the queue members to create diverse small groups;

3. The system sends a message to registrants with membership and background information, and suggestions of ground rules for participation;

4. Discussion is undertaken within fixed-term dialogues (less than one month);

5. Participants can only post within the group, but can read across the other discussion groups; and,

6. At the conclusion of the dialogue a summary of debate and resolutions is provided to all participants.

Mr Weiss stated that the effectiveness of the system was the careful process of recruitment (to ensure diversity), the establishment of rules within each group like the disciplines themselves, the deliberate model of partnership with other organisations (such as existing media vehicles to report on deliberations), and the asynchronous nature of the discussion system which allows for deeper debate due to a lack of time constraints on participants.

Organisation

Women’s eNews

Representative

Rita Henley Jensen, Editor-in-Chief

The Meeting

Women's eNews is a non-profit organisation which seeks out freelance writers from around the world to write on a wide variety of topics and commissions them to write 800-word news articles for distribution each day to email subscribers and on the eNews website. The organisation also maintains WE-Sources, a database of experts on a wide array of subjects of direct concern to women.

The delegation met with Ms Rita Henley Jensen, the editor-in-chief, and received a tour of the organisation’s premises. As a former senior writer for the National Law Journal and columnist for The New York Times Syndicate, Ms Jensen has applied her experience in journalism and journalism education to establish the service as a newswire which allows for the generation and distribution of stories relevant to women to counter the lack of coverage of women’s issues in commercial media in the United States and around the world. Recently, the organisation established an Arabic service with specific focus on women’s concerns in the Arabic world. The organisation is funded by donations from foundations and individual members (it has 5000 members), runs an annual fundraiser and receives a small amount of money through licensing its stories.

Ms Jensen identified the value of this organisation as direct provision of women’s news to subscribers on its email list (20,000 subscribers currently registered), the financial support provided to journalists who work on women’s issues around the world, and as a training destination for interns. The organisation has struggled in its attempts to place stories in the dominant media on a regular basis and, while it maintains RSS content syndication technology, its content has not yet been taken up by major commercial media. Because of an ethical decision not to accept advertising, promotion of the service also remains difficult, and constraints on the resources available to the organisation have limited its adoption of a robust technical infrastructure to some extent (e.g. the implementation of offsite content archiving for disaster recovery purposes).

Organisation

Systemscope Inc

Representative

Stephen Karam, Director, IM/IT Strategic Planning

The Meeting

Systemscope is a private-sector provider of information management services which recently assisted the Canadian Parliament to undertake online consultations.

The delegation spoke with Mr Stephen Karam, the company’s director of IM/IT Strategic Planning. Mr Karem stated that there is a valuable role to be played by the private sector in developing electronic democracy technologies. The Canadian experience of introducing new technologies across government (electronic and online service delivery) had afforded some companies, like Systemscope, with good expertise in dealing with government and an understanding of the unique environment in which public infrastructure and information technology projects need to be managed. Mr Karam made the following observations for managing relationship the between public sector organisations interested in undertaking large-scale online consultation and private sector providers:

• Unlike the adaptation of existing business systems, introducing electronic democracy initiatives requires additional time to be invested at the planning stage. Some private sector organisations are unsuited to the provision of these technologies, either because they lack the specific understanding of online consultation (no methodology) or are simply attempting to sell an existing product that may be unsuited to policy deliberations;

• Any introduction of online consultation must be undertaken in conjunction with the existing offline consultation strategy. Thus technology providers who are engaged to provide technology to undertake online consultation must be brought in early in the design of the overall consultation strategy. Failure to carefully plan the role online consultation can play in the broader strategy will fail to meet the objectives laid out by government;

• Particular care and attention needs to be paid to the process of recruitment for these activities to ensure that a broad range of desired respondents are included in the process. His organisation focuses on the use of quota sampling techniques, with recruitment through the Internet, promotion to third-party organisations and careful collection of participants’ demographic information.

Organisation

Commonwealth Centre for Electronic Governance

Representatives

Professor Thomas B. Riley

Cathia Riley

The Meeting

The Commonwealth Centre for Electronic Governance is funded by the Commonwealth Secretariat in London and explores issues across the range of Commonwealth countries (including developing nations). The organisation focuses on the concept of “electronic governance” rather than “electronic democracy” – a wider interpretation that includes consideration of service delivery and public management functions within democratic processes. In their recent report Electronic Governance and Electronic Democracy: Living and Working in The Connected World (2002), the Centre recommended that governments consider:

• greater publication of information that was designed for discovery (e.g. navigability);

• wider use of online consultation;

• providing grants to organisations seeking online democratic activities and stimulating civil society e-democracy endeavours; and

• intergovernmental best practice centres.

The delegation met with Professor and Mrs Riley who spent time talking to the delegation regarding the current state of play in Canada. They stated that Canada had been enthusiastic in adopting online consultation approaches within the public sector, however the level of resourcing that had been committed to these activities remains relatively low. Overall, much of the impetus underlining this trend tended to come from within the public sector, rather than from politicians or from political parties. At present, Canadian Federal political party websites remained relatively basic, but developments in electronic democracy have been driven by parliaments and parliamentary committees to some degree.

Professor and Mrs Riley also provided the delegation with some observations regarding the implementation of online consultations as lessons for Victoria:

• To some extent there is tension between online consultation and the existing media as direct interaction between the public and bureaucrats, the Parliament, or MPs tends to exclude the existing media. In Canada there has been some hostility from mainstream media organisations to online consultations;

• In addition, questions have been raised regarding the appropriateness of bureaucrats or private sector providers administering the systems. There is a tension between the bureaucratic and political functions when expertise in direct deliberation becomes concentrated in the public service;

• Genuine discussions regarding democracy and policy making tend to encounter resistance from entrenched interests and political actors. This resistance will limit the extent to which the introduction of new technologies dramatically changes the dispersal of power throughout society. Professor and Mrs Riley stated that significant political change is likely to be a longer-term outcome of the introduction of new communications and information processing technologies as these innovations change our underlying social structures;

• Within Canada a great deal of the focus on online consultations tends to be on the development of “front-end” portals and websites. There is significant work to be done in managing the flow of information from these systems through investment in systems and software that can automate, collate and aggregate citizen communications via digital technologies.

Organisation

byDesign eLab and Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development

Representatives

Dr Liss Jeffrey (byDesign eLab)

Steve Lee (Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development)

The Meeting

The delegation met with Dr Liss Jeffrey of the byDesign eLab and Mr Steve Lee, former Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss an extensive online consultation process which had been run by the Canadian Federal government, in partnership with Dr Jeffrey’s organisation. byDesign e-lab develops and implements knowledge media support systems for citizen engagement, community advancement and cultural content creation, with partners from government, business, and civil society organisations. The organisation is a spin-off venture from the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology at the University of Toronto, and has been independent since 1999.

Dr Jeffrey provided the delegation with an overview of the background of information technology adoption in Canada and its relationship with electronic democracy developments:

• Canada is a nation that has embraced the use of new technologies in delivering government services, and while telephone service delivery remains the primary method of contact between citizens and the state, the Internet is the second most commonly used tool and its adoption is increasing;

• This high adoption rate has partially motivated much of the work in electronic democracy due to the existence of good underpinning infrastructure and the greater use of online government portals by citizens. In addition, declining rates of political participation by Canadians (as indicated in voter turnouts at elections) has been instrumental in the adoption of formal “democratic renewal” policy platforms by the national and provincial governments. Electronic democracy (and especially online consultation) is seen in this policy context.

In discussing developments in the area of online consultation, Dr Jeffrey and Mr Lee stated that:

• The success of online consultation is highly dependent on clear leadership from the political level, and online consultation will only provide good policy outcomes where these deliberations are clearly connected to a mandate to introduce change;

• Online consultations have tended to be somewhat skewed with regard to participation and the areas of discussion which participants focus on. In the example of the Foreign Policy Dialogue, there was a tendency for current political events (the Iraqi war) to dominate discussion to the exclusion of other areas which the Foreign Minister would have liked to see addressed.

They recommended that the delegation consider the following in any adoption of online consultation in Victoria:

• Governments should partner with civil society organisations to provide external skills and legitimacy in the construction and implementation of online consultation portals. This has advantages in sharing risk and, through wider promotion via a range of different networks, the ability to incorporate objective evaluation of the technology, methodology and consultation outcomes;

• Active moderation of discussions should be considered as important to allow the consultation process to promote civic literacy and avoid problems associated with defamation laws.

Organisation

Online Consultation Technologies Centre of Expertise,
Government of Canada

Democratic Renewal Secretariat, Government of Ontario

Representatives

Elisabeth Richard, Online Consultation Technologies Centre of Expertise

Alison Fraser, Assistant Deputy Minister, Democratic Renewal Secretariat (Ontario)

The Meeting

In examining the role of the public sector in advancing electronic democracy initiatives, such as online consultation, the delegation had a joint meeting with Ms Elisabeth Richard of the Online Consultation Technologies Centre of Expertise (part of the national government of Canada) and Assistant Deputy Minister Alison Fraser from the Democratic Renewal Secretariat (Ontario Province)

The Online Consultation Technologies Centre of Expertise has been established to develop the practice area surrounding online consultation and to maintain staff that are trained in online moderation. The Centre publishes a range of reports and practice manuals for the Canadian public service to increase awareness of, interest in, and realistic expectations of, online consultation as a tool for increasing civic participation in policy making.

The Democratic Renewal Secretariat was established in 2003 with a mandate to modernise democratic institutions. It has been responsible for a range of incremental reforms, and plans to:

• ensure that more people, particularly young people, vote during elections, get engaged in their communities, and participate in the political process;

• have an open debate on improvements to electoral processes, leading to a referendum;

• engage a Citizens’ Jury to make recommendations on how political campaigns are funded;

• encourage more transparency and openness in how and where tax dollars are spent; and

• developing legislation for fixed election dates in Ontario.

In discussions with these two representatives of the Canadian political system, the delegation established that:

• Online consultation has been recognised as a useful way of broadening government consultation to a wider array of participants than those organisations and individuals who are regular contributors to policy debate and discussion. In addition, it was observed that online consultations can be useful in receiving submissions and input that is qualitatively different to that normally received through formal consultation processes – such as personal stories;

• Online consultation is effective in the Canadian environment because of the strong Westminster traditions and cultural norms of the public sector. Because of this, members of the public have a high level of trust in their public servants as facilitators of these discussions;

• The Canadian public service has been an active user of online moderation training services provided by the Hansard Society in the United Kingdom, while also specialising in online moderation within the Centre as a means of developing a professional group of moderators that can assist the consultation work of other agencies. This shared service model is preferred as it allows government agencies to experiment with online consultation rather than have to undertake significant investment in online consultation skills and infrastructure prior to proof of concept;

• Online consultation is not restricted simply to policy development and discussion, but is actively being employed in the development of service delivery frameworks and standards;

• Public service practitioners are aware that increasing expertise in online consultation in the public sector creates tensions between the executive branch of government and the legislature. At present, the Parliament of Canada has focused on the development of its own online consultation techniques in-house, rather than drawing upon the public service as a source of expertise. The reasons for this appear to be the desire to maintain the Parliament at arms length from the bureaucratic wing of government so as to maintain the division of powers.

Organisation

Multimedia Services & ISD Business Planning, Parliament of Canada

Representative

Elaine Diguer, Director

The Meeting

The delegation met with Ms Elaine Diguer of the Parliament of Canada and her staff to discuss the implementation of webcasting parliamentary proceedings. The Parliament (through its ParlVU system) broadcasts both chambers (representatives and senate) and a number of committee activities online, and provides a direct feed of this material for rebroadcasting over cable television services across Canada and within the parliamentary precinct.

Overall, this work has been considered to be successful and the Parliament is currently developing this system to provide greater integration with metadata and reference material (Hansard), and establish a system that will allow this material to be stored for on-demand access. Given that the existing webcasting has only allowed viewers to watch a live broadcast, Ms Diguer considers the integration between Hansard (allowing for debates to be searched by key terms) and the archived video stream will provide a superior level of service to the public: members of the public will be able to identify issues and debates of interest to them through the formal Hansard record and access a video record of parliamentary proceedings from the archive simply and though an integrated interface. Resource limitations have been considered in the development of the system, and Parliament has elected to restrict archiving of material in video form to two parliamentary terms.

Organisation

Crossing Boundaries Democratic Renewal Working Group

Representatives

Jay Kaufman, Principal, KTA Centre for Collaborative Government

David Hume, Research Analyst, KTA Centre for Collaborative Govt.

Mark Parent, MLA, Nova Scotia

Rose Langhout, Government of Ontario

Jeff Bray, MLA, British Columbia

The Meeting

The Crossing Boundaries Democratic Renewal Working Group is a broad cross-section of the Canadian political and public management community which has been working on issues surrounding governance and technology in the Canadian context. Drawing upon policy commitments across Canada for “democratic renewal” the group has been working on issues associated with electronic governance, as part of the overarching interest in government modernisation in Canada.

The sponsoring organisation, the KTA Centre for Collaborative Government, organised a teleconference between the delegation and a number of politicians and public servants who have been working on the project. The observations drawn from this meeting are as follows:

• There are no particular champions for electronic democracy initiatives in Canada from either academic or political sectors, and the use by politicians of technologies like the Internet remains relatively low. The Crossing Boundaries group is currently considering a project on the “wired politician” as a means to increase awareness of the potential of new technologies, generate best practice understanding, and produce a how-to guide for politicians interested in utilising new technologies;

• The democratic renewal agenda is still at a relatively early stage in Canada with most policy consideration regarding government use of new technologies still focused on electronic and online service provision. Of particular interest is the potential of new technologies as a means of engaging younger Canadians in the political system, and some work has been undertaken on increasing the participation of indigenous Canadians in policy debate;

• Online consultation is the particular area of electronic democracy practice that has attracted most interest in Canada, and at the Federal level there is an increasing expectation that online consultation will form part of most wide scale consultation processes being undertaken. Where constraints on further use of online communications channel exist, these tend to be related to concerns that these systems may bring large numbers of uninformed citizens into an unstructured debate. Thus, the emphasis in Canada has been on developing highly structured consultation processes.

Organisation

Parliament of Canada

Representatives

Barb Whittaker, Procedural Clerk

The Meeting

Given the inquiry’s interest in the use of online consultation by the Parliament (as opposed to bureaucratic consultation processes), the delegation met with Ms Barb Whittaker, a procedural clerk of the Parliament of Canada, to discuss her experience with online consultation during a Parliamentary Inquiry into changes to disability pensions in Canada. This consultation remains the only online consultation undertaken by the Parliament to date and its success is attributed to:

• the work of the Chair of the inquiry as a champion for the use of this technology in the consultation process;

• extensive information provision through the inquiry website (which received 180,000 hits) to support the consultation process. In addition this website remains an active source of information for the public;

• the use of the online consultation approach which was beneficial for this particular issue area, given the nature of the topic and the need for alternative access by people with mobility issues;

• the consultation allowing different types of submission to be provided by participants (“share your story”), creating a dialogue between the Committee and the public, and among the public.

The online consultation was undertaken as a partnership between the Parliamentary library, the committee secretariat, and an external consultant, and is estimated to have cost CA$500,000 to build the initial system. One of the key findings associated with the implementation of this consultation experiment is that the nature of parliamentary inquiries, as self-contained, one-off investigations, can make the establishment and implementation of online consultation costly. The Parliament of Canada is therefore in the process of redesigning its website to expand the amount of information that can be provided by its committees and increase the ease of navigation of the website through a multilevel navigation system, and is also considering a range of generic online consultation tools that may be of interest to its committees. The Parliament is in the process of looking for resources and interested parties to develop these technologies. It is envisaged that tools will be developed on a needs basis, then form an ongoing resource for future consultations. In this way, the Parliament hopes that it can incrementally develop more online consultation methodologies without having to invest large amounts of money prior to specific needs developing.

Notes

[1]

Castells, M, 2000, The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell Publishers, Malden.

[2]

Clift, S, 2002, E-Democracy Resources, http://www.publicus.net/articles/edemresources.html