Vecam

Tools in the service of participatory democracy

2002-10-04T13:28:33Z

Orientation of proposal

Encourage cooperative work between researchers, civic networks and freeware companies in view to developing tools capable of fuelling democratic debate by more participatory approaches.

Context

Many community and/or political networks seek to promote, in parallel with renewed forms of representative democracy, dynamic forms of participatory democracy (consensus conferences, participatory budgets, district organisations, etc.). Without waiting for ICTs to arrive, some of them have also sought to develop tools to facilitate democratic debate (for example, Abaque de Régnier, Péricles, etc.). Since these initiatives, different experiences such as electronic consensus forums experiment with democratic participation via the Internet. Companies working in the non-profit sector and the actors on the militant and community Internet are now drawing together to open up new, creative perspectives.

Increase the capacity of "community networks" to generate societal innovation

2002-10-04T13:27:11Z

The role of these actors is in particular :
Create and maintain public non-profit areas on the Net.
Provide all the training services required for a democracy of knowledge for local leaders, teachers, librarians and young, entrepreneurs.
Support local economic development initiatives focused on information to satisfy the growing demand for jobs in this sector and take into account the fact that nearly 90% of new jobs created are done so by small and medium sized businesses.
Design, develop and possess one's own telecommunication infrastructures that include the pipelines, fibre-optic cable, shared premises, local data exchange centres.
Create an ICT information and consultation centre in the service of the community.
Set up an independent community publication and diffusion system that uses the Internet to diffuse texts, voice, radio, television, multimedia.

To achieve this, community networks must meet the following challenges :
Break out of their isolation and link up with social movements. Take a pedagogical approach and coordinate debates on alternative political proposals related to communications and the social appropriation of ICTs.
Develop networks of partnerships not limited by geographic frontiers (between places at national level and between countries) and technological partnerships (with other written and electronic media).
Create and diffuse institutional models for community appropriation at local level.
Create public community multimedia centres that combine written, electronic (radio and television), computer science and the Internet as well as archive and documentation centres in which individuals and groups in the community can make and diffuse their own productions.

Some community networks have survived the tidal wave of Internet commercialisation by demonstrating a capacity to adapt and innovate technically and structurally, and create content. They now stand out as credible actors capable of inventing and proposing dynamic and innovative forms of networking at local level that call for partnerships between different social actors.

These orientations of proposals all point to creation and maintaining community control over non-profit, independent and jointly managed public spaces. The goals are to achieve greater independence in mastering and controlling technologies, the creation of diverse, original contents, research and benchmarking, setting up social economy companies specialised in ICTs, new institutional and organisational forms based on dynamic partnerships.

Make known and diffuse pioneering experiments in community and social uses of ICTs

2002-10-04T13:24:50Z

Orientation of proposal

Implement tools to capitalise on and share innovative experiments in community and social uses of ICTs.

Context

In this still pioneering era, innovations in social and democratic uses of ICTs need to be shared so that lessons can be learned from both good and bad experiences. ICTs now provide tools that make this capitalisation possible (online databases, resource spaces, etc.).

Certain organisations have started this approach with success, e.g. Funredes in Latin America, often doing so on the sidelines of their activities, generally due to a lack of financial support for this type of activity. However, this task of collection, observation, evaluation and capitalisation can be useful for actors in both the public and private sectors and new partnerships could be formed between them.

Acknowledging and encouraging the position and role of community organisations in the democratisation of the information society

2002-10-04T13:23:24Z

Orientation of proposal

 Acknowledge and promote the creation of places of independent public discussion and action free from market and government constraints, since they are essential to democratic life and social cohesion.

 Acknowledge the central place occupied by community organisations in the creation of non-profit public arenas.

 Acknowledge the concrete and unique role of social utility played by community organisations regarding access, networking, training, developing content, and job creation linked to ICTs.

 By consequence, include the non-profit sector in legislation and programmes not only as a passive recipient but also as a fully-fledgeds actor, by taking substantial institutional and financial measures.

Internal democracy in every intermediate entity

2002-10-04T13:21:00Z

Orientation of proposal

Organisations, unions and political parties should systematically use ICTs in the service of internal democracy, to eliminate hierarchies, and bring the grassroots closer to the decision-makers in democratic debate. Online voting can also be implemented within these organisations, facilitating democratic expression while ensuring freedom of representation.

Taking inspiration from the most recent social movements, for example, the "sans" (without) movement in France, which have found a mode of operating in network that is both more flexible and more efficient, the world of traditional organisations and ONGs can find the means to renew its own methods, especially in improving the link between the work done by permanent staff and voluntary members, and the active involvement of these members.

Context

What holds for the European Union, the government and territorial authorities should also hold for the other actors in democratic life, Whether they be political parties, unions or actors in non-profit organisations. However, the latter are still a long way from having crossed the threshold, since most of them only use ICTs as a shop window, and as a general rule they are quick to criticise the public authorities for the same faults that flaw their internal organisations. For all that, internal democracy, transparency and the quality of debate are just as important within these organisations as they are in the relations within the public authorities. They participate in a democratic culture that must nourish society as a whole. These organisations would strengthen their internal and external legitimacy if they were capable of drawing from the best that network culture has to offer.

Going beyond the debate on online voting ; experiments with participatory procedures

2002-10-04T13:19:08Z

Orientation of proposal

Thinking of voting in the electronic first implies dissociating voting from the election of representatives and diversifying online voting tools (e.g. colour vote, etc.) as well as the procedures on which they are based (e.g. the Condorcet vote rather than majority voting, etc.).

This would permit starting reflection on the use of voting in other domains (e.g. the enterprise, organisations, etc.), other frequencies (voting could become a continuous process) and with other objectives : privilege given to making proposals (taking from the grassroots initiative used in Germany), debating decisions, favouring the construction of judgements, etc.

Context

Although the electronic vote does not appear to raise basic problems, its democratic usefulness remains to be proven. As for online voting, it continues to stir great controversy. The European Commission has decided to finance expensive online voting experiments, without prior democratic debate. Without the necessary hindsight required to evaluate the possible impact and risks, it can be seen that electronic voting is more like a life-belt at which politicians grasp in their speeches, since they are bereft of imagination in the face of the democratic confusion that prevails in European democracies.

What is more, before becoming general practice, actually applying online elections should depend on the outcomes of pilot experiments of limited scope to avoid excluding a large part of the population, the absence of real debates and other obstacles to participation. Hardly any evaluation has been made of the potential of the technology used.

Specialised cyber-democracy observatories should be set up. The pilot experiments in community participation via ICTs should take inspiration from such cogent examples as the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil.

The debate on online voting can be summed up as follows : Arguments for online voting :
they encourage people enrolled on the electoral lists to vote and thus combat abstention ;
it brings the elector closer to the candidates, develops democratic debate, encourages thoughtful voting, informs (via links with the sites of the other candidates, legal information, polls, etc.) and combats various problems of representation ;
it guarantees confidentiality and transparency, since no relation can be established between the elector and the vote ; what is more, the count is an automatic calculation. Arguments against online voting :
It does not provide the voter the guarantees of the booth ; no one knows what pressures (e.g. family) could be brought to bear in front of the computer.
It adds civic inequality to economic inequality : citizens with computers and access would be privileged in comparison to those without
Above all, it reduces elections, the highpoint of representative democracy, to a simple act of pressing a button, neglecting that the vital part of the process occurs upstream, in public debate in the confrontation of proposals and positions, leading to the choice made by the citizen. Merely pressing a button makes the citizen a simple political consumer who, after purchasing a new watch on the Net, chooses his favourite candidate from among the contestants' Web sites. Whereas elected representatives are subject to the dictate of opinion polls, they will henceforth be subject to online dictates, rendering their task still more demagogic and myopic than ever.

Apart from this debate, what is at stake is the change from a representative or delegated democracy to a participatory democracy. Political citizenship will become a continuous process rather than occurring solely at elections, in which power is more diffuse, better shared, with the possibility for everyone to become an actor in their environment, whether it be a district, city, nation or continent.

Fuelling the public debate by systematic onlining of public texts before and after their adoption

2002-10-04T13:15:49Z

Orientation of proposal

Legislative texts and rulings by local, national and supranational authorities, as well as budgetary items should be onlined with the option of downloading. This onlining, which is already systematic in certain countries for texts adopted by some administrations and legislative bodies, requires additional work of organising the information in question to make it accessible and understandable by the greatest number of people.

Above all, it is the orientations of proposals of the texts (draft, orientation of proposal for laws, directives, municipal rulings, etc.) that should be systematically onlined to permit citizens to become aware, debate and even build an alternative.

Context

Although some administrations (cf. the efforts of the French government in this direction) have made considerable efforts to online their documents intended for the public, this effort should be systematic to ensure transparency and better information for citizens, especially regarding budgets. However, this information must be correctly organised and supplied with adapted search engines, etc.

As for the publication of texts before their adoption, the rare French experiences regarding this subject, such as the debating of a law on information corporations, should be generalised.

Cyber-democracy and cyber-governance : Definitions and principles

2002-10-04T13:12:43Z

Orientation of proposal

The Internet's potential for interactivity permits it, like no other medium before it, to radically change the interactions between citizens and their governments, opening up greater transparency and participation. They also open the path to the renewal of democracy.

Cyber-democracy should be understood in its broad meaning as the practice of democracy via active participation in dialogue and in decision-making in the myriad public areas of civil society and provincial, regional and national political action. Governments and communities have the duty and responsibility to create the conditions for participation in democratic life in organisations, and publics spaces and arenas.

Cyber-government should not be limited to merely onlining administrative and governmental information or participation in online elections. As for community participation, it should not be limited to simple access to information, administrative transactions and online voting.