Michael de Laine

Delivering politics to the people

By Michael de Laine, Copenhagen, 19^th January 2009

A European project desifned to bring politics to the people is not only re-engaging and re-energising a formerly apathetic public – it is reinventing the political process at the same time. Online democratic participation is more than a promising technology; it is an idea whose time has come.

When the eParticipation Trans-European Network (eTEN) project eParticipate ID decided to bring politics to the people, it set itself well-defined targets: It wanted to increase public participation in local politics by 25%, measured in both physical attendance in a council chamber and online viewing of public proceedings.

The results exceeded the project’s wildest expectations.

After eParticipate ID deployed its web services in ten local authorities across Europe, chambers of participating local authorities were standing room only. At the same time, hundreds of citizens tuned into local debates via the web, using an innovative online service, called Public-I, originally developed in the UK.

According to the project organisers, these are unheard of figures, especially in local politics, and they herald the potential for a complete renewal of the local political process.

The ID in eParticipate’s name stands for Initial Deployment, a funding mechanism that uses a critical mass of reference deployments to promote a promising technology. Based on the results attained so far, online democratic participation is more than a promising technology; it is an idea whose time has come.

The project set itself another specific target for the impact of the initial deployment. The organisers wanted to get 50 public authorities signed up for the service by 2009, and 100 the year after.

They already had the first 50 a year ahead of schedule!

The core of eParticipate ID’s success lies in the compelling services it is proposing for local authorities. Using the council meeting streaming service, constituents can log on and watch democracy in action via their computer. They see a live webcast of local authority meetings.

As the action unfolds, members of the public can access relevant documents, presentations used by the speakers, and background information for the topic at hand. When the council meeting is over, viewers do not lose their opportunity to participate: they can consult the meeting video at any time via an archive.

“Some authorities have started providing online translation for those constituents who do not speak the official language,” explains John O’Flaherty, coordinator of the eParticipate ID project. “Journalists in some jurisdictions have stopped attending the meetings in person, and use the webcast to cover council meetings.”

He adds, “Different public authorities are using the services in original ways. In Ireland, Fingal County Council – just north of Dublin - set up an online webcast for talks from parents whose children had committed suicide. Hundreds of people logged on. It was an enormous success, and it shows that these services are not only relevant for the political process, they can be powerful tools to engage with social issues.”

Local authorities are informing the public about the availability of the service in a variety of ways, too.

In Bristol in the UK, the City Council enlisted the help of the local paper; the authority published a note of coming issues and online events in the paper, and the paper covered the debates and issues.

The suite of services extends way beyond webcasting. It offers e-petition services, discussion groups, and web-based magazines, all of which local authorities can deploy with little expertise and at a low cost.

In the USA, most local politics initiatives of this sort have centred around cable television, which is an expensive undertaking. You need studio space and broadcast quality cameras. But the eTEN-funded eParticipate suite of services can use much cheaper equipment, with the result that it costs only in the tens of thousands per year, reveals O’Flaherty.

“The interesting thing is that the project did not receive a lot of funding, but getting the support of the European Commission, getting its endorsement, so to speak, via the eTEN funding, has proved an enormous benefit,” O’Flaherty says. “Local authorities are really interested when they know the Commission supports these types of services.”

In the eParticipate ID’s model, a business partner agrees to deploy and manage the service for a specific region, supplying the equipment and expertise to local authorities. This has led to some interesting variation.

“There are authorities with loads of money, but no interest in these services, and then there are others who have enormous interest, but no money,” he says. “Some arrange to use the equipment for specific events; others ‘share’ equipment between them. There’s a lot of variety in the tools deployed, how they are used, and how they are paid for.”

But one common, uniting theme in all the variation, is the number of citizens who eagerly participate in democracy, online-style.

The eParticipate ID has received funding from European Union’s eTEN programme.