Critique on SA6101 Topic 3 presentation: Innovation in Citizen Engagement and Dialogue

In presenting the topic Innovation in citizen engagement and dialogue, the team delivered a discussion on the emergence and developement of e-government in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. While e-government is one most visible new way of bringing citizens closer to the government, the digital way is not the only way of citizen engagement that worth to study further. Also, the team understands engagement and dialogue as mere output, the outcome of such interaction was not considered. The way the team defines innovation and engagement and dialogue limited the entire discussion to be more like titled E-government: its opportunities and problems. Innovation is defined by the team as the adoption of e-government. However, to increase the use of Internet in public service delivery is, in a sense, hardly innovative. Compare to the traditional analogue ways, the digital technologies allows the public sector to provide existing services and information in a new way which is much more efficient and, in some cases, allow a dissimilation of larger scale and quantity; adopting the Internet is a logical step following the introduction of a new and useful technology, it is not ground-breaking in itself. Some governments, particularly those of the more developed countries, do not have a choice but to integrate the use of Internet into their service and information delivery because the private sector and the citizen are adopting the technology fast. To be connected, literally, with the society is more a must than an innovation. The truly innovative aspect of e-government lies within the fact that information technologies allow the transfer, handling and storage of a huge amount of information to be greatly easier and much more manageable than ever before. True innovations enabled by the Internet should be the new mentality of civil servants because of the broadened range of things they can do for the people, the institutional or administrative restructuring of the government because of the faster

and more services and information the government can provide1, and the ways in which governments try to exploit the interactive nature of the Internet as a communication medium, contrasting with the unidirectional nature of more traditional medium like television and radio. On the other hand, in this presentation, citizen engagement and dialogue is defined as consultation and face-to-face interaction between the government and the citizen. This definition does not concern the intention and the intended consequence of such interaction, which are important elements in building a good basis of understanding in examining governments policy and performance in engaging and talking to citizen. Carpini, Cook and Jacobs, in a comprehensive literature review titled Public Deliberation, Discursive Participation, and Citizen Engagement: A Review of the Empirical Literature, define public deliberation by putting together a few scholars understandings to form a relatively comprehensive understanding of citizen engagement. By quoting John Gastil, they believe that in the most formal sense, public deliberation is discussion that involves judicious argument, critical listening, and earnest decision makingfull deliberation includes a careful examination of a problem or issue, the identification of possible solutions, the establishment or reaffirmation of evaluative criteria, and the use of these criteria in identifying an optimal solution.2 Recognizing that not all deliberation will be full, the authors bring in James S. Fishkin notion of incompleteness, which means that [w]hen arguments offered by some participants go unanswered by others, when information that would be required to understand the force of a claim is absent, or when some citizens are unwilling to weigh some of the arguments in the debate, then the process is less deliberative because it is incomplete in the manner specified.3

1 2

World Bank, (2009) Carpini, Cook, & Jacobs, 2004 3 ibid.

Fishkin goes on with one very useful note on how the act of improving citizen engagement should be evaluated: In practical contexts a great deal of incompleteness must be tolerated. Hence, when we talk of improving deliberation, it is a matter of improving the completeness of the debate and the publics engagement in it, not a matter of perfecting it4 All these definitions and insights could have broadened the discussion. By which we will look into what the governments in the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore did to improve the completeness of their citizen engagement efforts. The discussion could also look beyond e-government, to examine the other more traditional ways of communicating with the people. The state examples the team presented, all about e-government, focus mainly on the intentions of the governments taking those initiatives, and on the output of such initiatives more than the resulting consequences of them, much to blame to the definitions the team chose for the two key terms of the topic. The team went on introducing the problems and challenges the countries are facing, and then concluded the discussion by putting together the experiences of the three countries together under a SWOT table, where some of the items could use further elaboration, for example, how more portable ways to access the Internet an opportunity for Singapore when one of its problem is the political oppositions trying to spread their views and create social disorder on the Internet? Back to the literature review by Carpini, Cook and Jacobs, they found that

ibid.

the impact of deliberation and other forms of discursive politics is highly context dependent. It varies with the purpose of the deliberation, the subject under discussion, who participates, the connection to authoritative decision makers, the rules governing interactions, the information provided, prior beliefs, substantive outcomes, and realworld conditions.5 It would be great if the team introduce one or two carefully chosen case-studies from each country, which would allow the team to produce a rough but solid picture of international trend, be it focused on e-government or not. During the question period after the presentation, the team was asked about do they think egovernment will bring citizen engagement to a point that it could have a effect on decision making. One of the team member answered that it depends on the political system of the country. It is an interesting point which could date back to a discussion the SA6101 class had with Kim Salkeld, Head of the Efficiency Unit a few weeks ago: which come first? Public sector reform or political reform? While it is easy to agree that a democratic polity would utilize the Internet more for citizen engagement, if their citizens are indeed interested, it is theoretically possible that the reform and innovation the Internet brought to the public sector could very well urge its political overlord to reform itself. Political opposition was identified as a problem for Singapores development of e-government proofs that, along with other examples ranging from Chinas desperate curb on the Internet, the embarrassingly negative criticisms left on Hong Kong governments Facebook fan page, to the Jasmine Revolution and recent civil unrests in the Middle East, all demonstrated that the Internet is having a very close or even direct impact on the government-in-power around the world.

ibid.

Bibliography:
Carpini, M. X., Cook, F. L., & Jacobs, L. R. (2004). Public deliberation, discursive participation, and citizen engagement: a review of the empirical literature. Annual Review of Political Science,07(1), 315-344. World Bank, (2009). Information and Communications for Development 2009. City: World Bank Publications.