E-democracy in Development: A Case Study of d:mo in Molde Judith Molka-Danielsen, Beinta Jákupsstovu og Eli Kjersem
E-democracy in Development: A Case Study of d:mo in Molde
Judith Molka-Danielsen, Beinta Jákupsstovu og Eli Kjersem
Historic: What is d:mo ?
• D:mo the concept, is to be a debate platform for citizens and politicians on the Internet. – Participants can have a dialogue about current topics. – Anyone can read the debate page, organize a theme, read others
contributions, and post comments of their own viewpoint.– Anyone can follow the dialogue and contribute comments and answer
questions.
• D:mo is a further development of the website demokratitorget.no that was open for use in connection with the Town Elections in 2003. The website was a cooperative project with the county government (fylke) of East and West Agder and the software producer ErgoEphorma. – It was the impression that the pilot project functioned well and that it was
used in the short period before and during the election. – After the election the use of the website dropped quickly. The website was
then taken out of operation. – It was decided to develop a long term strategy to promote a new application.
Actors in the Pilot Project d:mo Molde Norway
d:mo Molde
1. Ergo Group
5. AdministrationMolde _____________Municipality
6. Political Representatives
2. Municipality Management Team
3. Private Consultant
7. Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development
4. Evaluation Project Møre Research Molde
Overview
D:mo was implemented in Molde in August 2004. After one year of little website activity, it was decided that the project would be evaluated. We would explore:
1. Citizen’s knowledge to use the website.2. Different group’s need and use of the website.3. D:mo’s legitimate role in Molde.4. D:mo’s layout and design.5. D:mo’s user friendliness.
Count of those surveyed that have been in the town’s website of Molde and in d:mo’s website
All those surveyed
Home town Molde
Have been in the Moldetown’s website
61 66
Have been in d:mo’s website 19 20
N (100 %) 211 170
Percentage of users that use the Internet (national statistics) compared with the percentage of those surveyed that have been on
d:mo’s web page
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
15-24 år 25-44 år 45-66 år 67 år eller mer
bruker internett jevnlig
vært på kommunens web
vært på d:mo's web
skrevet på d:mo
Different representation.Last updated17.09.04
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Technical Recommendations• Include information that has meaning, exclude information with no meaning.
• More user friendly: i.e replace IP-address with domain name.
• Site usage statistics should be collected.
• Have an expiration date for the display of the most visual information.
• Make d:mo look and work more like a Weblog.
• Decide if the d:mo portal is to have an independent identity from Molde municipality (or be a page under it), and then correct all links to it that you have control over.
• Have an active Web Administration for the d:mo web page.
• Accept participation in as many input forms as possible.
• A web portal may not be able to change the distribution of political activity: if they are treated as non personal meeting places.
Cumulative distribution of incoming links for political blogs, separated by category. A power-law with an exponential cutoff, shown as a solid line, is
the best fit. (Source: Adamic and Glance, 2005).
Torpe’s models of democracy
• Participatory democracy – – based on socially formed interests and opinions– Involve direct and active participation by citizens – Parents meeting at school (example)
• Network democracy – like Participatory democracy but,– Citizen participation is more self organized, informally structured, less
planned.– Emergent democracy– Product of those currently present and interested in a particular topic.
• ICT can support different forms of democracy. • Weblogs have not been evaluated.
– How open are they? – Who can participate?
How various digital instruments may support key features in different normative models of democracy.
(Source: Torpe, 2004)Models of democracy Key features Principles of publicness Digital instruments
All models Autonomy and equal access
Informed opinion-formation
Digital access to public documents and information about public services
Competitive democracy Individually formed preferences
Representation
Aggregation of interestsAccountability
E-hearings of groups and affected citizens
Consumer democracy Individually formed preferences
Self-determination
Aggregation of interestsDirect influence of users
on service provisions
E-hearings of usersE-voting among users
Participatory democracy
Societal formed preferences
Self-determination
Direct involvement of citizens in decision-making
Deliberation
E-hearings of citizensE-voting among citizens
Network democracy Societal formed preferences
Self-determination
Involvement of citizens in policy networks
Deliberation
User-groupsMailing listsDigital forums with restricted access
Deliberative democracy Societal formedpreferencesrepresentation
DeliberationAccountability
Public digital debate forums
Public digital chat forums
The Future• D:mo functionality will be revised and the site will be re-launched.• New functionality:
– Modify the d:mo registration system to maintain profiles on participates. – Enable posts of official town documents (i.e. town plan) on the d:mo site
and enable a comment-board to receive citizen comments under topics.– Implement a voting function where votes on topics are tallied and the
tallies are revealed.– Accept other input formats: blog-like comments, receive sms.– Post multimedia clips on d:mo i.e. student radio interviews and local TV
interviews.
• Molde Town Council committee will debate in a council meeting on 16.04.02 the role and use of d:mo by the town council.– Will the council members and other political representatives:
• contribute comments on the site, (?)• contribute to debate, and (?)• what will they do with the feedback of the voting system. (?)
• Re-launch and market d:mo through meetings to town political representatives, middle and high school students, and voluntary organizations.
Questions for discussion
• What is the expected impact of the technology (d:mo) on e-debate and e-democracy?
• What types of performance indicators should we use to evaluate if the proposed technology gives added value (qualitative) to the participants (citizens and political representatives)? – Should we count users of the site or topics discussed?– What benchmarks should be used to measure affects on
democratic governance (the actions of representatives) in the town of Molde?
• Can technology like d:mo help to integrate the actions of those operating under different democratic frameworks: representative versus self-determined frameworks?