I learned today that Estonia was the first country to use electronic voting (e-voting) in a general election. It is because of tidbits like this that I so appreciated reading this book, a textbook covering the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in the legislative and executive branches of government. The authors present a set of readings and examples, and the resulting combination makes it perfect for a graduate seminar in a program for information technology (IT) or political science, or for a Master in Business Administration (MBA). It will not help in getting the technology right. ICT is seen as a magic wand. However, the book may help in navigating the politics and philosophy of ICT in government.
Unfortunately, it does not include any exercises, review questions, or case studies, which limits it usefulness for courses at the undergraduate level. There is neither an index nor a consolidated list of references. It has one badly laid out table. The content is Eurocentric. For example, there is nothing on the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), or the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Furthermore, it uses dots rather than commas to indicate thousands in large numbers. Finally, there are one or two incomprehensible sentences. There are expensive textbooks covering the same topics from an American perspective.
Each chapter includes a list of objectives, a chapter summary, excellent real-life examples, and a list of references for further reading. The last chapter (10) summarizes the whole book.
The book starts by defining digital government and describing the participatory and the managerial reform paradigms. The authors introduce the ways that ICT can improve government: it can become more responsive, accessible, transparent, responsible, participatory, and efficient. The book discusses the stages from independent applications to one-stop electronic government. The last part of the first chapter indicates who should read the book and what they will learn.
The second chapter discusses how ICT can be applied in two branches of government: legislative and executive. The authors distinguish direct versus representative democracy, with ICT enabling more direct forms. It describes the conflicts that emerge as a result. There are short descriptions of the Pirate Party and the CandidateWatch website. The chapter also describes attempts to improve service delivery, including the new public management (NPM) reforms of the 1980s that attempted to make government more like a private enterprise. More recent proposals have been ICT-driven.
The third chapter, “The Digital Divide,” describes two problems with computerizing traditional government processes: many people do not have computers and/or connections, and those that do can be suspicious of them or ignorant of their use. The chapter describes a capability approach for understanding the adoption of ICT by people. This process is modeled using access stages. The chapter covers European attempts to get more citizens to use the Internet.
Chapter 4 tackles two sets of problems that appear when applying ICT to government: security, trustworthiness, privacy, and equal access; and problems with integrating different solutions implemented by different parts of government. This chapter briefly describes some standards, including secure sockets layer (SSL). The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union requires equal access opportunities for all citizens. As already mentioned, the parallel ADA is not discussed.
Chapter 5 discusses one-stop government, where a single portal provides coordinated access to many government services. It mentions the life-event metaphor and the rival vision that internal competition between providers may serve the citizens better. It is very good at describing the problems of establishing interoperability between existing electronic systems.
Chapter 6 tackles open government. The authors trace it back to President Obama in 2009. They argue that secret government is impossible and describe WikiLeaks, and present a maturity model and give examples mainly from the US. The possibility of crowdsourcing government decisions is indicated, and a nice example of an unacceptable solution in a German city is given. This leads to a description of the challenges of open government and ways to evaluate the openness of a government.
Chapter 7 discusses electronic procurement (e-procurement). The European Commission (EC) is proposing that all countries in Europe will have a fully electronic procurement system by 2016. The chapter covers the legal frameworks, the required functions and qualities, the common tools, and the best practices. There is no discussion of the procurement or development of software.
Chapter 8 looks at systems for e-voting. It is the one chapter that discusses the dangers of having secret code implement government policy. The authors include a good analysis of different voting machines and the problems with Internet voting.
Chapter 9 is about e-participation, which enables citizens to join in political decision-making. This adds to materials in chapter 6, and introduces a balanced scorecard and a cost model to align political and direct democratic principles to a concrete initiative.
