Download Electronic Communication with Local Governments

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION WITH LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
Sorin Dan Şandor, “Babeş-Bolyai” University, Romania
Abstract
The new ICT are offering the possibility to establish a two-way communication between
governments and citizens. By means of electronic mail, online discussion forums and other such
technologies many authors claim the possibility of increased public participation.
This paper tries to analyze the way in which Romanian local governments are using these new
possibilities. The assessment was based on the analysis of websites, online forums and interviews and
e-interviews with persons in charge of the e-communication process.
The findings are showing us that these new technologies have a low usage, both in terms of
quantity and quality. There are few local governments which are offering more than e-mail services
(not used at full potential). Discussion forums have a low number of users, few topics and short
threads, and initiatives as www.domnuleprimar.ro are more like channels for the complaints of citizens.
In order to improve participation through electronic communication we need to have an
improved administrative culture, a deliberative culture and to reach a critical mass of participants.
1. Computer Mediated Communication
Electronic communication falls within a category labeled as computer mediated
communication (CMC). CMC is considered to be any form of individual or group interaction across
networked computers. Electronic mail, listservs, newsgroups, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), blogs and
online discussion forums are just a few examples of CMC tools.
Synchronicity is the degree to which a medium enables real-time interaction (Hoffman &
Novak, 1996). CMC may be either synchronous (like chat rooms) or asynchronous (e-mails, listservs).
Online forums may be in a more hybrid status – by having elements from both technologies – enabling
real-time interaction, but not as a compulsory rule.
There is a significant body of literature stressing the limitations of CMC. The lack of vocal,
paralinguistic and non-verbal features common to face-to-face communication are the main limitations
quoted by many. These may lead to either a lack of social presence (de-individualization effects) or
reduced number of social cues. As a result of those shortcomings CMC may be seen as “promoting
task-oriented, depersonalized and anti-normative behavior” (Lamerichs&TeMolder, 2003:452).Factors
as anonymity or challenging and flaming (emotionally charged messages, ranging up to hostile and
insulting ones) may contribute to see CMC as depersonalized and leading to anti-normative behavior.
Exploring virtual communities found two problems Etzioni (1999): identification (which may
be overcome by some form of authentication) and accountability and two advantages: interactive
broadcasting (dealing with multiple recipients at a time) and memory (retrieval of information).
2. Possible uses of e-communication
The rapid development of new information and communications technologies (ICT),
especially the Internet-based applications, was seen as a new democratic promise. A greater
interactivity (which characterize CMC systems) gave hope of a rise of a more direct or participatory
democracy. E-democracy, especially at local level, is based on a broader public debates space, in which
the contact between citizens and decision-makers will be fostered by ICT technologies. New
technologies, based on flat and open networks, enabling two-way communication, made possible to
provide information to everyone, anywhere, anytime (Dutton, 1999).
E-democracy promises were free access to public information and open discursive
deliberation on the Net (Tsagarousianou 1999). While new technologies enabled governments to reach
to its citizens by using new methods and channels, only the first promise (and only as a result of a push
in national legislations) was addressed. E-government is seen mostly as form of e-business in
administration and refers to the processes and structures needed to deliver electronic services to the
public (citizens and businesses), collaborate with business partners and to conduct electronic
transactions within an organizational entity.
The United Nations (2005) has an e-participation approach towards e-government, focused on
citizens’ ability to influence public policy. Three different stages were identified: e-information, ecommunication (discussion forums dedicated to policies) and e-decision-making (a not so clear notion,
based mostly on government feed-back).
In an attempt to unify e-democracy with e-government Coglianese (2004) identified three
different avenues for electronic public participation.
First, public participation can be viewed as a mechanism for expressing individual
preferences that the regulatory agency then aggregates and uses as a basis for making its regulatory
decisions. This can be thought of as participation as voting.
Second, public participation can be viewed as a process by which individuals engage in a
deliberative process that aims toward the achievement of a rational consensus over the regulatory
decision. This might be thought of as participation as deliberation.
Third, public participation can be viewed as intrinsically valuable for citizens themselves, for
such participation fosters important personal virtues. This is participation as citizenship.
Another possible use for the new ICTs is forming virtual communities. In the case of
governments such communities may be aggregated either on a geographical level (as in a town) or
around specific issues; they may be member-initiated or sponsored by public organizations. More than
sharing a common interest, and a place (electronic), virtual communities should have also some sociopsychological traits as a sense of belonging and shared values, all developed through member
interactions.
Summarizing the possible uses of e-communication (seen as a two-way process) we got:
Uses
The citizens’ role
1.
Information gathering
Informers
2.
Systematic user feedback
Clients
3.
Enhanced public participation:
a.
mechanism for expressing individual preferences
Individuals
b.
engagement in a deliberative process
Stakeholders
c.
e-voting in plebiscites, referendums, surveys and polls
Citizens (political entities)
4.
Building virtual communities
Community
Table 1: Uses of e-communication
We can see that for each possible usage we have a different role for citizens. Electronic
support may not be that important in shaping the use of the communication and the roles the citizens
are playing. An electronic forum may be used for all purposes and citizens can have all the possible
roles. Still, there are clear limitations: e-mails can be used only for purposes 1, 2 and 3a and, in general,
for purposes 3b and 4 we need to have a higher degree of interactivity.
3. Electronic communication with local governments
We took the case of 41 town halls from Romania: the county capitals and the Capital of
Romania. In a country where one of the main dimensions of digital divide is based on the size of the
city1, the better prospect for finding communication with the government is in selecting the most
important cities.
By consulting the web-pages of these town-halls an inventory of the two-way communication
possibilities with local governments was made.
3.1 E-mail communication
E-mail, a one-to-one type of communication, is the most used possibility. Still there are three
different ways to use it in the local government:
1.
Institution address (one address for the entire institution): communication with
citizens is more centralized, usually a PR department (or person) handles all the
requests, sending the messages (often in printed form) to the proper departments,
receiving the answers and sending replies to citizens;
2.
Department address: each department has only one e-mail address – requests from
citizens are usually answered by one designated person in each department, with the
assistance of other public servants from this department; it is not always easy to find
which is the department which is in charge to solve your problems;
3.
Individual address: each public servant has one address, making the communication
process more personal; it is difficult to know which public servant from one
department is the right person to contact; no control or evidence for the answers sent.
The situation for these city halls is the following:
As we can see 71% of city halls prefer to have only one official address. This centralized
approach is considered to offer more control over the communication with citizens. The model is an
electronic replica of the way in which regular mail is handled in present.
1
See Sorin Dan Şandor, Romania’s Digital Divide and the Failures of E-Government, Revista
Transilvană de Ştiinţe Administrative nr. 1(16E)/2006, p. 154-162
We should notice that even if required by the law 52/2003, in three cases the e-mail address
7%
12%
Institutional
10%
Department
Individual
No address
71%
Figure 1 City Hall e-mail addresses
was not posted on the website (or very well hidden).
We do not have exact figures about the volume of e-mail sent or received. Only regular mail is
considered official and has archival procedures that make possible to find the amount of mail
correspondence. For institutional mail some of the persons in charge which were willing to answer had
vague answers ranging from dozens to several hundreds. For departmental or individual e-mail there
are no figures available.
The figures mentioned are indicating a very low usage of e-mail as a form of communication.
Some of the reasons for this situation are:
1.
Delayed answers: e-mail is typically a faster type of communication – answers are
expected to come in 1-3 days, but public institutions are working much slower
(especially in the case of institutional e-mail);
2.
E-mails are not considered official correspondence – so some institutions may
choose not to answer to them (which is actually happening quite often) and citizens
can not be sure that their mails will be treated as serious as other forms of
communication;
3.
The culture of citizen-administration interaction existing now is based on face-toface meetings. Very few citizens are trying to use the phone, mail or e-mail;
4.
Digital divide: Internet applications are used mostly by young people (under 40),
while household problems are solved by heads of families usually older.
3.2 Bulletin boards or Forums
Forums or Bulletin boards (while Bulletin Board Systems existed before the Internet, now the
term is covering also online forums; some people are trying to make a distinction based on their
purpose – a bulletin board is used to leave public messages while forums are meant to discuss issues)
offer the possibility to have a one-to-many or many-to-many communication, in which interactivity can
have a more important place. We can have linear (in which posts are arranged in order of their arrival –
making them more difficult to retrieve a specific one) or threaded boardes (in which individual posts
are threaded by topic). Linear forums are better for small-groups, on one topic or on a narrow set of
topics (not the case for public administration, in which we have usually a big number of topics and we
wish for a large audience). Threaded boards are very good for question and answers; but, unless well
managed they may become very fragmented and difficult for community building.
For the 41 city hall analyzed we found that only 9 of them are trying (not in a big extent,
though) to keep some form of interactive form of communication.
15%
10%
No forums
Linear
Threaded
75%
Figure 2 Forums or BBS
Of the 4 city halls having linear bulletin boards 2 have their own (but with a low usage, the
number of messages being 12 and 15 in total, with no replies from the city hall or from other citizens)
and other two are offering a link to another one, www.domnuleprimar.ro (presented in the next
section).
Threaded forums were presented as a possibility to hear citizens’ needs and to give them a
voice, boosting public participation.
In reality we do not have significant results. There is almost no activity on these forums, in
many cases the city halls are not answering the posts of citizens and there is a small number of people
reading the messages.
City Hall
Posts
Topics
Users
Maximum
Since
number of
users online
Bucureşti
~500
unknown
unknown
unknown
2005
Galaţi
644
197
101
28
2006
Iaşi
176
92
unknown
unknown
2006
2096
168
233
41
2007
Ploieşti
Reşiţa
814
137
unknown
unknown
2006
Târgovişte
222
151
92
78
2006
8
7
22
20
2007
Tulcea
Table 2 Activity on forums
The figures are disappointing. We can see that we have a very small number of users for each
forum and with a small number of posts. The ratio posts/topic is very small (maximum 12.5), posts in
the same topic are not related one to another, showing a very small potential for discussions.
Interactivity is very low, the time lag between posts is seeveral days, many questions posted are not
answered. The involvement of the city hall in moderating these forums is (in the best of cases)
moderate.
In two cases, Cluj-Napoca and Timişoara, the forums were closed in 2005 and 2007. The main
reason for doing this was that were too many posts attacking the mayors on political grounds. When
those posts were erased the users (and afterwards the local press) accused the city halls of censorship.
Against such accusations the answer was the closure of the forums.
A small number of topics do succeed in having some audience. In the case of Bucharest (a
forum very poor administered) only the issue of cab licenses (due to a new regulation) succeeded to
bring in April 2008 more than 100 posts, trying to mobilize the cab drivers to fight the new legislation.
Even then some of the posts were not related to the topic or were commercial ones (like offerings to
sell cab licenses). In the very few cases where the discussion is longer than the question & answer
format and other citizens are involved, the communication is difficult, with a lot of misunderstandings,
radical but unsubstantiated posts, with no contribution to the community-building process.
An example of strenuous communication on a forum is shown below2:
Citizen 1: [...] I am continuously perturbed by the daily activity of this church, where
loudspeakers are used to broadcast the sermons for the entire neighborhood. Where can I
make an official complaint in order to assure that my rights to privacy will be respected by
the church? [...]
Citizen 2: [...] You cannot expect that the mayor to start a quarrel with the bishop [...]
Citizen 1: The Community Police is subordinated to the Town Hall. The may act in such
cases [...]
Moderator1: I have two questions:
1. Did you tried to speak with the priest from that church?
2. Don’t you think that maybe more than half of the citizens from the neighborhood
may agree with this type of noise ?
It will be a good idea to try to collect signatures on a petition and go with it to the town hall.
[...]
Citizen 1: Why should I try to solve the problem by myself?[...] The law is clear about
forbidding too much noise. Such acts are misdemeanors that are sanctioned by the mayor or
persons designated by him, or by the Police [...] Applying the law should not be subject of a
referendum [...].
Citizen 3: Did you complain, in written form, to the police?
Moderator1: [...] You should try to contact the Police [...].The church is not subordinated to
the City Hall [...]
Citizen 1: How about the law? The mayor or persons designated by him may sanction such
facts [...]
Moderator1: [...] Well, what do you want? The mayor to go there and to give a fine for
2
Discussion was translated from Romanian and abridged by the author
Thu Dec
13 2007
Fri Dec
21, 2007
Sun Dec
23, 2007
Fri Dec
28, 2007
Fri Jan
04, 2008
Sun Jan
06, 2008
Mon Jan
07, 2008
Tue Jan
08, 2008
Tue Jan
disturbing the public peace? [...]
Citizen 1: So the Orthodox Church is a state within the state? [...]
Moderator1: You do not want to solve your problems but only to complain [...]
Citizen 4: In this country we the orthodox people are in majority. [...] You can stay with the
devil, I prefer to go with God.
Moderator 2: We informed the Bishop’s office about the situation [...]
08, 2008
Tue Jan
08, 2008
Wed Jan
09, 2008
Wed Jan
16, 2008
Wed Jan
16, 2008
We can see that the entire discussion lasted for more than a month. The position of citizen 1
was not understood by moderator 1 (and also by citizen 3), was supported (even if skeptically) by
citizen 2 and violently challenged by citizen 4. In the end, the City Hall sent a formal complaint to the
Bishop’s office. There is no indication that the problem was solved. The job done by the first
moderator is at least very poor.
Such a discussion, while with a longer thread than usual, is not unlikely to be seen on other
Romanian PA forums. Few of the participants in such discussions are willing to do more than express
their personal problems or their opinions on a specific issue. There is no purpose to reach an
agreement. In order to do that several steps have to be taken: identifying areas of disagreement, asking
and answering (with arguments based on facts and logic, not on feelings and beliefs) more questions in
order to clarify the issue in hand, negotiation (if several alternatives do exist) towards a common
ground, applying the new result.
3.3. Case study: www.domnuleprimar.ro
The site www.domnuleprimar.ro (in translation www.Mistermayor.ro) was established in
2005 in order to help citizens to communicate their personal or community problems to City Halls. A
feature added later was to allow other people to express their opinions regarding the posted messages.
Until the 4th of May 2008 153 city or village halls have joined the site (but only 69 answered
to at least one question). In this time 19.566 requests were made, 14.784 being answered (75.6%). Also
1.981 opinions were expressed. The numbers are not impressive. The average number of requests/town
hall is only 42 – a small number.
The following analysis is focused on one city hall, Cluj-Napoca, the champion of this
approach. Cluj-Napoca accounts for ¼ of the total messages, having the best response rate (88%).
Average duration of the answering time in 2008 was 27.8 days, the average number of
opinions/message being 1.73.
The first analysis made was regarding the topics of messages.
There is no surprise here. Since 2004 Cluj Napoca is developing at a high rate, in a country
which has a significant economic growth since 2000, and is confronted with the issue of having a
strong increase in the number of cars but with the same infrastructure since before 1989. Also the
construction sector is in a boom, but with a negative impact on urbanism issues and cleanliness.
Not related
10%
Other
6%
Streets
34%
Public order
6%
Urbanism
8%
Cleanliness
11%
Traffic
25%
Figure 3 Message topics
A more important issue was about the type of messages and answers. Most messages are
punctual complaints regarding a specific problem (like “my street is in a very poor shape”), there are
some specific proposals, mostly very specific, and not many opinions on public issues (regarding more
general targets, or even policies).
Answers are mainly formal (“we noticed your problems” or “your street is scheduled for
repairs in the next semester”), but we can see some actions, especially when the complaints can be
solved by sending a control team which will give some fines. There is also a significant amount of
information, when the messages are related to policies and programs of the City Hall.
Messages
Answers
complaints
78.2%
formal
49.5%
proposals
8.5%
action
29.6%
opinions
5.7%
information
15.6%
other
10.8
other
5.3%
Table 3 Types of messages and answers
The opinions posted for each messages are not taken into consideration by the City Hall.
Many of them are signalling similar problems, but they are not answered. Other messages are either
strong critiques or sceptical comments about the City Hall’s activity. Regarding some proposals or
opinions we can find some discussions, but the messages are usually not starting but trying to end a
debate, each participant trying to impose his own opinions, in many cases using strong words.
The average answering time and the low number of opinions posted demonstrate a low degree
of interactivity. The pattern consists of a complaint about a personal problem followed by a formal
answer (or, in the best case, a control action).
The use of this type of communication is not even information gathering - the service is seen
as public relations. The person in charge is the City Hall spokesperson who is sending the requests to
the departments and sends back, in the name of the mayor, the answers received.
4. Conclusions: why we do not have public participation
As seen above the level of e-participation is very low. There are some explanatory factors for
this situation.
Romania has a traditional administrative culture in which policy debates are not among the
main characteristics. Debates are seldom held when adopting new policy measures. Even in Parliament
or Local Councils problems are not discussed in terms of policies but of laws and regulations and are
often passed without a serious discussion. Citizens’ opinions are requested only at a formal level (for
each law a public debate should be held, but there is no evidence of government taking into
consideration ordinary citizens’ input). It is hard to believe that electronic communication can have a
greater impact unless a change in the administrative culture occurs.
Even if this happens, there is still the problem of low usage of e-communication services:
there is no critical mass that can keep forums alive. Digital divide hinders a lot of citizens that may be
willing to participate and among the others we can see a lack of interest.
Another problem is related to low interactivity: there are huge delays in communication
(weeks being a too long period in the electronic world), threads are too short to be considered the start
of a real debate.
Local governments have a minimal participation in this process. Many local governments are
not answering messages and there are few cases in which they are trying to start a debate; while the
administrative culture asks for centralised (and often anonymous) participation the specific of the
medium asks for a more personalised and de-centralised participation, but encouraging the public
servants to participate in debates as individuals is inconceivable.
We can see that citizens have a clear preference for expressing individual preferences instead
of being involved in a deliberative process – while we may find people willing to solve their problems
it is more difficult to find people eager to engage in finding solutions to solve public problems. One
possible reason is that there are no “rewards” for participation in debates – meaning that is hard to see
the utility of participating in a discussion at the end of which nothing happens or the results are not
clear. Another reason is the lack of deliberative culture, many debates being characterised by assertive
opinions, low reflexivity, politicized views, sceptical citizens challenging and flaming.
E-communication should not be seen as a magical solution. While new technologies are quite
spectacular, they can not accomplish anything more than offering faster, more interactive and cheaper
ways to communicate. Even public participation is not more than a mean to reach the goal of a better
society. While governments should try to improve public participation (including e-participation),
citizens should use participation in order to help governments to perform better.
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