Addressing the challenges of e-engagement
Electronic engagement (e-engagement) has become an approach that governments use to get involvement from their citizens to make better policies or decisions in their work. In each context applying the e-engagement process has own challenges that will differ from those in other countries or projects. From a Vietnamese perspective, I consider that e-engagement has the top three challenges as below:
It is difficult to get people involved!
One reason that e-engagement is not as difficult to implement in democratic countries is that the citizens and media tend to be more involved in following the work of the representatives people that they elect. They hold the government more accountable. On the other hand, in some countries, especially those counties that are developing and under development, the people’s priority is to survive by feeding their families and themselves. As a result, they think that political issues are not their job, and the government will be alright to act on their own. Therefore, they just get involved in the political issues when forced to (such as where there is compulsory voting) and may think that other issues are “not their business”. This can lead to an attitude that ignores political issues — so how can they get involved in something that they assume is not relevant to them, and with which they are unfamiliar, especially when it will take their valuable time.
Overcoming this challenge is not an easy job. One of the potential solutions for this problem is to have a long campaign to inform the people about the benefits that being involved in the e-engagement process can bring. This campaign would take at least six months or up to one year for the citizens to become familiar with the issue, have sufficient information and know what is going happen and their role in it. If such a campaign can be done well, the involvement of the citizen should increase noticeably.
Which approach should be used?
In each society, there are many groups of people that have different characteristics. They may not have equal capacity to access the approaches that may be suitable for another group of people. There are many approaches to get the involvement of citizen in e-engagement processes such as online deliberation, online forums, online debates, and online submissions. The challenge is how to use a suitable approach for each group of people to maximize involvement. This is truly a hard question to answer. Not only Asian countries face this challenge, but also some developed countries. For example, income and capability gaps exist between groups of people in New Zealand, leading to a digital divide. Some particular groups such as Māori, low-income groups, and disabled people have to face unequal access to the technologies that play key roles in e-engagement. They may have less IT skill or poorer conditions to be well-involved in an e-engagement processes, reducing the effectiveness of e-engagement.
Clearly understanding the audience for an e-engagement process is one of the possible solutions to tackle this challenge. This means that we should choose different ways to approach different groups of people and establish specialised support centres to help those with the fewest opportunities people to be involved. For instance, with highly skilled groups, we can get participation by creating a platform where they can contribute their ideas online and communicate easily with others. With other groups such as older people, or disabled groups, we could focus on using simpler tools such as email, providing information and engagement tools in accessible formats and providing support centres to “not leave anyone behind “.
Privacy for participants and transparency to the public.
The third challenge is how to provide both privacy for participants and transparency to the public. Besides the benefits of participating, the other reason that may make citizens willing to speak their idea is being sure that the information that they provide will not become a weapon that is used against them in their lives. The information that citizens provide may become the target information that a third party could earn benefits from which may affect their lives. For example, the personal information of citizens may be leaked outside and cyber-attackers could use the information to attack their bank accounts or other accounts, which may lead to social concern. However, this does not mean that the information that they submit should not be published as above all, it is important for e-engagement processes to be transparent with all the information they are provided so that the process can be trusted. Consequently, it requires the government, on one hand, to keep personal information secure to protect their citizens, yet on the other hand make the information provided for the e-engagement process available publicly to ensure transparency.
The solution for this challenge is that the government should provide document to promise that all the information that they received will be used for the right purpose of making better policy or decision, and only non-personal information about the e-engagement subject published. In addition, when using channels to collect information from citizens, the government should make sure all the platforms has been secured as far as possible against attack and do not collect unnecessary personal information. This will allow, citizens to freely provide their information and contribute their thoughts to the government.
In conclusion, depending on each context in each country that the government faces different challenges to have an effective electronic engagement. How to get the involvement from the citizens, leave no one behind, and balance security and transparency are the three most important challenges from my perspective. To overcome these challenges, the government should devote more effort to planning by having a campaign before doing an e-engagement process, choose a suitable approach for each group of people and commit to use the information provided for the right purpose and keep personal information secure.
