Nothing Last Forever, Spare a Space for Learning & Growing
Advanced technology inevitably influences the way the government interact with their citizens. This movement of change will continue as the government try to look a new and appropriate way to deliver better public services, as well as suitable with the budget or less expensive yet fit the needs of individuals in the communities (Dickinson, 2016).
One of the examples of how the government interact with its citizens to lead an excellent public service is by delivering online public engagement. Online public engagement has a purpose of capturing broader perspectives in the communities with a lower budget to provide effective and efficient public services or public policies. However, the choice to deliver online public engagement is not easily effective as it has unique challenges. I captured the challenges of performing online public engagement based on my experiences.
All about limitation
The main aim of online public engagement is reaching broader perspectives. However, as offline public engagement, online public engagement also requires a budget. It is expected that it will cut unnecessary cost in gathering public for one engagement. For example, the cost of an audience’s transport for gathering audience. In reality, online public engagement perhaps will require another cost in different forms.
Online public engagement will require software which easily accessed by the audiences rather than the complicated one which could divert the audiences from the main purpose of the engagement. For building a right and proper software configuration, it needs IT expertise to make it happen. Furthermore, online public engagement will require ongoing maintenance in technology. Hence, online public management will have to build one team. And, hiring the good IT team will require money, and not all the government has the luck in an appropriate budget to realize it, or even to make it as a priority. Another issue, there is another priority in using the budget for another purpose instead of performing the public engagement.
Do you trust to talk and to be honest
Indonesia experienced a long authoritarian era which leads to the experience of how it is hard to express the opinion. Hence it will be hard to establish the trust of the public. Firstly, there is a tendency that the real expression will lead to a dangerous situation for someone who wants to pour their opinion in public engagement held by the government. Secondly, there is likely the public could have no confidence that their opinions, views, and perspectives will be ‘heard’ and ‘used’ by the government as a good recipe to cook a better public service. Perhaps for some communities, online public engagement only becomes an ‘beautify imaging’ that government cares to public aspiration. Or to please the international community due to international funding.
There would need a reliable and firm commitment from the government as the critical player in performing online public engagement to build trust issue among its citizens. Until public engagement results in better public service, then perhaps it will lead the public to put their trust to the government.
In addition, a data security problem becomes a challenge to gather public opinion. How much data will be kept by the government to define each person. Will, the government, let real public’s voices appear even though it against the government’s will. The worst thing is if the audience gives the fake voice because they are scared that it will endanger them if they put real voice. Therefore, the online public engagement will lose the purpose of gathering real and practical ideas from the public.
Nothing last forever
The biggest challenge in performing online public engagement is how to make it longer and sustain. As a government initiative, it will depend on how the government think: it is essential or not for them to perform it. Once government official thinks it is a good idea to deliberating online public engagement, but perhaps the successor in government leadership in the future will think it is useless.
For instance, Indonesia experiences a change of leadership every five years, and it will be a lot of difference in policies to be implemented. There is no guarantee that good public engagement will be performing forever. Hence, it also influences the public to perceive another new public engagement. A never-ending circle to build trust in the community.
We try because we know it is a good option
However, although there are challenges in online public engagement, it should be a priority for the government to perform it as a piece of profound evidence that the government put democracy as a foundation priority. By imaging that online public management could reach wider audiences, with hopefully lower cost for engaging people. Hence, limitation in budgeting and human resources should be managed and not become a big challenge.
Furthermore, the government needs to make a clear base of regulation to protect the privacy of the public who involve in online public engagement. It also including ensuring that the government are accountable and trusted enough to use public voices for public interest and not about manipulating the result of online public engagement to legitimate their decisions in the end.
Besides, periodically monitoring and evaluation will help to re-define the aim of one online public engagement. The government could manage to have two sides coin of monitoring and evaluation: from internal online public engagement team and from the side of the user/audiences. The monitoring and assessment will be effective and useful if ongoing learning values is a primary evaluation, not only to satisfy the requirement.
Finally, it has to be considered that the process of online and offline public engagement will be a dynamic process, it could not last forever hence spare a space for learning and growing: a consideration that there is imperfection in human and open to several challenges in the future (Gutmann, 2009).
Reference
Dickinson, H. (2016). From New Public Management to New Public Governance: The implications for a ‘new public service’. The Three Sector Solution: Delivering public policy in collaboration with not-for-profits and business, 41–60. Australia: ANU Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.helicon.vuw.ac.nz/stable/j.ctt1rqc9kc.12.
Gutmann, (2009). Why deliberative democracy? Retrieved from: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/43751
