CEE e|Dem and e|Gov Days 2016 - Andrássy University Budapest and National University of Public Service, Ludovika Campus Budapest, Hungary
Speech by Andreas Kiefer, Secretary General of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe
Keynote Session II
Budapest, 12 May 2016
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Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a pleasure for me to speak in the presence of esteemed experts in the field of e-governance and civic technology today and to discuss how we can improve democratic governance, citizen participation and render service delivery efficient and effective using these technologies to our best advantage.
I represent the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. As you may know, the Council of Europe is the continent’s leading human rights organisation comprising 47 member states including those 28 of the European Union.
The Congress is an institution of the Council of Europe, responsible for strengthening local and regional democracy in its member states. It brings together 648 elected officials representing more than 200 000 local and regional authorities.
At the Congress we have been working on e-governance issues since 2008. The subject was new to us at the time; we were only just discovering the potential of the new information and communication technologies for improving consultation with the public as well as increasing the efficiency of service delivery. At the time there was a lot of focus on the “digital divide”. The Congress adopted a recommendation to member States in 2009 to improve “e-inclusion in the regions”, because it was feared that many of our citizens would be left on the side-lines, leading to other, new forms of inequality.
Much water has gone under the bridge since then and it is flowing fast. Today, a bare eight years later, we live in a world which has moved from the digital divide to ubiquitous smartphones, and from websites to social networks, to Twitter and Instagram. The question of access and accessibility does not have the same meaning as before.
This incredibly rapid evolution has, unsurprisingly, given rise to issues which are very relevant to the work of local governments: Human rights issues, social rights issues, and privacy and data protection issues. I say “unsurprisingly” because such a technology, which touches on all aspects of the everyday lives of billions of people, could not be expected not to lead to a review of our practices and the functioning of democratic societies on many fronts.
Simultaneously, we have come to realise what a powerful tool it can be for participation in public life, for awareness-raising, for social dialogue, for social protest. I am thinking of the importance of the social media networks in the evolution of events such as the Gezi (Istanbul) and Tahrir (Cairo) movements in the recent years but also of the information flow during the refugee crisis which mobilised the public. The No Hate Speech campaign of the Council of Europe has found an echo particularly among the youth of our 47 member States through the internet and social media.
Speakers today will tackle various aspects of e-governance. I would like to focus my contribution on the relevance and challenges of ICT for local government, underlining that our approach to this question is, as always, informed by the core principles of the Council of Europe: human rights, rule of law and democracy.
Council of Europe Framework as basis for Congress’ approach
Therefore I would like to say a few words on the framework established by the Council of Europe organs and standards and Congress’ own political output. For those who are interested, there is a printed compilation of Congress texts on the subject that we have put together for your information. I have brought some copies with me.
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in its Recommendation 2009(1) to Member States gave us the basic definition. As “electronic support” of democracy, E-democracy must respect and implement the fundamental freedoms, human rights and minority rights, including access to information. Back then, seven years ago, the Committee of Ministers encouraged all member States to support training for e-literacy of their citizens.
The Parliamentary Assembly in its Resolution 1653 (2009) underpinned the political principle that determines our action: e-democracy is not a tool for “replacing representative democracy by participative democracy but as a complement” and “must not be a consequence of the implementation of the ICT”. It encouraged the introduction of legal standards for using e-tools in the political process.
Thirdly, the European Court of Human Rights, from a legal point of view, gave us indications of the kind of issues the developing ICT would give rise to. I would like to cite three examples where mayors and citizens confronted each other on issues related to ICT.
i) Under the heading “importance of transparency in politics” concerning the Wypych v. Poland case, 2005, where a town councillor was obliged to disclose details concerning his financial situation and property portfolio. The declaration was to be subsequently published in a Bulletin available to the general public via the Internet. The applicant complained that the publication might make him and his family a target for criminal acts. The Court found that such information was necessary in a democratic society for the prevention of corruption in politics;
See the “circumstances of the case” part of the inadmissibility decision at:
http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22dmdocnumber%22:[%22790329%22],%22itemid%22:[%22001-71236%22]}
ii) Under the heading the “right to receive information”. The freedom to receive information does not extend only to reports of events of public concern, but covers cultural expressions and entertainment as well. In the Khurshid Mustafa and Tarzibachi case, where the applicants (an immigrant family of Iraqi origin living in Stockholm, Sweden;) were evicted from their flat following their refusal to remove a satellite dish by which they received television programmes in Arabic and Farsi). They won the case as the Court emphasised the importance of the principle of the “free exchange of opinions and ideas”;
See the “information note” on the judgment (violation of Article 10) at:
http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=002-1804#{%22itemid%22:[%22002-1804%22]}
iii) Under the heading “incitement to boycott and discrimination against foreign products on the Internet” concerning the conviction of the mayor of Seclin near Lille in France for calling for a boycott of Israeli products. The Court noted that a mayor must retain a certain neutrality and has a duty of reserve in his/her acts when he/she engages, as a whole, the local authority that he/she represents. He/she must not incite it to spend according to a discriminatory logic (Willem v. France, 2009).
See the “summary of the judgement” (no violation of Article 10) part at:
http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=003-2803253-3069793#{%22itemid%22:[%22003-2803253-3069793%22]}
Finally there is the Ad hoc Committee on E-democracy (CAHDE) which is part of the Council of Europe’s “Good Governance in the Information Society” project. Its terms of reference include examining government-to-citizen and citizen-to-citizen communication, with a view to identifying political, social, ethical, legislative and technological issues as well as emerging good practice examples and measuring the complementarity and interoperability with non-electronic forms of democratic engagement and participation.
Against this background, I would now like to come to the main theme of my speech which is the relevance of ICT for local authorities – in their activities in the spheres of democracy, governance and service delivery.
Relevance of ICT for local government
I will touch upon two aspects of this question:
First, ICT is A MEANS TO AN END for local elected representatives. It is a complementary strategy for enhancing existing democratic processes.
But ICT also creates a NEW REALITY.
Let me take first the ICT being a means to an end, the “end” for our context being local democracy: it is citizen participation; transparent and informed governance; efficient and effective service delivery.
To achieve this end, ICT is an enhancer and enabler for practices that foster inclusiveness, democratic citizenship and good governance through the use of open data:
- By enhancing the participatory experience and the exercise of fundamental rights:
o FixMyStreet by mysociety.org. People anywhere in the world can use it to set up a website so that people can submit the information to the relevant municipal councils.
o European City SDK is a service development kit for cities that people can use for example for reporting complaints; based in Helsinki, it has 23 European partners in 9 countries.
- By enhancing accessibility to groups with specific needs: for example seniors, mothers with small children, migrants with language issues or for people with handicaps:
o Wheelmap is a German initiative, which is an open and free online map for wheelchair-accessible places.
o Nice City Pass in France allows people to find parking places, following vehicle movements in real time.
o Similarly, Blindsquare is a GPS app for blind and visible impaired.
o The Dutch application, Go-OV, assists travellers who have difficulties traveling alone in public transport (seniors, people with handicaps) with their journey by providing updated information about the public transport schedules and for those travellers who still get lost the app has an emergency button which connect them with a helpline (Go-OV.nl).
- By facilitating data collection; gathering and publishing target group information:
o Many cities have web interfaces for local services allowing parents to find schools for their children: Skills Route in the UK; Kindergartensuche in Germany.
- By enabling transparency and accountability:
o The OpenAHJO project of the city of Helsinki has released data about the decision-making leading to numerous projects enabling citizens to follow decisions as they happen.
o “TheyWorkForYou” in the UK allows citizens to follow that their elected representatives say and how they vote.
o Transparency International Lithuania collects information from local councils including asset registers in order to profile local politicians and interest connections between them.
o The Dutch government has an open data portal (data.overheid.nl) which provides a register with information and references to all open datasets of Dutch provinces and municipalities.
o End December 2015 the Austrian Association of Municipalities published an internet-platform showing the revenues and expenditures of all the 2.354 Austrian municipalities from the last five years. Citizens and journalists can search and compare different municipalities by indicators: (www.gemeindefinanzen .at).
o The Romanian NGO “Expertforum” carried out a study on “Clientilistic allocation of public funds to municipalities”: http://expertforum.ro/en/clientelism-map/
The report shows which governments, in which periods and with what instruments behave in a clientelistic manner. They built a clientelism index that correlates allocated sums with the party affiliation of the mayors. Similar evaluations are under way for Italy, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.
o All this erodes the monopoly of information of “those in power” and enables citizens and media to assess situations and statements made.
- By increasing efficiency and effectiveness and underlining service orientation:
o In the UK, “Tell Us Once” (TUO) is a cross-government initiative developed by a partnership of local governments to provide a service where people can inform government just once of a birth or a death.
- By enhancing cultural experience through facilitating access to cultural monuments, using virtual reality to promote a city’s cultural and architectural past
o Historic Bath project in the UK (historical maps), RandomApp in Amsterdam (discovering new museums).
My second point is about ICT creating a “the new reality” which is relevant for public authorities in the sense that the parameters of public and political life are affected by these new technologies.
So to sum up, we can safely say that ICT is a game-changer for local democracy. Local authorities have to take them into account in their policies. This brings me to the challenges ICT poses for local authorities.
Challenges of ICT for local government
The very characteristics that make ICT a positive contributor to democratic practices, the increased interaction with the public, the speed, the facility and transparency also means that local authorities have difficulty in managing their responses.
I will take just four questions that need to be addressed as an example of these challenges:
Citizens now expect to have information at their fingertips. They expect their elected representatives to be available 24 hours, 7 days a week. Many of our councillors are feeling the pressure (see our 2015 report on “Conditions of office”).
ICT is time consuming; needs staff trained in analysing and putting information online, resources need to be allocated, in order to develop the infrastructure needed to react to the public who expects responses and wants them rapidly.
With new ICTs, it is possible to open up and publish procurement contract data to great detail. This not only allows greater scrutiny – by the public but also by other parts of government – but it also has a preventive effect, because officials think twice about manipulating the contracting process if they know that the details will be revealed.
For example, the Hounslow Borough of London has embraced the “government as a platform” idea and is working on putting its applications on the “cloud” thus getting rid of infrastructure; they won’t even have IT on their premises and will work through the virtual cloud. Are all elected representatives ready to accept the idea of “customisation of services around the citizen”? This is not just about logistics and technology; it is also about a vision of public service that all might not share.
There are various threats to the cyber-environment: Threats for the integrity of data and the examples of servers being hacked; threats for the protection of privacy, but also the “uncontrollability” of individual expressions.
The local authorities need to become more aware of human and social rights that are at stake in this environment and train themselves and their staff to tackle it.
The Congress has started work in this field only recently and or rapporteur Harald Bergmann (NL) is currently preparing a Congress Human Rights Action Plan based on the three reports Congress members adopted in 2010, 2011 and 2014 (https://wcd.coe.int/com.instranet.InstraServlet?command=com.instranet.CmdBlobGet&InstranetImage=2881198&SecMode=1&DocId=2272370&Usage=2 ).
I would like to conclude with a few words on what the Congress has done and what we think should further be done in this field.
Since 2008 the Congress has adopted five resolutions to local authorities and recommendations to member States on e-democracy and e-governance.
See the compendium of texts: https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?p=&id=2403023&Site=COE&BackColorInternet=C3C3C3&BackColorIntranet=CACC9A&BackColorLogged=EFEA9C&direct=true&RefreshDocsCache=yes or http://bit.ly/congress-egovernance
From recommending the development of E-tools in order to engage better with citizens to the use of ICT in deliberative consultation with citizens, from the risks related to e-democracy to e-inclusion in regions to E-media being a game changer for local and regional politicians we tried to cover areas of opportunity and of risk for local governments. We are currently working on a report on open data for cities which will be adopted in October 2016.
There is one area where we need to work on and that is ICT for local elected representatives themselves: Local and regional elected representatives throughout our 47 members States need awareness raising, capacity building and training:
As for local authorities themselves, the way forward can be approached from six angles:
1. preparing for the future: by - improving infrastructure for internet access and integrating online and traditional methods for citizen engagement in policy-making
2. addressing new issues and setting new standards: take steps, in co-operation with the appropriate partners and stakeholders, to develop standards for E-democracy that uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law
3. developing specific action targeting specific groups: children, youth, minorities
4. encourage cooperation between local and regional authorities: - strengthen the already existing local and regional collaborative efforts to allow pooling ICT resources
5. strengthen the role of associations of local and regional authorities to act as enablers for promoting open source software
6. investigate benefits of E-democracy to regions that cut across national borders and to persons living in different countries and sharing the same linguistic or cultural identity;
Ladies and gentlemen,
When the Council of Europe began its work on e-democracy, back in 2008, from the outset the Congress played a key role in the proceedings. What became evident in the work of the ad hoc expert committee that the Committee of Ministers had set up, was that most of the exciting developments in this sphere were happening at the local level.
Eight years on, it is no secret that this is still very much the case. ICT is continuing to transform democratic processes. In the Congress we have the privilege to observe what is going on through our regular contact with practitioners and the seminars, conferences and debates that we organise on this subject. We have a role to play here in highlighting the issues that arise and alerting our governments to them.
This is important work. It is difficult work. It is also exciting work. I hope that today I have been able to share some of that excitement and I am very pleased to take with me a lot of inspiration, knowledge and answers for our future work – but also many new questions.
Thank you