Interview with Vasilis Koulolias, Executive Director of Gov2U
It is a privilege for eGovBlog to present this interview with Vasilis Koulolias. Vasilis is the Founder & Executive Director of Gov2U, a very well known non-profit and non-governmental organization based in Athens, Greece and focused on assisting legislative bodies become efficient and transparent institutions. We would like to thank him and his team for making this conversation possible.
eGB: Gov2U believes that ICT offer vital opportunities for bringing about a fundamental change to the workings of traditional democractic systems. Do you think both governments and citizenships across Europe are already taking advantage of these opportunities?
VK: Currently in the European context of eGovernment the emphasis is shifting from making public services available online to delivering real results for citizens. eGovernment is therefore considered not only as a new way of designing, organizing for and providing services to the citizens, but also crucially a novel approach in engaging and interacting with citizens.
This positioning of eGovernment is clear within the i2010 strategy. In April 2006 this was followed by the publication of the EU’s new eGovernment Action Plan where the role of eGovernment in modernisation and reform (of government) is emphasised in the context of ageing populations, climate change, terrorism; and of citizens demanding better services, security and democracy.
The Action Plan has five major objectives for 2010, three of which are directly relevant to the citizen-as-customer issue: No citizen left behind; raising efficiency in public service delivery; and, strengthening participation and democratic decision making.The term citizen-centric with respect to ICT-enabled public services has in fact become common reference in the European Commission.
In this framework the European Commission supports e-democracy in its widest terms – through an area of work termed eParticipation, which was launched in 2005. This area of work encompasses online deliberation, e-petitions, e-consultation and e-legislation, and underlines the importance of this field in Europe. The latest example is the Estonian elections. Estonia has become the first country to use internet voting in parliamentary elections. Some 30,000 voted online - that’s one in 30 registered voters – considerably beyond official expectations.
eGB: What are the necessary steps that need to be taken to create more representative and efficient democratic systems?
VK: Although the EU considers the development of ICT a top priority, recognizing their potential as powerful drivers of growth and employment, contributing to improving the quality of everyday life and the social participation of Europeans, supporting the transparency of European institutions and the involvement of citizens, the reality is though that Europeans still reap few or no benefits from ICT in this domain, and resilient gaps remain in ICT use across Europe. Today, a little fewer than 50% of EU citizens are even users of the Internet.
Today, political participation via the Internet plays only a marginal role in the political process mainly because it is not prioritized by public authorities. Awareness and integration of internet usage in everyday life as well as the direct involvement and support of civil society are indispensable components for a comprehensive and successful public strategy.
eGB: Can you tell us a few words about Gov2DemOSS?
VK: The Gov2DemOSS platform is an open source, generic but customizable, informative and collaborative e-participation platform. It’s the most advanced platform of its kind – it is comprehensive, efficient and user-friendly – the EU awarded it with the Good Practice Label in 2006. Basically, it provides an efficient channel for institutions and organizations to keep their communities informed, manage their information repositories, gauge public opinion, interact directly with their constituents and to involve them in the decision making process. The core component of the platform is the deliberation forums through which citizens can view current topics under discussion, access related documents, express their views and cast their votes in polls. The platform also contains a wealth of other features that facilitate information sharing and dialogue. We have an e-brochure on Gov2DemOSS featured on the home page of our site Gov2U for anyone who wants to learn more.
Initially, we envisioned the platform as a tool for various levels of government; but we are increasingly attracting interest from a much wider range of stakeholders including community groups, civil society organizations and even corporations who are seeking an efficient medium for interacting with their membership base. The first practical implementation of the platform was launched in a community in Houston, Texas (http://www.upperkirby.org/) and another project is under development in Spain wherein 31 municipalities will implement the Gov2DemOSS platform.
eGB: What have been the first reactions both from people and public authorities to an initiative like Gov2DemOSS?
The platform is very well received. The EU supports it and awarded it with the EU best practice label in 2006 as I mentioned. We carried out an initial evaluation in 2006 based on regular consultation with both site administrators and users, so as to get both user-specific and comparative analyses of experience with using the platform. The evaluation showed that respondents found the platform to support citizen access to information. The overall gain from using the platform was seen in the promotion of openness and transparency and the empowerment of citizens’ involvement in the decision-making process. On a local authority level, citizens believed that the outcome of their participation in such a platform equate with their involvement in the everyday life of their municipality and community.
We strongly believe, and have seen this in practice, that engaging citizens online raises legitimate expectations that the public input will be used to inform policy making. If such experiments or services are to have any value, then Governments and / or local authorities and the public sector need to adapt their structures and processes to ensure that the results of online consultations are analyzed, disseminated and used. Additionally, we have found that the active promotion of online consultation through traditional mediums is essential (i.e. through leaflets, stickers, banners etc) to draw the attention of a wider and more representative audience to the existence of such services.
We strongly believe that the impact of tools such as Gov2DemOSS on the legislative process hinges fully on the political will of legislatures to truly incorporate public opinion in their decision-making procedures, rather than merely paying lip service to the public. In positive cases, public participation in the decision-making process will result in more transparent decisions, ones that have broader public consensus and are more representative of the will of the people.
eGB: Imagine for a second an European Government -national, state or municipal- of 2027, twenty years from now. Do you expect fundamental changes in the way a government is managed/conducted? Will technology become a major driver of public administrations in the future?
VK: We strongly believe that the use of Information and Communication Technologies could help establish a new administrative and decision-making culture. Citizens will be able to act in bottom-up decision making processes, to make informed decisions, and to develop social and political responsibility.
The political, sociotechnological, and cultural capabilities of individuals could be empowered giving them the possibility to involve and organize themselves in the information society. People are becoming increasingly tech-savvy, and not only are they demanding a more direct and active role in everything from governance to media, they are making it happen. This is also direction in which we are working. We hope that with the implementation of our programs throughout Europe and the States we will be able to showcase the possibilities that ICT can offer.
