ICT in Politics and Public Administration

Some basic concepts

• Politics

• Democracy

• Public administration & management

• Public policy

What is ”politics”?

• Collective actions aimed at changing or preserving conditions in society

• Collective actions: decisionmaking, demonstrations, signing petitions etc

• Decisions on WHO does WHAT and HOW

• Decisions are made by elected politicians

• Decisions are made in common (public) matters

What is ”democracy”?

• A decisionmaking technique• Direct or representative• Representative democracy criteria:

– Universal franchise– Meaningful elections– Freddom of organisation– Freedom of opinion– Freedom from repression and political

violence

What is ”public administration”?

• Traditional definition– An administration under the formal control of

the political leadership– Strictly hierarchical model– Permanent, neutral and anonymous officials– Merely administering policies decided by

politicians– Administration = follow instructions

Public Management

• The achievements of results and taking personal responsibility for doing so

• Fokuses on– Strategy– Managing internal components– Managing external constituencies

What is ”public policy”?

• ”A government’s program of action to give effect to selected normative and empirical goals in order to address perceived problems and needs in society in a specific way, and therefore achieve desired changes in that society…” (Cloete 1998)

• Written or unwritten

THE POLICY LIFE CYCLE

EvaluatiEvaluationon

ImplementatiImplementationon Policy Policy

decisiondecision

Problem structure

Policy options

Feasibility of Feasibility of optionsoptions

(Parsons 1995: (Parsons 1995: 7777))

ReviewReview

ProblemProblem

The year 1996

• …”the breakthrough for Internet information services in (Swedish) public administration” (statement by The Swedish Agency for Public Administration)

• First time ICT issues were dealt with in Parliament as a separate policy area

Access to computer at home

                                                                                   

Government bills 1996 and 2000

• ”Sweden will be the first country to become an information society for all” (statement by the Prime Minister in 1999)

• Goals:– Increase growth and employment– Safeguard societal goals (democracy, rule of

law, gender equality etc)

Areas of concern regarding citizens

• To create and maintain trust in the information society among the broad public

• To provide skills to use the services

• To secure access to the information society

Good services for citizens and enterprises defined as:

• Access – services when needed

• Participation – possibilities to give feed-back to public authorities

• Co-operation between authorities in order to achieve single point contact

• Simple and similar routines for easy use

• Development based on the demand of users