The Finnish eParticipation Environment

Niklas Wilhelmsson, Ministry of Justice

Towards Collaborative Government? (Gov 2.0)

ParticipationParticipation

TransparencyTransparency

Collaboration

Sources: USA Gov/White House 2009, Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce 2009,

Poikola 2009

Gov 2.0 refers to modernization of the way governments engage and collaborate with citizens and involves policy shifts in culture and empowerment of citizens, harnessing the opportunities of new technologies

People have higher education and more free time than ever,

As well as cheap computing power & networking peer production & participation phenomena,

e.g., theories and concepts of:- Networked information society- Produsage- Crowdsourcing- Wisdom of the crowds

Possibilities & enablers of collaborative government?

Sources: E.g., Ahlqvist et. al 2008, Benkler 2006, Surowiecky 2004, Shirky 2008, Howe 2008, Bruns 2008

Source: Nordfors et al. 2009 (eGovernment of Tomorrow Future Scenarios for 2020)

eGovernment 2020 scenarios

Is this what we want?How do we get here!?

16.6.2006

Accenture: 73 % of Finnish citizens have tried eGovernment and 43 % prefer eGovernment channels

80

100

40

60

80

Citizens’ eGovernment use, %

Citizens’ enthusiasm for eGovernment, %6020

South Africa

Germany

Ireland

Brazil

United Kingdom

USA

The Netherlands

DenmarkNorway

Australia

Sweden

JapanSpain

Portugal

France

Malaysia Singapore

Belgium

Italy

Canada

FinlandOpportunity

Dormant Challenged

Converted

Use of online services provided by the public administration

Available online services in the

public administration

(% of total)

Use of online services provided

by the public administration

(% of population)

Finland 80 % 50 %

EU 27 51 % 30 %

Ranking: Finland 6. 5.

Developing Finnish e-democracy

Aims:

1. To develop already existing fora. To create a joint portal for all administrative online consultations

2. To cooperate with other existing participation fora (eg. media)

3. To develop methods for finding and making use of dialogue and discussion in other webfora.

National eParticipation Environment

Web based environment for • Planning of participation (otakantaa.fi)• Deliberative discussions (otakantaa.fi)• Several kinds of consultation (lausuntopalvelu.fi)• Questionnaires, polls, statements (otakantaa.fi, lausuntopalvelu.fi )• Citizen initiatives (national & local level) (kansalaisaloite.fi, kuntalaisaloite.fi)

Enhances and enables dialog and interaction between citizens, politicians and public servants and improves e-participation possibilities – at local and national level

In practice: goal is to modernize web-based tools and processes, into a ”toolbox” that is easy to take into use – by citizens, associations, government agencies and municipalities

eParticipation Environment is part of Action Programme on eServices and eDemocracy

The Ministry of Finance’s Action Programme on eServices and eDemocracy (SADe) develops comprehensive services for citizens, companies and the authorities.

Programme is among the Government’s key projects.

The SADe programme comprises eight projects, which were chosen based on significance and cost-efficiency as well as cross-sector collaboration, customer focus, quality and innovativeness. Special attention was paid to the productivity of municipalities

eParticipation Environment Services Roadmap

Otakantaa.fiReleased 28.6.2012“Have your say” – eParticipation Platform

2012 2013

Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Kansalaisaloite.fiReleased 1.12.2012Citizen initiatives

Kuntalaisaloite.fiRelease Q2/Q3/2013Local initiatives Lausuntopalvelu.fi

Release Q4/2013Statements

Services: Citizen initiatives

Services: Have your say

Execution

The E-participation environment project lasts 2010-2014• run by Ministry of Justice

• Part of larger national SADe eServices and eAdministration acceleration program run by Ministry of Finance

Iterative approach:• first official releases in public use 2012, releases continue 2013

Estimated costs 3 million Euros• technical development and execution 1,5 milloin Euros

Long-term goal is to build an ecosystem of e-services – with commercial and non-profit add-on services complementing the services developed in the program

Implementation

Marketing campaign starting in autumn 2013• Campaigning in radio, print media and social media

Presentations of services to public administration (ministries & communities) and to non-governmental organizations and in several events

Special citizen jury for commenting both goals and execution of eParticipation services

Have your say -blog informing current events and steps in project

Need for marketing varies between services• Citizen initiatives -service: over 500 000 statements of support given in

web service without any marketing campaign

Key benefits

Cost-effective, open

Fast and easy to deploy in organisations

Tools and methods support variety of participation methods

Reaching larger groups of stakeholders

Quality, effectiveness and acceptability of drafting increases

Participation with less time-bound or physical limits

Uniform processes • increased service level, productivity, impact• Participation planning tools – not just implementation

Less dependency on particular persons, less overlapping information systems

Thank you!