The Scottish Parliament and e‐democracy

Abstract

Purpose -To describe the initiatives of the Scottish Parliament in the field of e-democracy and assess the prospects for future developments. Design/methodology/approach -Analysis and review. Findings -The Scottish Parliament has always seen the internet as one of the major mechanisms for engaging Scottish citizens in the Parliament's business and activities. Its most successful initiatives have been the e-petitioning system, the webcasting of proceedings, the discussion forums and the MSP video diaries. Research limitations/implications -Relevant to parliaments and other representative institutions.Practical implications -Simple implementable tools are described that have been shown to be effective. Originality/value -Few parliaments have been able to put theory into practice in a short time.Applicable to other small parliaments with limited resources wishing to enhance democratic participation by electronic means.The fact that the Scottish Parliament was established well into the age of the internet has given it a huge advantage in terms of incorporating new information and communication technologies into its practices and procedures. Although the Parliament was established as a result of the Scotland Act, passed by the UK Parliament in 1998, it was able to be created in an astonishingly short time because of the wealth of discussion and cross-party agreement that had taken place over many of the preceding years. Much of this prior planning was encapsulated in the work of the Consultative Steering Group (CSG), which was set up by the Secretary of State for Scotland in November 1997 under the chairmanship of Henry McLeish MP. Their report, Shaping Scotland's Parliament, was published in December 1998 and made detailed recommendations for how the Parliament should actually work (Scottish Office, 1998a).The CSG identified four key principles on which the Parliament's operations should be based. These were endorsed by the Parliament in 1999, and are: . sharing the power;. accountability;. access and participation; and . equal opportunities.The CSG was supported by an Expert Panel on information and communication technologies, whose remit was:

Parliamentary Petitions: An Information Studies Perspective

“…A number of Parliaments have revisited their petitioning processes after a long period of stagnation. Sophisticated electronic petitioning systems have been introduced in the Scottish and German Parliaments (Smith & Gray 1999;McMahon 2004;Seaton 2005;Carman 2008;Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee 2009). It is now recognised that petitions play an important role in the "contemporary democratic process" (Fox 2009, 683).…”

Long, often quite boring, notes of meetings

“…• transcripts of meetings might be accompanied by audio and video recordings, creating interconnected multimedia data [13];…”

Characterizing eParticipation

“…of citizen input to policy-makingParalic and Sabol (2001),Paralic et al (2002) Visualization(including virtual reality) Visualizing future developments, typically for design and planning purposes Hudson-Smith et al (2005) Web logging Political activism on the net Johnson and Kaye (2004), Macintosh et al (2005), Paralic et al (2003), StromerGalley (2000) Web virtual meeting places (chat-rooms, discussion forums) Development of virtual political communities as supplement to conventional Aikens (1998), Ainsworth et al (2005), Chang (2005), Dahlberg (2001),Gro¨nlund (2003aGro¨nlund ( , 2003b,Jensen (2003b),Klein (1999),Luhrs et al (2003),,Masters et al (2004),Papacharissi (2004),Paralic and Sabol (2001),Paralic et al (2003),Ranerup (1999),Roeder et al (2005),Rose and Saebø (2005),Saebo and Paivarinta (2005),Seaton (2005), Stromer-Galley (2000),Tambouris and Gorilas (2003),Westholm (2002) …”

“…,Gro¨nlund (2003aGro¨nlund ( , 2003b,Hoff, Lofgren, & Torpe (2003),Kakabadse et al (2003),Kampen and Snijkers (2003),Koch (2005),Macintosh (2004),Mahrer and Krimmer (2005),Masters, Macintosh, and Smith (2004),Moreno-Jimenez and Polasek (2003),Pejout (2004),Saebo and Paivarinta (2005),Seaton (2005),Siapera (2005),Snellen (2001),Tambouris and Gorilas (2003),Watson and Mundy (2001) eGovernance-participation in institutional structures of authority and collaboration to allocate resources and coordinate or control activity in society or the economyBingham, Nabatchi, and O'Leary (2005), Moreno-Jimenez and Polasek(2005)e-Accessibility-making eParticipation available to people with handicaps or disabilitiesJaeger (2004),Waddell (2000) e-Activism-spontaneous (that is, not organized by government) political activity or agitation mediated by ICTChang (2005), George(2005), Kosmopoulos (2004), Lusoli and Ward (2004), Park (2002), Rushkoff (2004) e-Campaigning-political campaigning on the net Park (2002), Rushkoff (2004), Stromer-Galley (2000) e-Community-how ICT applications shape the instantiation of communities with a political focus, such as local political discussion forums Bekkers (2004), Chang (2005), Dutta-Bergman (2005), Fernandez-Maldonado (2005), Gross(2000),Huang (1998),Klein (1999),Luhrs, Albrecht, Lubcke, and Hohberg (2003),Macintosh, McKay-Hubbard, and Shell (2005),Myles (2004), Snider (2003 e-Consultation-stakeholder consultation with government (for instance in policy making) partly or wholly conducted over the Internet Al-Kodmany(2000),Gro¨nlund (2003a),Jensen (2003b),Lamb, Berntsen, and Kueppers (2004),Macintosh et al (2005),…”