A. A. Bashkarev
ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY AS A FORM OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
The work is presented by the Department of Political Science of the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University. Scientific adviser - Doctor of Political Science, Professor S. M. Eliseev
The article is devoted to political communications in modern computer networks, and in particular to the phenomenon of electronic democracy. Classical concepts are considered in comparison with the opinions of modern scientists, the main priorities for the development of computer technologies are outlined as a tool for maximum involvement and participation in the political life of all members of society.
Key words: politics, communications, Internet, engagement.
The article is devoted to the political communications in the Internet, in particular the phenomenon of electronic democracy. Classical concepts are considered in comparison with opinions of the modern scientists. The author designs the basic priorities of development of computer technologies for maximal involvement and participation of all members of society in the political life.
Key words: policy, communications, the Internet, involving.
The concepts of e-democracy refer to theories that consider computers and computer networks as essential tool in a democratic political system. An e-democracy is any democratic political system in which computers and computer networks are used to carry out essential functions democratic process, such as the dissemination of information and communication, the unification of citizens' interests and decision-making (by consultation and voting). These concepts are different
by the possibility of using a direct or representative form of democratic government and by the degree of activity of citizens in the state. What these concepts have in common is the belief that the various properties of new media, such as interactivity, faster ways of transmitting information, communication a large number users with each other, an abundance of information and new user opportunities for managing processes, can positively influence a democratic political system1.
The term “e-democracy” has at least two interpretations2. The first, earlier and more specific, involves the implementation of political activity through new information and communication technologies. The second, more recent interpretation of e-democracy is based on the scholarly notion that new technologies improve citizenship in the broadest sense, becoming the center of politics and governance.
The analysis of e-democracy is carried out in modern political science mainly in the context of the conceptual apparatus of traditional concepts of democracy: liberalism, republicanism and the theory of participatory democracy.
The liberal tradition, which took shape thanks to the work of J. Locke, considers the “democratic expression of the will of citizens” as a private element of the political system, structurally formalized within the framework of the constitution and involving the separation of powers and the legal regulation of legislative activity. The concept of teledemocracy draws much of its arguments from economic model democracy of E. Downes, formed in the liberal political theory in the 1950s. This model is based on the idea of rationality of political behavior: each actor seeks to maximize the result of his activity in the economic sense, i.e., to get more results at lower costs. With this approach, politics is viewed as a market, where competition and mutual exchange take place in order to obtain the most beneficial result. The two main premises of the economic theory of democracy in this regard are the most important: firstly, “every government tries to maximize political support”, and secondly, “every citizen tries to rationally maximize the utility of the result of his action”3.
These premises determine the understanding of the features of a democratic system, in which both those who rule and those who are ruled act guided not by ideals, but by their own real interests. The attempts of any government (respectively, any political force in the form of a party) to maximize support pursue a pragmatic goal: to maintain its dominance or win dominant positions.
The notion of society as an originally political entity (societas civilis) essentially identifies democracy with the political self-organization of society as a whole and is based on the republican tradition dating back to Aristotle, Machiavelli, Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville. The state as a bureaucratically self-contained administrative mechanism must again become part of society as a whole.
An equally important area of theoretical research within the framework of the republican political tradition has become the concept of "deliberative" (deliberative), reflective or reflective democracy. Its core idea is a permanent and as broad as possible political discourse in society, the results of which are determined not by the balance of power, but by the strength of arguments. The deliberative process acts as a “democracy of discovery” for the society itself of the meaning of the decisions made and their consequences. The model of deliberative democracy, developed by the German philosopher J. Habermas, suggests the ideal of a society of free and equal individuals who determine the forms of living together in political communication. The procedure for forming the opinions and will of the people should be conceived as a democratic self-organization, and the decision is legitimate, in the discussion of which the largest number of citizens took part4.
The relationship between civil society and the state, in the interpretation of Habermas, trans-
are formed in such a way that "the principles and structures of the rule of law are analyzed as a mechanism for the institutionalization of the political discourse of the public." At the same time, institutionalization is understood as both the rationalization of opinions and the enforcement of legislative programs. Deliberative democracy is not just the power of the opinions of the people, but rather the possibility of the power of reason, obtained in the institutions of communication between citizens. The purpose of communication is to reach consensus.
The concept of deliberative democracy is actively used in modern studies of the Internet as a democratic public sphere. The theorists of participatory democracy - J. Wolf, F. Green, B. Barber - remain true to the central idea of the classical theory of democracy about the ability of ordinary people to govern themselves; they believe that a democratic system of political power does not yet exist in full, that the status quo cannot be maintained, but that it is necessary to achieve a universal effective involvement of the masses in the political decision-making process. Against elite tyranny, a well-informed public is needed that can exercise democratic control through general elections and representative institutions. Civic literacy is characterized as a set of abilities that make it possible to function in a democratic community, think critically, act deliberately in a pluralistic environment. The Internet is seen as the most important means of establishing direct democracy.
In many Western studies, the main goal of e-democracy is declared to increase the level of political participation. Analysis of the role of the Internet as a guarantor of democracy is one of the most promising areas in political theory. Modern information technologies not only change
they change the form of the implementation of democratic procedures, but also the very essence of the development of social processes. Describing the role of new information technologies in the 21st century, R. Dahl notes: “We have barely begun to seriously consider the possibilities they open up and carried out the very first, timid trials on an insignificant scale”5.
The classical concept of democracy comes from the postulate: democracy is based on the common interest of the majority of citizens, which forms their common will. Nevertheless, in a post-industrial society, the former forms of solidarity are disintegrating, and a pluralization of positions and interests is emerging. Differentiation of ideas, principles, values, norms of behavior fragments civil society, hinders the achievement of the degree of agreement that is necessary for the democratic governance of society6.
End of XX century marked the transition from the "politics of interests and goals" to the "politics of values". Modern political science proceeds from the fact that the "old politics" - "party politics" (party politics), parties of the old type, based on a class attribute, on interests social groups, the division of the party spectrum into "left" and "right", traditional electoral systems and systems of representation - are gradually becoming a thing of the past. In their place come new social movements and new social practices, including in the system of representation, the “democracy of participation” is expanding, and the task of expanding the use of “direct democracy” is again on the agenda. The Internet plays an important role in this process.
It should be noted that mass political participation is only one of many key functions policies by means of the Internet. Equally important functions of the Internet that can strengthen the institutions of representative democracy are: providing conditions for the competition of parties and the competition of candidates,
activation and involvement of civil society, ensuring transparency and increasing accountability in the decision-making process, as well as their effective communication from power structures to citizens.
A key question in evaluating the role of information technology for democracy is how much governments and civil society will learn to use the opportunities provided by new channels of information and communication to promote and strengthen the basic representative institutions that bring citizens and the state together. Considered in this way, the opportunities for public participation created by new technologies are certainly important, but the Internet is also capable of generating information, increasing the transparency, openness of activities and responsibility of national and international authorities, as well as strengthening channels of interactive communication between citizens and intermediary institutions. These are special features, and the Internet implements some of them better than any other means. In particular, the Internet could provide a more suitable means of interaction in political campaigns for minority parties than traditional mass media (newspapers, radio, television); provide greater one-time access to information for journalists, official documents and current legislative initiatives and proposals.
The rapid spread of the Internet provides an opportunity for an unlimited number of people to quickly access the texts of draft laws at the stage of their preliminary development, as well as to the maximum amount of analytical information of an unclassified nature. By reducing the cost of receiving and transmitting information, a group of people who have the opportunity to participate
in the development and adoption of politically significant decisions, significantly increases - potentially to the level of the entire politically active population. As a result, prerequisites are being created for a gradual decrease in the acutely felt inequality of political opportunities for citizens of formally democratic states, which is predetermined by inequality in the distribution of property and income7.
Nevertheless, it would be completely unreasonable to leave without scientific analysis problems associated with the dangers and risks of e-democracy, in particular the danger of manipulation of voting and election data due to the lack of sufficient data protection, the danger of dividing society into those who own information and those who do not (digital division), and how As a result, infringement of the principle of democracy of choice, there is also a danger of propaganda by criminal and extremist groups and their influence, especially on the younger generation8.
The discussion about e-democracy in last years is shifting towards the discussion of e-government projects. In the Russian case, e-government means, first of all, increasing the effectiveness of the mechanisms of state control over citizens in the areas of tax collection, combating crime, etc.9 The Western approach implies, in addition to facilitating communication, strengthening citizens' control over the government, which the introduction of public performance indicators of the latter. It is important to note that if informatization is rapidly developing “at the top”, without penetrating into society, it deprives citizens of the opportunity to monitor the activities of state structures, check them, and therefore not only does not make the state more transparent, but can also strengthen the state’s monopoly on information. Electronization "from above" will thus give
ruling elite additional features manipulation of society and the individual.
The greatest prospects in Russia are the process of using Internet technologies to further expand the capabilities of the existing system of representative democracy and the development of “electronic democratization” processes. Its main meaning is to use the Internet in order to expand the access of voters and media representatives to legislative activities, reduce the costs of forming associations and associations of voters, and increase the efficiency of feedback between voters and their representatives in legislative bodies.
For Russia, the problem of “new despotism”, i.e., sophisticated and refined forms of manipulating society with the help of modern technologies communications, mass culture, political process. "New Despotism"
does not resort to open violence, the suppression of individual rights, the abolition of democratic institutions; The construction of liberal democracy is preserved, but its content (the functions of civil will) is emasculated. Thus, B. Barber points out that "new technologies can become a dangerous conductor of tyranny..."10, and thus the "new despotism" is able to take people's lives beyond the bounds of political existence11.
Technology, thus, can change the methods of regulation, but does not change their essence, and the dependence of the emergence of information openness as a consequence of the electronization of relations between citizens and state institutions cannot be called straight. The introduction of "electronic democracy" is not able to make the police state more open, however, it allows to improve the system of expression of will and increase the political participation of each member of society in cases of healthy functioning of one or another political system.
NOTES
1 Vershinin M. S. Political culture as a reflection of the political and communicative reality of society // Actual problems of communication theory: Collection of scientific papers. St. Petersburg: SPbSPU Press, 2004, pp. 98-107.
2 Vartanova E. Finnish model at the turn of the century: Finnish information society and media in a European perspective. M., 1999. S. 85.
3 Downs A. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York, 1957. C. 37.
4 Habermas J. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. P. 118.
5 Dahl P. On Democracy. M., 2000. S. 179.
6 Kovler A. I. The Crisis of Democracy? Democracy at the turn of the XXI century. M., 1997.
7 Vershinin M. S. Political communication in the information society. SPb.: Publishing House of Mikhailov V.A., 2001. S. 90-91.
8 Vershinin M. S. Political culture as a reflection of the political and communicative reality of society. pp. 98-107.
9 Peskov D.N. Internet in Russian politics: utopia and reality // Polis. 2002. No. 1. S. 37.
10 Barber B. Three Scenarios for the Future of Technology and Strong Democracy // Political Science Quarterly, Winter 1998-1999. Vol. 113. No. 4. C. 581-582.
11 Kapustin BG Modernity as a subject of political theory. M., 1998. S. 229.
The farther, the more people talk about "electronic democracy" everywhere. It has become a catchphrase, like "nanotechnology". But if it’s clear to everyone about nanotechnology that you won’t understand it so easily, you need special knowledge (and besides, they suspect that with the prefix “Ros-” this is generally bullshit and cut), then electronic democracy seems to be intuitive and, moreover, a good thing: democracy is generally good, but electronic, that is, without leaving home, via the Internet, well, this is modern, it probably gives more opportunities, and, in any case, one can be more independent from the authorities, or maybe , and in general, you can encrypt everything, let them try to get us ...
The elections to the Coordinating Council of the Opposition that took place in the fall fueled the general impatient expectation even more: now, we have registered in a reliable way (that is, we fenced ourselves off from doubles and bots and even figured out and neutralized the attack of the Mavrodians); then they voted, elected deputies to our representative body; and besides, on our specialized Internet platform "Democracy-2" we can now "discuss issues" and "make decisions"... Electronic democracy, direct democracy, direct electronic democracy - go ahead!
Are these expectations too high? Is this really the reality of today, or is it just a project for the foreseeable future, or is it just dreams and myths about a golden age?
Before attempting to answer these questions, we must agree on what we mean by e-democracy. The various vague "umbrella" formulations offered here, and especially in the West, make it possible to put every creature under this umbrella in pairs, as in Noah's ark during the flood. Attempts to classify all this living creatures, that is, types of electronic democracy, are also diverse and contradictory. Below I will try, as far as possible within the framework of a newspaper article, to lay out several conceptual aspects and the current state of affairs in this area and show that truly significant projects for the transformation of today's imperfect democracy cannot be born from good wishes alone plus access to the Internet; serious developments are needed, including programming, algorithmic and even mathematical ones.
I have been dealing with this topic for many years, mainly in the European context, and I have probably managed to make a lot of enemies there, constantly proving in articles and speeches at numerous conferences that most of the initiatives and arguments in this area are either obvious and do not contain a qualitative leap, or, conversely, cannot be implemented without serious conceptual justifications and algorithmic developments. There are almost no serious developments, most of the projects are treading water within simple tasks and existing mechanisms.
What is e-democracy? First, it should not be assumed that this is some kind of fundamental new form democracy. Everything that can be done with computers and network communications can, generally speaking, be done without them; information and network technologies (hereinafter abbreviated as ICT) only provide an opportunity to do something faster, more accurately and, most importantly, on a much larger scale. Scalability is the main advantage. So, e-democracy is a set of types, forms and aspects of “just democracy”, expanding to a previously impossible scale and previously impossible efficiency.
Parenthetically, it should be noted that “electronic democracy” and “electronic government” are two completely different concepts. Whether to consider “government” as an agency for enforcing its citizens to comply with the laws (regulator state) or as an agency for providing services to them (provider state) - in both cases we have a hierarchical structure public institutions(“government”) interacting in some way with regulated entities or service providers. Each such elementary interaction (for example, filing a tax return or obtaining a copy of a birth certificate), of course, can be greatly simplified by the use of ICT; the same applies to the interactions of state institutions with each other. The scope of all such applications of ICT is called “e-government”. The results should, of course, be transparency, less bureaucracy, more efficient public institutions, and so on. Everyone is theoretically interested in this - and those who obstruct these processes can be written down in advance as corrupt officials. And yet all this is by no means e-democracy, since it does not refer to the participation of citizens in the management of society and the state.
This participation of citizens itself may be limited to the election of representatives to legislative bodies (representative democracy) or give the opportunity to personally participate in the adoption of specific decisions. The second possibility is considered to be related to the field of direct democracy. In fact, however, there are many intermediate stages and gradations between pure representative democracy and ideal direct democracy. As for the actual representative democracy, here the conversation is mainly about electronic voting. Different options for rating voting, voting in many rounds, etc. – all this becomes possible thanks to IST. But the end result seems to be always the same: they chose their “representatives” and retired for four years (or more), they decide everything for us.
The most flexible form of representative democracy is the so-called liquid democracy, in Russian called "mobile" by some, "cloudy" by others. Each citizen can transfer his vote, in whole or in part, to any other citizen, and separately for each issue under discussion. On pension reform, let Vasya represent me at 40% and Kolya at 60%, and on interethnic disputes, I divide my vote even among my four representatives; at the same time, at any moment when I don’t like someone, I will take my vote from him and give it to another - or leave it to myself if I have a desire to make decisions myself ... Such fantastic flexibility cannot be realized otherwise than by a specially programmed network tool.
Let me emphasize: we are talking about the flexibility of the “decision-making” process, but not the process of “discussing and developing decisions”. This is a very significant limitation. Someone discusses some problems and develops solutions, and I either vote myself, choosing the solution I like, or remove myself, transferring my vote to those whom I trust. The option when citizens are invited to vote directly on some issues, without representatives, is the democracy of referendums, which has long been practiced without any Internet in many countries, most widely in Switzerland. It is this variant that is usually called "direct democracy" - as we will see in a moment, for lack of a better variant.
Indeed, the original and most authentic direct democracy - the democracy of the People's Assembly in Ancient Athens - did not consist only in the possibility for any citizen to vote on any issue. It also included the opportunity to raise any issue in the meeting* and participate in its discussion. It was thus "deliberative direct democracy", the highest form of democracy. Of course, they will immediately say that, firstly, not every inhabitant of Athens had this right (only a minority were citizens); secondly, although there were no restrictions for citizens under the law, but social restrictions acted - as everywhere and always, and not every citizen had a real opportunity to use this right to raise and discuss issues. And most importantly, in Athens there were a maximum of 60 thousand citizens, and the quorum of the assembly was 6 thousand, every tenth, and it was due to such a high percentage that the People's Assembly could be considered representative. And what about today, a country with 140 million citizens or even a city with 1 million - how can you organize any kind of discussion when any forum on the Internet is immediately littered and fizzles out in empty chatter and mutual abuse?
So, of course, we would like to have the opportunity to participate in the discussion of state or other socially significant issues; and it is clear that without the Internet it is definitely impossible. But here we have a computer at home, we have access to the Internet - and where is the platform where at least several thousand participants could discuss the same issue together, offer their solutions, compare and comment on them, process and bring them together - and only at the very end, if not agreed, by voting to choose one of the competing options?
There is simply no such platform, such a system or tool yet, neither in Russia nor anywhere else in the West. There are many Internet forums, more or less specialized, more or less simulated. Such, for example, is the platform "Democracy-2" (website Democratia2.ru). It, of course, has a rich assortment of functions of voting, petitions, elections, delegating one's voice - but all these are precisely the mechanisms of a democratic CHOICE from alternatives proposed by someone before. Suggest new topic or a problem, of course, any participant can, but without efforts to focus the attention of citizens on the proposed problem and without a clearly developed procedure for discussing it, all activity in such a forum does not and cannot go beyond a few small get-togethers. Go to the site democratia2.ru, register, visit any topic being discussed now - and you will see for yourself. The book "Cloud Democracy" by L. Volkov and F. Krasheninnikov describes and substantiates in detail the mechanism for delegating votes when discussing a particular problem - but nothing is said about the procedure for the discussion itself. Igor Eidman, an opponent of Volkov and Krasheninnikov, also passes over it in silence, criticizing the very idea of delegating votes in his book "Electronic Democracy".
Why is the negotiation process so important? Is it really not enough to transfer to the Internet space the usual parliamentary procedures, according to which the parliaments of democratic countries, consisting of several hundred deputies, work at the very least? To begin with, we note that in a "living" parliament there is almost never a general discussion. Any issue, any bill is worked out first by the relevant committee and in parallel - in the party factions. The plenary discussion thus boils down to the presentation of an already prepared version and a confrontation of factional opinions, one opinion from each faction. The overwhelming majority of deputies in this procedure are mere extras, waiting for the moment when it will be necessary to vote, "as my faction orders." It cannot be otherwise: 450 people, all together and at the same time, cannot discuss anything in a “live” meeting.
But on the web, can they? And if not 450 people, but 10, 100 times more? And if the discussion is open to all citizens, as it should be in a true deliberative direct democracy, and, moreover, the problem under discussion does not leave indifferent a significant part of society? I bet that with an adequately chosen “acute” problem and after a wide campaign to alert citizens through various media channels, a well-organized Internet site will gather at least 50, or even 100 thousand participants in a week. Here are three such topics off the top of your head - you can easily continue the list yourself. 1. How should a publicly controlled and efficient law enforcement system be organized? 2. How to ensure the rights of national communities throughout the territory of the Russian Federation, and not only in territorial autonomies? 3. How to ensure the right of children to safety, health and education, without excessive control over the life of families and without infringement of the rights of parents (the problem of "juvenile justice")?
In each case mentioned, it is proposed for discussion not a ready-made bill with kilometers of formalities and an already fixed structure and ready-made solutions (or a carefully disguised absence of them), but it is precisely an acute topical problem that may require non-standard solutions, when the wider the circle of participants, the more likely it is to find such decisions.
When a bill already prepared at the top is being discussed, even with the opportunity not only to criticize it, but also to propose alternative versions of its individual provisions and points (this is called Consultation in the West, and in our country “public hearings”), then the attention of the participants is scattered between these many points; nevertheless, the activity of several hundred participants can sometimes concentrate on the key and most controversial provisions. We saw this in 2010 during the discussion of the draft law “On Police” initiated from above: 16,000 active participants, 22,000 proposals and comments ... And at the same time, except for the first few days of discussion, in the future, almost none of the new “proposers” read previous proposals already submitted. This can be seen from the distribution of the number of evaluations of new proposals: it quickly decreased to almost zero. As a result: a) many “equivalent” proposals were submitted, practically not compared and not discussed by the participants; b) the sorting of proposals and the selection of the allegedly most supported were carried out by the staff of some institution in the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which reduced the public significance of the discussion to zero.
What does it say? About how quickly the “limit of attention” of each individual participant is reached, that is, the amount of information after which the new one is no longer perceived. Does this mean that the discussion of any problem in a community with thousands (or maybe tens or hundreds of thousands) of active participants is impossible in principle? Indeed, the Internet facilitates communication by removing the restrictions imposed by distance and time; but the Internet itself does not expand the possibilities of our perception - or expands them only slightly (and even then due to the greater superficiality of our judgments).
The authors mentioned above, of course, are aware of this problem and try to get around it in their own way: Volkov and Krasheninnikov postulate a decrease in the number of participants due to delegating some of their votes to others, Eidman a priori proceeding from the fact that each specific problem will attract to its discussion only a limited number of citizens, while all other citizens will simply ignore the discussion, "waking up", perhaps, only by the time of voting on the proposed alternatives. In both cases, the calculation is based on the generally low public interest in the problem under discussion.
Maybe this will be the case - when we already have full Switzerland for 100 years, peace and quiet, tranquility and prosperity, and only from time to time something needs to be slightly updated and corrected ... But to this level of democratic stability, not only we here in Russia it is very far away - this old Europe itself is now shaken by disputes and clashes, which no one expected 20-30 years ago, and, moreover, generated by real problems: a critical percentage of immigrants, the withdrawal of production to China and Southeast Asia, the instability of financial markets . In a large project that my European colleagues and I are going to launch in several European countries in the near future, we expect to choose an acute problem for discussion in each country, which will bring together at least 10,000 active participants.
How are we going to organize such a mass discussion? The newspaper article format does not allow you to go too deep into technical details. The basic principles are set out in several of my articles (in English), which the curious reader can easily find on the Internet. In a few words: the discussion of the problem begins after the participants get acquainted with the "expert reviews" provided to them on this topic. Participants' new proposals (as well as their comments - "posts" in Internet slang) are sent for anonymous review to other participants randomly selected by the system. Reviewing consists in assessing the quality of a new proposal (clarity, reasoning ...) and in expressing the degree of agreement (or disagreement) of the reviewer with the idea expressed in the proposal. At the same stage, the entire mass of posts that clearly contradict the rules of discussion are cut off: containing personal attacks, commercial advertising, leading away from the topic, etc. Note that this is done by the community of participants themselves, without the intervention of full-time moderators; and the initial mailing to randomly selected reviewers provides a certain guarantee of the objectivity of the quality assessment.
The system constantly groups and regroups (that is, distributes into several “clusters”) the entire set of submitted proposals, based on the available pairs of assessments and sometimes requesting additional ones. This clustering is carried out according to some algorithm, mainly taking into account the distribution of the "degree of agreement" different participants with different offers. The sentences within each cluster are then "ranked" by the system by their average quality score, so that at the top of each cluster is the sentence that (the system assumes) best expresses the idea of all the other sentences in that cluster. In such a structured presentation, any participant can easily and quickly navigate to familiarize themselves with the main ideas expressed before submitting their new proposal or correcting or commenting on someone else's already written.
For example, a situation is quite real when in the first days of discussion of the problem posed, 500 different offers, which were distributed by the system into only 10 clusters, corresponding to 10 different ideas contained in them. In parallel, the discussion participants evaluate, comment and edit the submitted proposals. At the next stage, the participants try to first "aggregate" the proposals within each cluster, and then find compromise solutions for ideologically compatible clusters; but this process still needs to be clarified in many respects.
The described approach to direct deliberative (electronic) democracy undoubtedly contains much as yet open questions, the solution of which can only be achieved by further theoretical developments, verified in practical experiments. Here are some of those questions. How to organize the interaction between "experts" (carriers of knowledge on a given problem) and participants in the discussion (carriers, generally speaking, of different, sometimes even opposing value systems)? How to assess the objectivity of these experts themselves, moreover, in a way that is convincing for the participants? How to coordinate the discussion of various related topics or problems, including those that dynamically arise in the process of discussing the initial “core” problem? How to ensure the stability of the system, its "self-defense" from information attacks like the one that was undertaken by the Mavrodians during the elections to the opposition Constitutional Court? What types of trust ratings or other ratios might be useful to encourage constructive and parliamentary behavior among participants?
On some of these issues I have my own proposals, others have already been partially worked out in some experimental systems, mainly in the West. None of the existing experimental systems, however, is designed to be scalable to tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of participants, a capability that may be in demand at the first attempt to apply it in the context of an open discussion of a hot topical problem, when participants know that the results of the discussion will either be taken into account by the current authorities, or will be included in the program of a broad opposition coalition. At the same time, projects of “open public hearings” initiated by the authorities based on systems like WikiVote! - although they can sometimes boast of a total number of participants and posts (however, several times less than in the above-mentioned discussion of the bill "On Police" on the website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) - in fact, they break up into many discussions of individual items, each of which turns out to be far away not so crowded. But the very principle of direct democracy lies in the fact that in the absence of election, the legitimacy of the decisions made is achieved not only by openness, but also by a real mass character of the discussion.
A separate question: who can or should choose the most pressing issues for discussion? This question, oddly enough, is much simpler than the question of effective organization the discussion process itself, because the list of problems only needs to be arranged in order of priority, while the list of solutions to a given problem has to be reduced to one. In the first experiments, probably, the problem for discussion will be chosen, so to speak, from above, but not by the authorities, but by the organizers of a specific project. In the future, the prioritization of problems can be carried out by the citizens themselves, as is already being done successfully, for example, in Iceland. In general, it should be noted that sparsely populated northern countries populated by sensible northern citizens (Iceland, Estonia, Finland) are at the forefront of state-supported experiments in the field of e-democracy.
So, a true direct democracy should enable all citizens to make their proposals and discuss them among themselves; a system that allows this to be done must be ready to "serve" a very large number of participants; such a system is impossible without the implementation of new and very specific algorithms, with the help of which the participants, each acting in a fairly free manner and without excessive efforts, can collectively achieve an agreed result.
This is a matter for the future; hopefully in the next few years. Thus, my answer to the question posed in the title of the article is this: e-democracy in its fullest, most open and most creative version of direct deliberative democracy is a real project, but not a project of today, but of tomorrow. This does not mean, of course, that the tools and methods available today should not be used; but don't expect too much from them. One should not expect today that "all your proposals will be considered"; for the majority of citizens, it will still be possible only to choose from several proposals made by the “most enterprising comrades”, the same Coordinating Council, for example.
* Over time, the right to “raise questions” was more and more assigned to the elected body (Council of Five Hundred), but really ALL citizens of the Athenian policy could discuss the issue raised by the council and offer their own alternatives.
e-democracy. Principles for introducing technology into the democratic process
Electronic democracy
The world of the 21st century is electronic and mobile. At the end of the last century, trends towards the digitization of society were clearly visible. Therefore, it is not surprising that this digital trend should affect many other facets of life. The concepts of e-governance, e-democracy and e-participation have been discussed and implemented in various ways as there is a growing need for participation in the political decision-making process. Indeed, the Internet can be seen as an opportunity to bridge the gap between the rulers and the ruled. In a sense, institutions have been unable to take advantage of new technologies.
Today, e-democracy is still in its infancy. It seems that websites with political information appeared only a few years ago. The same can be said about the development of the first e-democracy tools for e-forums and e-voting; attention was focused on the use political methods 20th century with 21st century technology. Web 2.0 offers capabilities such as conflict resolution and other group decision-making tools and technologies that can be used to radically transform and expand democracy through technology. Perhaps most of the technology required to support the features included in the participation tools is already available.
It is not only a wide range of government institutions that are placing ICT at the forefront of their strategies for change: other organizations and groups are increasingly using the Internet for campaigning and debate. E-democracy can bring about change for the better and is not always managed or controlled by the government.
One way to increase the impact of e-democracy on the democratic process is to identify the contexts in which many of its goals are achieved and where missing details can be obtained. These missing details are more likely to become links than the sites themselves: the network provided by the Internet is the most important engine of e-democracy. When it is recognized that various people and organizations also promote, create and control democracy, more Internet sites that support e-participation (even if the term is not mentioned there) will be recognized. The challenge will be how best to support them with quality information, as well as to convey to politicians their experience and the results of their activities.
E-democracy does not lead to a different type of democracy than the type that exists where it is implemented. From a fundamental point of view, e-democracy is not intended to change democracy or the type of democracy that exists in the place where it is implemented. The methods of e-democracy and e-participation can be classified in different ways. In most cases, a three-tier classification is used, for example, according to the degree of interaction and the binding force of the result (information - communication - transmission), or the degree of participation (information - communication - participation). Some suggest a four-tier classification (eg information - consultation - cooperation - joint determination/decision making, or more related to e-government: information - one-way response - two-way response - full electronic case processing). E-democracy does not promote any particular type of democracy. E-democracy, for example, is not intended to promote direct democracy. The purpose of e-democracy is to facilitate democratic processes, not to promote any particular type of democracy.
The main purpose of e-democracy is not to force people to use technology: it is to use technology to improve democratic governance and participation. E-democracy must be driven by the demands of democracy, not technology. Neither ICTs themselves nor enhanced or improved technologies in and of themselves automatically contribute to the support or strengthening of democracy, democratic institutions and processes. Agreed democratic and human values and ethical considerations are inseparable parts of the technological aspects of e-democracy. The choice of instruments reflects not only the course of policy, but also the implementation of values and ethical considerations. In addition to their function of sharing and disseminating information, ICTs also have the ability and vocation to improve the process of realizing human rights.
There are several reasons for the introduction of technology into the democratic process: for example, a decrease in the turnout in elections, a lack of interest in politics among young people, a decrease in the level of legitimacy, and a gap between politicians/state authorities and citizens. However, technology should never be the reason for implementing e-democracy. Technology can be used to address these current challenges facing democracy. in number electronic solutions These challenges include e-participation, e-parliament, e-petitions and e-consultation.
The Internet of the future will not be what it is today. Web 2.0 is widely used at the moment, but Web 3.0 is already being developed. The term "Web 2.0" is used to describe Internet applications designed to enhance creativity, information sharing and collaboration. New technologies and tools include user-generated content, social media, social electronic commerce, Semantic Internet Opportunities, Online Employee Engagement, Personal Publishing, and Community Journalism. Some of the Web 2.0 applications are very successful (Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube). Wikipedia demonstrates how citizens can collaborate in content creation and knowledge sharing through grassroots collaboration and employee engagement. An important issue related to Web 2.0 is what e-government and e-democracy can learn from social media and how public authorities can embrace this new way of collaborating and sharing information.
E-democracy: world experience
The creation of new forms of interaction between the state and citizens using information and communication technologies (ICT) is not a new idea, known since the 1970s, when the possibilities of cable networks began to be used to increase the activity of citizens in elections. The 1980s saw a number of experiments with e-voting and online discussions, but it was not until the early 2000s, with the development of the Internet, that there was significant interest in using ICTs to promote democracy.
One of the pioneers in the field of e-democracy is Estonia, which in 2005 was the first in the world to hold local elections using Internet voting. In 2007, electronic voting was already used in the elections to the Estonian Parliament. And if in 2005 only about 2% of Estonian voters voted on the Internet, in the 2011 parliamentary elections this figure reached 24%.
Another example from Estonia is the “Today I Decide” (“Täna Otsustan Mina” (TOM), or “Today I Decide” (TID) project, initiated in 2001 (there is also a TID+ project that accumulates the experience of the TID project). is to create a portal that provides citizens with the opportunity to openly express their proposals for improving government controlled and the legislative system and discuss new initiatives affecting various areas of society. According to the idea of the creators, the main task of the project should be a more active participation of voters in the formation of state policy and the elimination of barriers between society and the state.
The same ideas formed the basis of the Estonian E-Citizen project, which created two electronic resource: Information Portal and Citizen Portal. Portals operated by the Estonian State Information System Department open the door to the e-state, informing citizens about their rights and obligations and providing access to electronic services, databases, a virtual office, and so on.If in 2005 about 2% of Estonian voters voted online, in the 2011 parliamentary elections this figure reached 24%.
In Iceland, information and communication technologies are also being used for a wide discussion of socially important issues. According to the latest estimates, 97.8% of Icelanders use the Internet. One of the most enlightening examples from the experience of this country is the collective discussion of the draft Constitution on social networks: the website of the Constitutional Council received 3600 comments and more than 300 official proposals. Taking them into account, the draft basic law of the state was presented to the parliament and the public.
Many ordinary citizens, seemingly far from state administration and lawmaking, showed activity in the discussion of the draft Constitution. At the same time, some experts and representatives of higher educational institutions turned out to be very passive. According to one of the representatives of the Constitutional Council of Iceland, the main lesson of the experiment is that truly positive results can only be expected when the authorities listen to the opinion of citizens.
Another interesting example The implementation of e-democracy mechanisms could be seen in New Zealand with the revision of the police law, which has been in force since 1958. In 2007, a wiki version of the bill was brought to public attention. As a result of the experiment, 234 proposals were received and taken into account, which formed the basis of the new document. According to experts, the participation of citizens has become one of the key aspects in the process of drafting the law.
The functioning of e-democracy mechanisms is directly related to the issues of "e-participation" (e-participation), which Professor Ann McIntosh defined as "the use of ICTs to increase the degree of political participation by enabling citizens to interact with each other, as well as with elected representatives." South Korea is one of the leaders in the field of e-participation, according to the recent UN report "E-Government 2012: E-Government for the People". Since 1995, the Ministry of Information and Communications of this country has committed significant resources to the development of the Internet. In 2000, most South Korean citizens had access to the World Wide Web, and a number of politicians had their own web pages. New websites quickly appeared, instantly filled with political discussions. The result was a sharp increase in political activity on the Internet. A key moment in the development of e-democracy in South Korea become presidential elections 2002: According to analysts, Ro Moo-hyun's victory was largely due to the support of an online community organized by the candidate's supporters at www.nosamo.org, with about 47,000 members.
A revolution in the virtual world often has a serious impact on the real world: suffice it to recall the revolution in Tunisia, which led to the overthrow of President Ben Ali, who created a police state and suppressed any protests. Despite certain achievements of his regime in the economic sphere, a significant number of Tunisian citizens opposed the authoritarian course, and social networks became the main platform for protest. It was they who allowed opposition-minded citizens to convey to the world information about the events that were carefully hidden by the authorities. Facebook and Twitter have become platforms for the free exchange of opinions and the coordination of the protest movement.
The Internet is often targeted by authoritarian regimes. For example, the Iranian authorities have repeatedly blocked access to Gmail e-mail (the last time this measure was presented as a "response" to the screening of the movie "Innocence of Muslims"). According to official explanations, services Email do not comply with the laws of the Islamic Republic. Currently, Iranian government agencies are actively developing their own analogue of the Internet.
Internet freedom is significantly limited in China, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Vietnam. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has a mixed picture: on the one hand, this country is considered one of the leaders in the development of e-government and has a high score in e-decision making (100% in the UN ranking). The government website www.government.ae allows citizens to ask questions, participate in discussions and express their opinions on a range of issues of public interest. On the other hand, the mechanisms of e-democracy in the UAE coexist well with authoritarian tendencies: it is strange to hear, for example, about achievements in the field of e-democracy and at the same time about state intervention in all spheres of public life, the closure of offices of foreign organizations, persecution and arrests of dissenters.
It sets out recommendations, principles and guidelines on e-democracy, which are intended to apply in the context of e-democracy the principles of democracy and human rights, as established, inter alia, in documents of the Council of Europe and other international instruments. The recommendation is complemented by a series of indicative guidelines offered as additional suggestions for possible action.
Recommendation CM/REC(2009)1 uses the terms "democracy", "democratic institutions" and "democratic processes". The concept of democracy reflects two principles of democracy. The first is that all participants enjoy generally recognized freedoms. Democratic institutions, including NGOs, are essential because democracy is not limited to periodic elections; and therefore institutions are needed to support and defend democracy. Democratic processes consist in the ways in which decisions are made within these institutions and the protection of democratic rights.
E-democracy includes everything that is democracy and is not only about technology. Therefore, the evolution of e-democracy through improved technologies should be taken as a basis and used in accordance with the principles of democratic governance and practice. E-democracy and its tools are presented in the Recommendation as additional opportunities for democracy; at the same time, there are neither elements of their promotion, nor obstacles to their application
The CM/REC(2009)1 recommendation on e-democracy represents the first serious international document describing e-democracy in its entirety. Thus, this is only the first step taken by an international (intergovernmental) organization in presenting and describing e-democracy and setting appropriate standards. It is proposed to carry out further work in specific areas of e-democracy. The Council of Europe will, among other things, continue to work on legislative issues, consultations and bottom-up e-democracy, as these are areas in which the Council of Europe has particular expertise and interest.
Principles of e-democracy
The appendix to recommendation CM/Rec(2009)1 states that when introducing e-democracy or taking steps to improve it, stakeholders should take into account the following principles of e-democracy:
P.1. As a support and reinforcement of democratic institutions and processes through ICTs, e-democracy is first and foremost about democracy. Its main goal is to support democracy electronically.
P.2. E-democracy is one of several strategies to support democracy, democratic institutions and democratic processes, and to spread democratic values. It complements the traditional processes of democracy and is interconnected with them. Each process has its own merits, and none of them is universally applicable.
P.3. E-democracy is based on the democratic, human, social, ethical and cultural values of the society in which it is implemented.
P.4. E-democracy is closely related to good governance, which is an efficient, effective, collaborative, transparent and accountable way of exercising power in electronic form and includes informal politics and non-governmental actors.
P.5. E-democracy must respect and realize fundamental freedoms, human and minority rights, including freedom of information and access to it.
P.6. E-democracy is an opportunity to facilitate the provision of information and discussion by increasing the activity of citizens to expand political debate and ensure an increase in the quality and legitimacy of political decisions.
P.7. E-democracy affects all sectors of democracy, all democratic institutions, all levels of government, as well as a wide range of other parties.
P.8. The stakeholders of e-democracy are all individuals and institutions involved in and benefiting from democracy.
P.9. E-democracy, like democracy, involves many and different stakeholders and requires their participation. Participating States, public authorities and their representatives are just a few of the parties that have a stake in e-democracy. Citizens, civil society and its institutions, the media and the business community are all equally necessary to develop and implement e-democracy.
P.11. Any type of participation can be achieved through e-democracy:
providing information;
communication, consultation, discussion;
interaction, empowered participation, joint development and decision making.
P.12. E-democracy can be implemented with varying degrees of sophistication, in different types of democracy and at different stages of democracy development. It is not associated with or leads to any particular type of democracy.
P.13. In particular, democracy can, through the use of new technologies, attract young people to democracy, democratic institutions and democratic processes.
P.14. NGOs can both benefit from the introduction of e-democracy and provide a testing ground for e-democracy for citizens.
P.15. E-democracy can be especially useful for regions that cross state borders and cover territorial units from different countries. Their institutions and citizens residing in different countries and having a common linguistic and cultural identity. It can facilitate participation and decision-making processes in international institutions.
P.16. Public authorities can benefit from discussions and initiatives regarding e-democracy activities carried out by civil society, as well as cooperation in this area with civil society.
P.17. The goals of e-democracy, which are similar to those of good governance, are transparency, accountability, accountability, inclusion, discussion, inclusiveness, accessibility, participation, subsidiarity, trust in democracy, democratic institutions and democratic processes, and social cohesion.
P.18. Trust is extremely important for any type of e-democracy at all stages and phases. It is closely related to accessibility, transparency and accountability.
P.19. E-democracy helps to increase the level of participation of individuals and groups, allows those whose voices are heard less often or in a quieter voice to express their views, and promotes equal participation. It can lead to more collective forms of decision-making and democracy.
P.20. E-democracy is about supporting and strengthening democratic participation; it covers sectors of e-democracy where civil society and businesses are involved in formal and informal programming, and decision-making.
P.21. E-democracy by itself does not cover the constitutional and other duties and responsibilities of decision makers; it can provide them with additional benefits.
P.22. E-democracy requires information, dialogue, communication, discussion and the continuous creation of open public spaces where citizens can gather to advance their civic interests.
P.23. The media play a key role in e-democracy; among other things, they offer a platform where citizens can take part in public debate and defend their interests in the public sphere.
P.24. New Media and Suppliers electronic services improve the quality of access to information, thereby providing people with a better basis for participating in democracy.
P.25. E-democracy is an integral part of the information society, bringing with it a number of traditional and innovative tools that can be successfully applied in democratic processes and institutions.
P.26. Access to a new information and communication environment can facilitate the process of realizing democratic rights and freedoms, in particular, to participate in public life and democratic processes.
P.27. If e-democracy is to be designed properly, it must be based on the following concepts:
actively providing comprehensive, balanced and objective information to help the public understand problems, alternatives, opportunities and/or solutions to democratic problems; this concept is closely related to freedom of information and freedom of speech;
a broad understanding of citizenship, embracing individuals and groups of individuals who permanently reside and are integrated into political reality, regardless of nationality;
civic participation - that is, the involvement of citizens and groups of citizens, such as interest groups, corporations, associations and non-profit organizations (NPOs) in public affairs so that they can influence and improve the quality and acceptability of the results of democratic processes;
empowerment – in particular, strategies and measures to support civil rights and provide resources for participation;
inclusion - that is, the political and technological arming of citizens, regardless of age, gender, education, socio-economic status, language, special needs and place of residence; such inclusion requires the ability to use electronic tools (knowledge, e-skills, e-readiness), available and accessible tools, and a combination of electronic and non-electronic approaches;
discussion - in particular, rational debate on an equal footing, where people publicly discuss, approve and criticize each other's points of view in the course of meaningful, polite discussion of the issue and the action required in relation to it.
P.28. E-democracy can lead to a form of democracy that all stakeholders can view, observe, access and interact with from anywhere.
P.29. E-democracy has the potential to bring decision makers and citizens together in new forms of engagement and policy development. On the one hand, this can lead to a better understanding of public opinion and the needs of the people by decision makers, on the other hand, to a better understanding by the public of the tasks and difficulties faced by decision makers. This will provide citizens with a better definition of the democratic system and a higher level of respect and trust in democracy.
P.30. Since e-democracy opens up new channels for information, communication, discussion and participation and increases transparency and accountability, it has the potential to address shortcomings in democratic institutions and processes.
P.31. E-democracy has great potential for community building, including community building among and with minorities.
P.32. By offering a means of limiting the degree of exclusion, e-democracy can enhance social inclusion and social cohesion, thereby contributing to social stability.
P.33. E-democracy has the potential to further enhance the European, international and global nature of politics and to facilitate the cross-border cooperation that it entails.
P.34. E-democracy requires interdisciplinary and cross-border research.
E-democracy in Russia: official version
In Russia, the development of the information society and e-democracy, at first glance, is going very well: in terms of the number of Internet users, the country has taken first place in Europe and sixth in the world. The Internet audience in Russia continues to grow and, according to the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation at the beginning of 2012, amounted to 70 million people. According to the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM), 60% of Russians use the Internet today, and 40% go online every day.
In April 2012, the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications published the draft " Concepts for the development of e-democracy mechanisms in the Russian Federation until 2020”, and already in May, at the first federal congress on e-democracy, the ministry presented a new tool for Internet interaction between citizens and the state: the Unified e-democracy portal Russian Federation. As conceived by the creators, the Single Portal will provide not only the government, but also individual citizens and organizations with the opportunity to “create, discuss, support and publicly place their appeals with their subsequent sending to departments and authorities, inform authorities about emerging problems, make suggestions and initiatives ".
At the same time, the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, represented by Deputy Minister Oleg Fomichev, proposed the creation of the Russian Public Initiative portal. According to representatives of the department, the idea of the project arose thanks to the very pre-election article of Putin. According to the Ministry of Economic Development, the portal will become "a unique specialized Internet resource for public promotion and discussion of civil legislative initiatives" and will serve to introduce the mechanisms of e-democracy.
At the end of June 2012, the Office for the Application of Information Technologies and the Development of Electronic Democracy was created in the structure of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, headed by the former Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications Igor Shchegolev. His former deputy, Ilya Massukh, became the founder of the Information Democracy Foundation, whose main task is to translate the virtual communication of citizens with the authorities into a real one. “The Foundation was created to promote all the good things that are on the Internet, to support regional projects,” Massukh said at the first meeting of the Information Democracy Foundation's expert club. “We have to show the citizens how the clique generates this or that action of the authorities.” One of the Fund's key projects is the Russian Public Initiative, which is an alternative version of the project of the same name by the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.
The abundance of official initiatives creates the impression that, despite some difficulties, Russian e-democracy, under the strict guidance of the authorities, will soon lead the country to the democratization of political life (Ilya Massukh himself wrote about this, for example). However, upon closer examination, the "purity of intentions" of the Russian authorities is called into question.
So, while still in his former position as Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications, Shchegolev spoke about his vision of the “electronic democracy” project as follows: “This is a rather promising project, because it works according to the outsourcing model. When we can use analytical mechanisms to see which areas of work cause the greatest number of claims, then it will be possible to evaluate the work of individual departments, and individual bodies, and individual leaders.” According to him, it turns out that the main goal of e-democracy is not to expand the participation of citizens in the exercise of power, but their participation in the optimization of the state machine. The interests of citizens are a secondary matter.
Electronic democracy (“e-democracy”, “virtual democracy”) is a form of democracy characterized by the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) as the main means for collective thinking and administrative processes (informing, making joint decisions by electronic voting, monitoring the implementation of decisions, etc.). .d.) at all levels - starting from the level local government and ending with international.
The concept of "e-democracy" means the widespread use of electronic procedures, the Internet and social networks in the political and managerial processes with feedback. It is about forward and backward interactive communication used to ensure both the preparation and participation of citizens in political governance.
E-democracy is comparable to democracy, understood in both broad and narrow senses.
In a broad sense, we are talking about the form of structure and functioning of any organization based on the principles of equality of its members, decision-making by majority vote, periodic election and accountability of the governing bodies to the general meeting, conference, congress, organization that elected them, with the widespread use of interactive communication.
In a narrower sense in political science, e-democracy is understood as the effective use of interactive political communication in the work of state and especially not government agencies management.
A distinction should be made between e-democracy and e-government. If the latter concept means increasing the efficiency and convenience of access to the services of the state from any place and at any time, then the first refers to the use of information technology to empower every citizen. Some researchers use the term network democracy instead of the term e-democracy.
The sphere of e-democracy includes, first of all, the activities of the network Internet community for the discussion, promotion and updating of various political ideas and initiatives, information support and organization of various political and non-political actions, as well as participation in various elections.
The platform for the implementation of electronic participation of citizens is the Internet, which can be accessed through a variety of channels (personal computers, Cell phones, interactive TV, etc.). Thus, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the UN, there are three levels of e-participation that reflect the degree of citizen involvement: 1) informing, 2) consulting, 3) active participation. They correspond to three main goals: a) increase in information accessibility and openness, b) wider involvement of citizens in discussions on various political and socially significant issues, c) empowerment of citizens in policy making.
The first two goals (informing and consulting) are implemented through top-down e-participation tools, allowing citizens to be informed about ongoing political events, as well as respond to government initiatives, while the achievement of the last goal relies on participation tools, based on the bottom-up principle, according to which citizens are not only consumers of state policy, but also its producers.
Following global trends, Russia is also making attempts to enhance the participation of citizens in solving various issues of state and public life through ICT. Among them is the approval of the program for the development of the information society, which prescribes the creation electronic services to ensure public participation and control over the activities of public authorities.
Over the past few years, a number of legal acts have been adopted that form the legal basis for the interaction of government bodies with citizens in electronic format. Among them, the development of the "Concept for the development of e-democracy mechanisms in the Russian Federation until 2020" should be mentioned. An important rule is that the authorities will be obliged to consider proposals that have received the support of at least 100 thousand citizens within a certain period of time.
In accordance with this "Concept", e-democracy is understood as such a form of organizing the socio-political activities of citizens, which provides, through the widespread use of information and communication technologies, a qualitatively new level interaction of citizens with each other, with state authorities, local governments, public organizations and commercial structures. E-democracy, along with e-government, is one of the basic foundations of the information society.
The most common among the e-democracy mechanisms are:
- - electronic voting (voting by mobile phone, Internet elections, etc.);
- - mechanisms of network communication of citizens and collective discussion of socially significant problems and issues of socio-political topics online;
- - mechanisms for the formation of online communities, including mechanisms for planning and implementing civil initiatives and collective action projects;
- - mechanisms of network communication between citizens and authorities, including tools for influencing decision-making and civil control over the activities of authorities;
- - public online governance mechanisms at the municipal level.
According to the concept, the development of e-democracy mechanisms until 2020 is proposed to be provided in three stages.
At the first stage in 2011-2013. it is planned, in particular: to test technical and software solutions when creating prototype unified system of electronic democracy (ESED); to introduce USED in the subjects of the Russian Federation, including at the municipal level, integrating it with regional and municipal portals of authorities; develop and launch a mobile version of the USED for use by citizens on mobile devices; to ensure the integration of ESED with popular social networks.
At the second stage in 2014-2016. it is planned to expand the scale of functioning of the USED to the federal level, to fully implement the principle of subordination, to ensure the integration of the USED with federal portals of authorities, as well as with Internet portals of news agencies and the media, with most of the existing services of mass network communication of citizens (forums, social networks, blog hosting, multimedia hosting, etc.).
At the third stage in 2017-2020. it is possible to develop and implement additional functional subsystems of the ESED. In terms of organizing electronic interaction between civil society and authorities, a promising direction for the development of the USED can be a further increase in the level of interactivity through the use of online conference technologies, as well as video communication. The ESED can be used as a convenient platform for planning and organizing online communication between officials and citizens, organizing online "hot lines" and Internet conferences.
According to the developers of the concept, a unified system of e-democracy should ensure the participation of citizens and organizations in public administration at the federal, regional and municipal levels, which should positively affect the quality of the provision of state and municipal services on the territory of the Russian Federation, ensure an increase in the efficiency of public administration, and also increase the satisfaction of citizens with the activities of state authorities and local governments.
Analysis of the attitude of Russians to electronic forms participation in politics shows that up to half of the respondents express a desire to raise their own awareness by receiving electronic mailing lists with news about the activities of legislative and executive authorities; some of them are ready to take advantage of online netitions.
Online chats with politicians and officials are also a popular tool for public participation among a number of respondents. Online protests, online debates and online rallies - attract the attention and participation of up to a quarter of those surveyed.
At the same time, a significant part of Russians would not use any of the proposed forms of electronic participation. Those people who do not participate in politics usually do not participate in active "electronic politics".
Political blogs play an important role in e-democracy processes. In Russia, blogs with a political orientation are not dominant in the blogosphere (only 10-12%), which, however, cannot be said about their significance, especially in electoral or politically sensitive periods of the country's development. The political sector of the Runet blogosphere is growing. The direct development of the Runet and the arrival in the Russian space broadband internet expands and reformats the communicative space of the network, and in addition to the websites of political parties and the personal pages of politicians, many bright political bloggers of various levels have appeared in recent years, and their importance in the socio-communicative space is increasing. The political blog is becoming a powerful image PR tool aimed primarily at target audience opinion leaders.
The introduction of e-democracy tools in general can increase the level of public participation and democratization of the communication sphere. At the same time, there is a danger of its restriction and privatization by opinion leaders on the Internet. In order to equalize the rights of participants in the blogosphere, in 2015 Russia adopted a law on the mandatory registration of bloggers (similar to the media), with more than 3 thousand readers registered per day.
The emerging political activism in the Russian Internet space has already demonstrated its potential to influence the balance of political forces and access to power by placing events of public importance on the political agenda and mobilizing part of the public to put pressure on those who are empowered to make political and administrative decisions. The Internet creates both new opportunities and can be a conductor of threats and restrictions for modern democracy.
ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY BELOW VIEW
The phrase "electronic democracy" arose long before the widespread use of the Internet. When interactive cable television appeared in the American state of Ohio in the 70s, citizens got the opportunity to follow the meetings of the local administration, as well as express their opinion through instant push-button voting (later Professor M. Castells writes: “The Internet can be used by citizens to watch their governments - rather than by governments to watch their citizens").
Such an electronic citywide meeting showed that there was a technical means for organizing remote social interactions, and even then gave rise to expectations that new communication technologies could ensure the implementation of the principles of freedom of speech. Teledemocracy technologies were widely used by Ross Perot during the 1991 election campaign, which forced his rival B. Clinton to follow this example. We will return to electoral technologies below.
The emergence of Internet technologies has greatly increased the influence of society on political power. The mechanisms of e-democracy have long been used in the West. An example is the Pirate Party. The fighters for freedom of information and copyright have become a serious social and political movement, spread their activity to 40 countries and won two seats in the European Parliament. Another example is the Active Democracy party, which has been active in Sweden since 2002. Canada, Singapore, Holland, Finland, Norway, Australia, and Estonia have made notable progress in this area.
According to Wikipedia, e-democracy (e-democracy) is a form of direct democracy characterized by the use of information and communication technologies as the main means for collective thinking and administrative processes (informing, making joint decisions, monitoring the implementation of decisions, etc.) at all levels, starting from the level local government and ending with international. In a broad sense, this means taking into account the opinions and involvement of citizens and organizations in political decisions and processes. The aim of e-democracy is to make citizens' participation in public decision making easier and simpler. E-democracy can help citizens become more involved in policy making, make decision-making more transparent, bring government closer to the people, and increase its political legitimacy.
Unlike e-government, which is created “from above” to serve the interests of the state, e-democracy is designed primarily to reflect the interests of citizens and, accordingly, be created “from below”.
In the previous material, it was shown that if the authorities communicate their intention to benefit the population, then the true motives for such initiatives are usually related to the implementation of laws, the use of funds, the implementation of plans, career considerations, etc. Only in rare cases do citizens get what really works and what they really need.
As a result, the influence of the virtual environment on real life countries. The activity of people is increasingly manifesting itself in a new, informal capacity. The Internet is becoming not only an additional space for self-organization of citizens, but also a platform for asserting their rights and freedoms. The most notable public initiatives of recent times - both protest activity and mutual assistance - were carried out with the help of Internet communications. Social media in general and the blogosphere in particular are alternative media, in which the majority of Internet users have much higher trust than in the authorities and traditional media (according to the Levada Center, only 16% of citizens trust local authorities, and this the level of trust decreases every year).
The ideas of Government2.0 are gaining more and more supporters. The number of projects that make the Internet a tool for solving society's problems is growing, and their scope is expanding. Below we will consider some new public initiatives from various regions of the country, developing on the principles of e-democracy.
Let's start a brief review of initiative projects of public monitoring of power with the famous RosPil A. Navalny. This is a government procurement control system, which, according to the president, "steals a trillion a year." The site is dedicated to the fight against officials who use the public procurement system for personal enrichment. This is not just a collection of information about theft and collective indignation, but specific work for each competition with the involvement of experts. The wide popularity of the project made it possible to unite the Internet wallets of ordinary people to fight corruption: when the fundraising for the operation of the project was announced, 3 million rubles were received in the first week. The total amount of orders for which violations were stopped exceeded 7.5 billion rubles.
Under the auspices of the Institute modern development there is a project by I.Begtin RosGosZatraty, created to analyze and monitor government spending in the Russian Federation and based on open and publicly available data. Information is tracked on state grants and state contracts (at the expense of the federal budget, regional budgets and the municipal level).
The public procurement information service is offered by Innovative Search Technologies LLC. The IST-Budget website aggregates data on public and private tenders collected from five major electronic trading platforms. The task is to create a single free information space for searching and primary processing of information on public procurement conducted in the country.
A group of projects is dedicated to public monitoring of politicians' promises. L. Volkov from Yekaterinburg maintains the site DalSlovo.ru. All content that appears in the project is entered there by the users themselves. The logical unit that the project operates on is an objectively verifiable promise, a statement by a public person that contains specific deadlines. In the current reality, politicians make such statements completely irresponsibly and as often as they like. On the site, such promises are recorded and tracked using a calendar of deadlines, while it is easy to get information about government officials who have been “lit up” on the project site.
(The described service uses the collection and verification of information by an unlimited circle of people, this is a special case of the so-called crowdsourcing (from crowd - “crowd” and sourcing - “selection of resources”, the term was introduced by D. Howey in 2006). However, about the joint actions of many people for the sake of a single goal without material motivation, it has been known much longer - back in 1714, the British government offered everyone to develop a simple method for accurately determining the coordinates of a ship. Recently, many wonderful projects have been implemented using crowdsourcing technology, the most famous of them is Wikipedia).
The experience of DalSlovo.Ru is also used in other regions. As part of the Ulyanovsk City portal, the Word of Power project was implemented, designed to bring the government closer to the residents of Ulyanovsk and the region, to make government more open. As in Yekaterinburg, information about the socially significant promises of officials and the progress of their implementation can be added by all users of the portal (with the obligatory indication of the source of information).
Another indicator of the veracity of the statements of famous personalities: politicians, economists, lawyers, artists and other public figures is the Pravdometer project. Based on the results of checking dozens of applications, verdicts are issued, a “rating of truth-tellers” and a “rating of deceptions” are compiled.
In 2011, the Roskombribery project appeared for the public fight against corruption. The amount of recorded bribes exceeded 100 million rubles. Described over 750 episodes in 20 cities. There is a classification of bribes into categories, the ability to sort messages.
The author of the following project is a 20-year-old student from Kazakhstan, who has experienced various aspects of obtaining higher education. Based on his own and other people's experience, he created the Briber.info website, where you can complain about extortionate teachers. The user can leave a complaint about the teacher who demanded a bribe. All 40 universities of Kazakhstan are represented in this kind of black list. All complaints are subject to mandatory pre-moderation, their text is hidden from site visitors in order to prevent slander against honest teachers. After verification, the names of the "heroes" become public domain.
The latest action was started on the initiative of E. Chirikova, widely known as the leader of the movement "Ecological Defense of the Moscow Region" and "Movement in Defense of the Khimki Forest". Through the joint efforts of web users, a “black list” of government officials and business structures is being compiled that act to the detriment of Russian citizens, lobby for anti-people amendments to legislation, master Natural resources for personal enrichment. The organizers write: “We want corruption to find its face. The meaning of our activity is to make unknown corrupt officials see that they are weighed and recalculated, that their deeds are publicly known. Over 60 Russian cities expressed their desire to join this action. The "People's list of traitors to the public interest" is constantly growing.
The Internet provides convenient means for implementing mutual aid and charity projects, where both those who need help and those who are able to provide it can apply. Here are some examples.
The well-known charitable foundation "Fair Help" of Dr. Liza (E. Glinka) accumulates cash and donated items to provide specific targeted assistance, conducts charitable programs, including "Station on Wednesdays", "Kyiv Hospice", "Hospital for the Poor", etc. The Helping Hand Charitable Foundation works in a similar direction.
The Gift of Life Foundation was created by actresses Ch. Khamatova and D. Korzun to help children with oncological, hematological and other serious diseases. For incomplete 2011, children received over 450 million rubles.
Charitable Internet Foundation Help.Org (founder A. Nosik) unites the forces of Internet users in different countries to collect targeted donations for urgent social and medical needs (surgeries, expensive treatment, assistance to children's and medical institutions). The fund's motto is: "Out of every donated ruble, 100 kopecks reach the needy." The site contains a long list of those who received real help for treatment (most of them are children); in 2010 the amount of this assistance amounted to 55,897,364 rubles.
The website "Together" is, by its own definition, "a community of people who like to do good and right things." Among these cases is the purchase of a special chair for a boy Timofey with cerebral palsy from the city of Vyksa, repairs in the Kaluga nursing home and the purchase of operating equipment for the Kirov Central district hospital, equipping the Selizharovsky rehabilitation center for minors with computers and much more.
Every day, Runet users throw away up to 10 tons of things they don't need, from old magazines to refrigerators and pianos. But these things may be very necessary for other users. Residents of 13 cities participate in the work of the portal Odam Darom. The creators say: "We want every thing to find its owner, so that some do not pay a lot of money to movers to throw away old things, and others to hucksters in thrift stores." The portal allows not only to donate unnecessary things and find the right things, but also to get advice from an experienced person, to take part in the development of charitable projects.
The non-profit organization CAF-Russia, the Russian representative office of the British Charities Aid Foundation, has launched an online project - electronic journal about charity "Philanthropist". The goal is to bring together a community of professionals and simply caring people on one platform to discuss and promote the ideas of philanthropy, to disseminate the ideas and practices of charity. For this, in particular, it is planned to use the possibilities of social networks.
The principle of crowdfunding - collective donations, joint financing of new projects by Internet users - is implemented on the site "From the World in a Thread", the first open platform in Russia for public financing of creative projects. Each project publishes an application for the required amount and the period for which it is supposed to be collected. If it is not possible to find the entire amount within the specified time, then the collected money is returned to those who supported the project. Another attempt at crowdfunding in the form of raising money for the implementation of an art and music project through the social platforms of the Naparapet service.
The next group of projects appeared thanks to G. Asmolov and his associates. The memorable summer of 2010 saw the launch of the first project, the Fire Relief Map. This site has become a database, on the one hand, allowing everyone to provide information, and on the other hand, systematize it according to relevance, time, place and type of message. On the Maps of Help website, you can track fires, deforestation and pollution environment, find out where and which of the fire victims need help, as well as find volunteers who are ready to independently restore the damage caused to nature and people, without waiting for instructions "from above". The project received the Runet Prize in the nomination "State and Society". Later, to provide assistance to those affected during frosts, the Cold Info service appeared, a map of operational monitoring of cold weather throughout Russia. Over time, these sites began to receive messages that were not related to the topics of fires, cold weather and man-made disasters. It became obvious that we need a single base where a person can turn for help and advice. This is how the idea of the “Virtual Rynda” was born to coordinate mutual assistance. The objective of the project is to realize the potential of the online community, to establish cooperation between Internet users and non-profit organizations, government agencies and business. The authors warn: “We are not a charitable foundation or organization. We do not provide any assistance personally and do not collect any funds. We act as a systematized database of requests and offers for help. Our task is to give people an effective means for coordinating mutual assistance, which, in fact, by its very existence stimulates it and increases the level of social responsibility of Runet users.”
After the tragedy in Japan, the same team created the Radiation Map. Its purpose is to provide a platform for collecting all reports on the level of radiation, in particular on Far East.
The Lisa Alert search and rescue team unites volunteers who are ready to go in search of lost and missing people at any time. "Liza Alert" does not accept financial assistance, but assistance in providing the detachment with the necessary equipment for searches is welcome.
So far, the KartaBed project (a map of criminal activity and a help service from neighbors) has not gained wide popularity. The existing service allows users to independently map information about criminal incidents using a website and an Android application.
Another group of projects aims to create public associations to solve local problems. Where the authorities, for one reason or another, do not fulfill their direct duties, the citizens themselves take up the matter.
In Perm, an open Internet platform "My Territory" has been created, a tool for interaction between city residents and representatives of authorities, organizations and services responsible for maintaining order in a certain territory, in a city, in a district. The service allows any resident to report various socially significant problems (an open manhole, a garbage dump, a broken traffic light, a hole in the road, a beer stall near a school, etc.), track their condition and evaluate the work of relevant services. Residents mark problem areas directly on the map of their city. Openness and publicity also force the relevant organizations to act quickly and more responsibly.
The project cooperates with regional authorities, in particular, an agreement has been concluded with the administration of Perm. Messages about problems from residents of the Perm Territory, registered on the site, are accumulated and sent to the document management system of executive authorities. Samara has become one of the most active cities in My Territory (perhaps because the mayor of the city began to actively use this project). The service is available in the web version and on the Android mobile platform. By July 2011, the site listed 4746 issues, of which 1013 have already been resolved and closed.
Similar problems are solved by the site "Fix your street" is an interactive Information system to receive and process applications for urban issues. The system makes it possible to timely respond to problems arising in the city and analyze the quality of work of service organizations. The somewhat awkward name, apparently, is due to the presence of foreign analogues: English fixmystreet.com, Canadian fixmystreet.ca (as well as German gov20.de, Dutch verbeterdebuurt.nl, American SeeClickFix.com).
On the Just Russians website, a community of active citizens is being formed who want to change the country for the better, create a system of mutual assistance of citizens to solve social and political problems related to the action (or inaction) of state authorities. The site recalls that, according to the Constitution, “the only source of power in the Russian Federation is its multinational people,” and offers tools for coordinating the actions of activists from different parts of the country. The number of participants in the movement reached 3 thousand. A selection of headings gives an idea of the range of issues raised:
Lipetsk officials left a 97-year-old veteran homeless
Let's stop the pollution of the Yauza and Moskva rivers
Police brutality in Altai
Victims of the raiders of the Krasnodar Territory
Corruption in the Chelyabinsk region
etc.
The site "IMHOnn Complaint Book in Nizhny Novgorod" is addressed to those who care about the fate of Nizhny Novgorod and who want to change the situation in the city in better side. Headings: Organizations, Work, Transport, Persons, Shops, etc.
In various regions, thanks to the Internet, citizens are uniting to fight pedophiles using the “bait fishing” method. On dating sites, they place profiles on behalf of 10-13-year-old children, enter into a dialogue with adults and arrange a meeting. The videos are then posted online. In St. Petersburg, there is a community "Rodcontrol" - a group of proactive parents who patrol the Internet space to protect their children. Let's also mention the associations "Duri.net" (Voronezh), "APF Group" (Yaroslavl), "Stop, bastards" (Tambov), "Hunters for pedophiles" (Novomoskovsk).
"Dead roads of Pskov" social movement motorists in Pskov are concerned about bad roads, high gasoline prices, traffic safety and areas for safety and order on the roads, which are united by driving cultures. information, facts, helpful tips. It is worth noting that this Internet movement has gained a strong reputation, its leaders are invited to meetings with the governor of the region.
Portal "Traffic from the window" carries out "people's video monitoring" traffic webcams of Internet users. The result is clear and reliable information about traffic jams, parking situations, snow removal, accidents, etc. The project offers network users to install webcams in the windows of their apartments facing the road, so that car owners can assess the workload of a particular area at a given moment. The developed technology allows you to give information without overloading the user's Internet channel. If a person does not have a webcam, he can get one from the project team or its partner store. The project operates in Moscow and the Moscow suburbs, with almost two hundred cameras in service. The Moscow traffic jam center, supported by the city government, is also trying to improve the transport situation in the capital. The essence of the proposed measures is the optimization of the use of the existing infrastructure. There are many places in the city where even small changes can significantly improve the traffic situation. The site contains proposals from motorists to eliminate traffic congestion (changing the mode of operation of traffic lights, rearranging signs, eliminating unauthorized parking lots) on the principle of "minimum costs - maximum results".
Recently, the community of motorists, outraged by the ugly state of roads and boorish driving style (especially the “servants of the people”), has noticeably intensified. Another project of A. Navalny RosYam is designed to unite citizens who are faced with the incompetence of road services. The user takes a photo of the damage to the road surface (pit on the road, protruding rails, sewer well, etc.) and uploads the photo to the site with reference to the map of the area. After that, the text of the letter to the traffic police is automatically generated with the requirement to identify the perpetrators, bring them to justice under Art. 12.34 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation and oblige to repair the damage. This letter must be printed and sent by mail or via the Internet using the services offered on the site. At the time of writing this text, out of 5816 defects noted, 581 have been fixed - not a bad result at all.
The site "Avtochmo" (board of shame for drivers) is an interactive gallery that contains the most outright violators of traffic rules. Photos are added by the users themselves (the license plate must be visible in the picture).
In the same row is the "Society of Blue Buckets" - a social movement whose members oppose the misuse of "flashing lights" (flashing beacons) by officials. For more than a year, various actions have been held, organized according to the principles of a flash mob; The site contains photographs with descriptions of situations.
Project "Where is the casino?" is a map of illegally operating casinos. The information is collected on the principle of people's monitoring. The project was highly appreciated by the country's leadership.
The information system "Democrator", created at the expense of the entrepreneur A. Pavlov, offers, according to the project manager A. Bogdanov, a mechanism for the implementation of e-democracy in Russia. This is a website that allows citizens to unite around common socially significant problems, jointly edit the texts of collective official appeals to state authorities and local self-government (a decision is made on the problem if it is supported by at least 50 people), track the status of work on appeals. "Democrator" can offer useful services to the authorities, providing monitoring of problems and feedback(monitoring and evaluating the quality of work of officials) and generally stimulates constructive work to solve problems, rather than protest calls. The program "Information Society (2011-2020)" sets the tasks of developing services to simplify the procedures for interaction between society and the state using information technologies; increasing the openness of the activities of public authorities; creation of services to ensure public discussion and control of the activities of public authorities. "Democrator" claims to implement these tasks, identify socially significant problems and solve them in a timely manner with the participation of citizens without bringing the situation to critical tension. However, there is another point of view: this project is beneficial precisely to the authorities, which, allowing citizens to unite around allegedly “socially significant problems”, uses it as a valve to “let off steam”. Approximately the same role is assigned public associations Minister I. Shchegolev, arguing that "Electronic democracy ... this means that ... without leaving home, citizens will be able to mark some kind of unrest at small enterprises, on the roads." As you can see from the other examples given, social networks allow much more.
Internet solutions to improve the quality of life. Interested citizens are well aware of what services they personally need (which means that they can become useful for others). Therefore, often these projects become extremely successful and even commercially profitable. An example is the GLONASS/GPS-based urban transport monitoring system developed in Ryazan. After its installation, local buses, trolleybuses and trams began to follow with almost one hundred percent regularity, because the movement of each transport unit is immediately displayed on the city map. The technology used in the project for monitoring the movement of public transport, equipped with GLONASS sensors, interested big company, which plans to promote such systems.
Postgraduate students of the University of Nizhny Novgorod created the DorogaTV project, which in 5 years turned into a useful service for 150,000 users and reached the interregional level. Agreements have been signed with the largest suppliers data for building a traffic jam map, created its own infrastructure of video cameras. Passengers receive information about public transport through the Internet and mobile phone. Among the useful functions is route planning (using the points of departure and destination marked on the map, the service will tell you bus routes, as well as travel time, taking into account traffic jams); sms-forecast of the arrival of minibuses at the bus stops in Nizhny Novgorod; "public transport on-line" ( software transmits the coordinates and speed of movement directly to the screens of the phones of passengers waiting for transport in real time).
Skillper's international site is a community of users, a collection of helpful household tips, and a great encyclopedia of experience. By matching user profiles, life experiences are exchanged between people who are similar in content. One of the most important sections is the practical experience of citizens in interacting with government agencies.
The quid pro quo community was created to bring together people who are ready to exchange free services. We sometimes lack familiar car mechanics, dentists, lawyers, tailors, massage therapists, nannies, translators, etc. On the site you can get useful contacts and acquaintances, offer your services, just make friends. But the participants in the PIF movement (from the title of the book by K. Hyde “Pay It Forward”) do good deeds disinterestedly, without expecting a reciprocal service. This movement (a kind of "chain reaction of kindness") has gained momentum in the last decade. the main idea: You can change the world with just three good deeds. If each person helps three others, and they do the same, then the baton of good deeds will be passed on, increasing their number exponentially. The author of the idea is B. Franklin, who in 1784 suggested that the debtor, instead of returning the money, “pay off” like this: “When you meet another decent person in a similar difficulty, you must repay me by lending this amount to him, insisting that he repay your duty in the same way." And in Russia, many bloggers associate themselves with the PIF movement; perhaps their actions will soon become visible.
The Surdoserver (assistant in learning sign language) is designed to help deaf and hard of hearing people, as well as anyone who wants to access online resources of Russian sign language and sign languages of the world. The project is being created at the Institute for Control Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Internet project "Listen to the news" is a unique opportunity to listen to fresh (updated every hour) information from news feeds. A separate Internet portal for visually impaired people is being formed.
The social operator of the OP, according to a given schedule, makes calls to the number of your elderly relatives - landline or mobile. When connected, the subscriber can listen to an interesting message, but if the phone is not picked up, the system will send an emergency call to the number specified by the customer (paid service).
The Alter Russia Virtual Republic project was created as a democratic Internet platform for discussing and developing citizens' initiatives. Each registered user of the portal can propose his own legislative initiative or his own amendment to the existing laws of the Russian Federation (“if I were president…”). All proposals adopted by a majority vote of the user community are brought to the attention of officials, ministers, deputies and leaders of political parties of the Russian Federation.
Effectively.rf (Kazan) - a comprehensive automated assessment system managerial competencies employees of state and commercial structures for the purpose of planning personal and group development according to the "360 degrees" method. Each participant evaluates himself, his leader and subordinates. The system randomly selects people for cross-evaluation. At a presentation in May 2011 with the participation of the leadership of Tatarstan and Sberbank of the Russian Federation, it was noted that it is not inferior to the decisions of the largest Western companies in the field of personnel assessment, after which an agreement was reached on the application of the system in the country's largest bank. Service Effectively.rf is able to conduct a comprehensive assessment of state and municipal employees with minimal time. Competence assessment allows you to create a personal development program for each employee, a group development program and form a personnel reserve.
The project of the Komi Expert Society (KomiExpO) is aimed at creating a communication Internet platform for interaction between government, business, science and society. Information flows are accumulated in three directions:
. news reports that provide information content to corporate, personal and state "decision-making systems";
. messages of the most active bloggers of the Komi Republic;
. scientific and methodical publications.
The project “Public Construction of the Image of a Russian School Graduate 2020” is being implemented by WikiVote! with the participation and support of the administration of the President of the Russian Federation, analytical center"Forum" and fund " Public opinion". As a result of the project, it will be possible to find out what personality traits and practical skills a school graduate should have in 10 years, according to representatives of various strata of modern society.
Vyborov.net information resource about elections in Russia. On the site you can get acquainted with the programs of parties, pre-election videos and TV debates, regions where elections are held with the latest news.
There are many Internet platforms for collective discussion of various issues. Public examination of current draft laws is implemented on the website of the Public Opinion Foundation, here again we are dealing with crowdsourcing. A number of Internet resources organize large communities of citizens united by close views on the processes in society. Among them is the Hydepark information and discussion portal. Its materials are formed by users by posting news and journalistic materials. In fact, Hydepark is the first social network for middle-aged people created to discuss and solve various issues of life, receive exclusive information and communicate directly with famous people. The site has 2.5 million members, more than 280,000 daily visits, about 1,200 blog entries and more than 20,000 comments per day. Approximately half the corresponding figures for the Newsland news discussion portal.
Let's name a few resources of information and reference character. Legal reference system Pravo.Ru. Rusturn service for scheduling appointments at Russian consular offices in Rome, Milan, Barcelona. On the map of the district policemen of Moscow, you can find out the name and hours of reception of your district policeman (although the information seems to be outdated).
The above list of projects does not claim to be complete, but it makes it possible to trace the diversity of their topics and the breadth of geography.
The discussion of e-democracy issues would be incomplete without an analysis of electoral technologies. There are a huge number of polls and polls on the Internet all the time for a variety of reasons: who will win the football match, will President Obama interrupt his vacation due to a hurricane, how many cars do you have in your family, and so on. This allowed the optimists to see a direct connection between e-elections and e-democracy, to talk about a new stage in the ancient Greek agora or the Novgorod veche. Indeed, each vote can be taken into account directly, without intermediaries in the form of deputies and delegates. On this occasion, there is a suitable quote “from the President” (as before, “from the classics of Marxism”): “I am absolutely sure that the era of the return from representative democracy to direct, direct, with the help of the Internet” is coming. However, let's not forget that the requirements for serious voting and Internet polls are markedly different. First of all, there are questions about the authentication of the voter and the exclusion of falsifications. The mechanism exists is an electronic signature, but it is not clear how this corresponds to the principle of secret voting. Some offer to receive special one-time cards at polling stations, but if you still have to go to the polling station, the main convenience disappears (in Kazakhstan, there were attempts to send pin codes by mail, but this system did not work). According to the Estonians, they have solved these technical problems; there, in October 2005, the world's first official voting via the Internet took place in local government elections. Electronic voting was carried out in parallel with the usual one, about 10 thousand people, or about 1% of the total number of voters, voted via the Internet. Moreover, a law has appeared in Estonia that, starting from 2011, allows elections of the supreme power not only via the Internet, but also from a personal mobile phone (it is no coincidence that there are proposals to rename the country to E-stonia :). There have been limited experiments in conducting online voting in elections in the United States, but there the National Institute of Standards and Technology released a document from which it follows that the technologies used today are not capable of ensuring the proper security and integrity of elections over the Internet and telephone networks.
In Russian practice, attempts to automate certain aspects of the electoral process have so far not been crowned with noticeable success. The odious "GAS Vybory" is rightly called the All-Russian scam. In March 2009, an experiment was conducted on an electronic poll of voters. At 13 polling stations in five regions, they were offered, in addition to the usual paper voting, to express their will using the Internet and mobile communications. In the city of Raduzhny, Vladimir Region, mobile phones were used for this purpose (they required downloading the necessary software). Voters in the city of Vologda, the Petrovsky farm in the Volgograd region and the village of Kargasok near Tomsk received a disk at their polling stations. In Nizhnevartovsk, the survey was conducted using an electronic social card. During the single voting day, there were 270,000 attempts to hack the system. The technical aspects of such experiments were discussed during the meeting of the chairman of the election commission with representatives of the Internet community (see transcript). However, even a successful solution of technical problems will not be able to remove legal barriers to electoral technical progress: Russian legislation does not yet provide for the possibility of virtual elections.
In the summer of 2011, the deputy of the Yekaterinburg Regional Duma L. Volkov and the president of the Institute for the Development and Modernization of Public Relations F. Krasheninnikov presented their book (more precisely, a 64-page brochure) Cloud Democracy. In our opinion, the main value of this text lies in the withering criticism of the costly and inefficient modern representative democracy (ch. 2-6). That alone is enough to recommend reading the book. But in its 3rd part, the authors propose a model of the democracy of the future. There are three main technical ideas. Firstly, it is proposed to measure the will of voters more than once every 4 years, but more often - the Internet allows you to do this as needed. The second idea is the ability to delegate your vote to one or another representative, and not necessarily one - you can various issues in which they are experts (with the right to withdraw it at any time). The third idea, called "enforced honesty", is that the level of openness of information about applicants for certain positions in political system more and more increased as the importance of the position for which they apply increased.
The second sentence raises the most questions. The delegation of votes is likely to result in their purchase. Rural old people, the homeless and some other categories of the population who do not have computers and are not going to use the right to vote will gladly sell this right, as in the days of voucher privatization. Doctors, teachers, policemen, soldiers, officials will voluntarily-compulsorily give the right to vote for themselves to their superiors. Factory workers will be forced to entrust their votes to their bosses. There is a danger of the final transformation of politics into business, and the parliament - into a political joint-stock company.
There are other controversial places in the book, but the authors themselves are aware that in modern Russia it is impossible to quickly provide all citizens with means of authentication, solve the problem of digital inequality and lack of access to the network for very many voters. Thus, the introduction of "cloud democracy" is not a task for the next decade in our country. You should not be upset about this, it is much more productive to develop and promote achievements in this area, while simultaneously tightening the infrastructure and raising the level of literacy of the population. It is already possible to try to make the elements of e-democracy available to those who are ready and would like to participate in it. And in the fall, the authors of the book presented the Democracy-2 website. This is a kind of electronic parliament - a system of distributed decision-making by a large group of people, combining the best features of direct and representative democracy and assuming an absolutely transparent approach to the development and adoption of decisions on all topical problems of the political and public life of Russia. As B. Nemtsov points out, this is “a platform unique for Russia, where you can openly and without censorship discuss any issues from paid fishing to ethnic crime. At the same time, a voting mechanism is proposed to determine which of the points of view enjoys the maximum support. In the absence of a parliament and wide public discussions, this is obviously a sip fresh air. Then everything will depend on the level of people's involvement in the project. If it turns out that there are hundreds of thousands in the electronic parliament, then even the most insolent government will not be able to ignore them.
The Internet provides a unique opportunity for citizens to come together to work together to realize their rights. Social networks allow you to conduct discussions and organize any community. New technologies of electronic communications provide individuals and groups with such wide access to information and opportunities for discussion that it makes the existence of authoritarian political regimes even more difficult. At the same time, authoritarian regimes are trying to control the Internet, restricting citizens' access to it and creating their own versions of "electronic government". The ruling circles are not interested in the introduction of real e-democracy, as this limits its power. The government understands that technical means already allow society to create elements of e-democracy independently of the governing elite, i.e. alternative sources of power in society. Under these conditions, the only way to restrain the activity of society is to seize the initiative and put the processes in the Internet space under the control of the authorities. The self-organization of young people also poses a threat to the authorities (and this is an important resource for the opposition). Therefore, pro-government youth projects are directed against politicized youth, or to include them in the system of political governance.
Here one could recall Manezhnaya Square and the "Arab Spring", but we will not delve into the socio-political aspects of electronic democratization and blame the Internet for the shortcomings of the authorities. After all, often people unite, desperate to get an adequate response from the state to their natural rights and demands. Symptomatic in this regard is the magazine headline “To hell with him, with the state!” in the material about the activities of the activists of the Tugeza website.
Internet creates technological capability to take democracy to a higher level. Whether this historic chance will be realized, we all will soon find out.
* * *
The author dedicates this series of two articles to the memory of Oleg Valerianovich Kedrovsky, a wise and principled person, an outstanding professional in the field of scientific and technical information, who created the journal Information Resources of Russia 20 years ago and headed it until 2011.
Literature:
1. Polyak Yu.E. Electronic democracy, top view // Information resources of Russia. -2011. - No. 5. - S. 5-10.
2. Polyak Yu.E. Regions on the way to e-democracy. Report at the VII International Scientific and Practical Conference "Regions of Russia: Strategies and Mechanisms for Modernization, Innovative and technological development". - M., INION RAN, May 27, 2011
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