1. Teledemocracy is about…
Democracy
For practical reasons still representative democracy and not direct democracy
Citizens
Enabling citizens to participate in decisionmaking in the earliest possible stage
Monopolies
Taking away traditional political monopolies on information and agendasetting
Trust
Democracy is basically about the organization and distribution of public trust. Teledemocracy should broaden this trust: you can not only vote on traditional political parties but also on community organizations. Not only on an overall ideological program for lots of years, but also on selected topics for the short term
Interactive policy making
Giving local, regional, national and international government a tool for interactive policy making; a tool for reducing political bureaucracy and enhancing political openness of government by the immanent openness and speed of the Net


2. A practical tool for Teledemocracy:
"Decision Guide"
http://www.publiek-politiek.nl/bw/
Decision Guide is an instrument for debating, polling and voting through Internet, based on editorial independence, privacy and clear result of debating. The aim of Decision Guide is to enlarge citizens' role in decisionmaking in an early stage.

The first official debate using the Decision Guide/Teledemocracy model took place in November 1996, on the question 'Are we running out of space in Brabant?'. The debate involved members of the community, pressure groups and politicians (the local MP and members of the local council and provincial executive). The independent editorial team drew up a report: this will be presented to the North Brabant provisional executive, which will indicate in a memorandum of reply what it intends to do with the findings, which parts it intends to adopt and which parts it does not intend to adopt, giving reasons.



3. What do we need for highest quality teledemocracy tools?
a better digital medium
a simpler and easier to use Internet in the very near future, made available to all people for low prices

editorial independence
the will to use independent editorial boards for Net-debates with the citizen is essential for credibility and legitimacy of government. Government is a party like all other parties, with its own special interests. Independent editorial boards are dedicated to independent information supply, to the process of debating and the interests of all debaters. Public funding is necessary for the editorial boards of the new teledemocracy-organizers

privacy
traditional voting is safe, so digital voting must be safe too. No government may be able to see who has voted what; they must be able to check that a voter is entitled to a particular vote. Voting must be conducted anonymously; every voter is represented by a number with which he can vote. This number is created out of the voter's Demographic Data. Thereby every one can see how certain groups (not: individuals!) have voted. This demographic analysis is a strong tool for interactive policy making.

clear results
embedding of Net-debates into traditional procedures of decisionmaking. Otherwise no one is going to spend her precious time on vague teledemocracy debates

digital passport
we need clear identity checks that the digital citizen is who he claims to be; this has to do with every ones voting rights. Creating a digital passport can only be a common European Community effort

creation of a common user interface
a joint effort by all large institutions and companies in European Community who wish to communicate with citizens or consumers on a massive scale (hundreds of thousands of people) to create a common user interface that can deal with large scale debating, has built-in privacy and authorization features, a superior navigation structure, uses expert polling systems

courage
lots of courage and openness of mind, both from politicians and citizens. Don't just look at the risks. Grab the chances!




Features of Decision Guide/Teledemocracy
The aim of the Decision Guide is to increase the influence ordinary people have on decision-making. We now have a working tool, but we intend to produce a high quality tool that municipal and provincial authorities, central government and others can use to give people an active role in policy-making

The Decision Guide/Teledemocracy is a debating and polling tool that works through the Internet. It is based on editorial independence, privacy and a clearly defined result of the debating and polling (embedding in political decisionmaking). It has been developed expressly to involve more people in decision-making on social and political issues at an early stage, and thus to enhance the administrative or democratic process.

The advantage of using the Decision Guide rather than a referendum is that it not only allows binary yes/no questions to be put but also gives people an opportunity to get involved in policy and decision-making at an early stage, thus enabling more fundamental issues to be raised. Complex problems can be presented split up into their component parts and voters can put forward counter-proposals (they must obtain support for these first, however).

Democracy is basically about the organization and distribution of public trust. Teledemocracy should broaden this trust: you can not only vote on traditional political parties but also on community organizations. Not only on an overall ideological program for lots of years, but also on selected topics for the short term. In current parliamentary democracy, political parties have a monopoly: citizens can only choose political parties as their trusted organizations. Decision Guide uses a general trusted third party model, in which citizens can choose any community organiziation they like to hand over their vote to. In this respect, Decision Guide broadens the concept of representative democracy - without throwing away though the benefits of parliamentary democracy.

The entire process is supervised by an independent editorial team which is there to serve all those taking part in the debate. The editorial team checks that the information provided is reliable, makes summaries of the information and the actual debate, and produces a final report. The technology used in the Decision Guide has a lot of privacy and security features built into it.

The Decision Guide process involves four stages, which can be run selectively.

1. Information. Once the issue has been defined (which can be done by the politicians or in consultation with the voters), voters can read information provided by the politicians, fellow citizens, political parties, community organizations etc.

2. Debate. The second step is a debate by all the participants, involving just the voters or both the politicians and the voters. A database with a search engine is linked to the debate as an additional resource: to support their opinions the participants can find out what they themselves and others think about various aspects of the problem by running a simple or clustered opinion poll. The results of these polls are shown graphically, split into various demographic categories if desired.

3. Polling. The debating is being accompanied by several polls, simple and clustered polls, which help the voters to build their opinion. Eveveryone can immediately see thee opinions of all other voters in graphics and percentages. The opinions of organizations are by definitions public, unlike the opinions of individual voters (whose anonymous opinions are grouped together). Voters can change their opinion within the time-limit of the debat. The poll questions are being made by the editorial board. Polling is conducted anonymously; every voter is represented by a number with which he can vote. This number is created out of the voter's Demographic Data. Thereby every one can see how certain groups (not: individuals!) have voted. This demographic analysis is a strong tool for interactive policy making.

4. Voting. Voting is technically a special form of polling. The status of the voting process differs from the polling though; it can vary greatly, depending on how much scope and influence the (political) initiator wishes to grant the community. The process ends with those taking part in the debate giving their final decision. There are two useful features here: a voter can delegate his or her vote to another voter (which can be a community organization, a group of citizens, a political party or the government itself). A voter can also use the 'strong feelings' option if he or she feels passionately about the issue. A voter can divide his or her vote among a number of options or vote 'against' an option he or she considers highly undesirable.

The first official debate using the Decision Guide/Teledemocracy model took place in November 1996, on the question 'Are we running out of space in Brabant?'. The debate involved members of the community, pressure groups and politicians (the local MP and members of the local council and provincial executive). The independent editorial team drew up a report: this will be presented to the North Brabant provisional executive, which will indicate in a memorandum of reply what it intends to do with the findings, which parts it intends to adopt and which parts it does not intend to adopt, giving reasons.



Personal information
For more information on Decision Guide features, how to use it and what it costs, contact Marcel Bullinga, Designer and Project Manager