Democracy and Municipal Life in the Information Age ” Stockholm's E-Government The Stockholm municipal government believes that the world is shrinking and that a new Europe is growing according to a totally new game plan in which regions and cities will play an increasingly instrumental role. Stockholm officials believe that the increasing competition between economic regions will affect the preconditions for the political activities and the operational development of cities. In 1999, Stockholm's IT Advisory Committee proposed an e-strategy to make IT a central, executive-level issue for the city's administrations and enterprises . The strategy aims to facilitate reaching the objective to become a "municipality of the future." The most important areas of application in the proposed e-strategy are e-democracy, control and management, e-structure, competence development/supply, a more attractive Stockholm, procurement, and municipal services. These points are discussed below. -
Democracy and political activities ” The city of Stockholm e-strategy intends to use IT in order to contribute to the strengthening and deepening of democracy through improved information and discussion. The city's inhabitants must be assured of integrity, self-determination, and participatory rights. IT can create increased opportunities for human contact with municipal organizations for city users and inhabitants alike. -
Control and management ” Analytical and processing opportunities presented by IT shall be increasingly utilized in Stockholm to provide support for management and control through improved information on which to base decisions. Using IT, control and monitoring can be more rapidly achieved through immediate access to reports and analyses. -
E-structure ” The development opportunities for trade and industries and the establishment of new companies in the region will depend on the preconditions provided by the available IT infrastructure. The city's data and telecommunications services should be continuously developed, while extending these services into the home environment will enable the creation of new functions and services. -
Competence development/supply ” The increasing use of IT is furthermore seen as important for educational activities to develop and supply competence, and enable lifelong learning for both citizens and employees . -
A more attractive Stockholm ” IT will help to streamline transportation activities, improve the utilization of street space, and decrease the pressure on the environment, making Stockholm an even more attractive place to work and live in the future. -
Procurement ” Electronic commerce will be used to streamline the city's commercial processes. Transparency created by the Internet will enable increased choice for city inhabitants, the quality of purchased goods will improve, costs will go down, and the establishment of new companies will be encouraged. -
Municipal services and the citizens ” Integrating IT into the city's administration is seen as a tool to better afford citizens a central role in its operations. IT will more easily provide citizens with benefits, contact, and service-oriented municipal operations. Information technology is furthermore seen as a tool to enable the citizens' right to transparency of operations, while facilitating access to municipal services. Carl Cederschi ld, mayor of Stockholm, sees the city's e-strategy as a systematic way to use new technologies to make municipal government more effective and efficient. It will make it possible for the city to give the population better, faster answers, for instance when applying for building or restaurant permits . At the same time, the democratic process will be improved, by allowing citizens to post opinions and vote online. In Kista, the EU project Cybervote [4] intends to make online voting feasible . Carl Cederschi ld It's not just about throwing information on the Net Constructing an e-government has far-reaching implications for individuals inside and outside of the administration, as well as for private business in the area. The city is currently involving many private businesses in trying to find solutions for its e-government project. Stockholm sees itself as a large and hopefully competent buyer of technologies that will make e-government possible. In the long run, these government efforts are expected to create important prerequisites for research and development in the field of creating e- governments . Finding support for the city's e-strategy has been fairly simple both politically and privately, since Stockholm's citizens in general have a positive view of new technology. The challenge in implementing this e-strategy has been to ask the right questions of the people with the right competence. There needs to be a lot of interaction between the technical systems competence and the city's politicians , civil servants, and others who are going to formulate the right criteria for the technicians to construct. Everything starts with the homepage. The key is to be receptive to the feedback from users. Experience shows that there is a lot of feedback, which initiates a trial-and-error process that will eventually lead to the right angle from which to approach political issues using new technologies. It's not just about throwing information on the Net. Building the Stockholm e-government has been an iterative process implying frequent site adaptations and responding to the requests of users. Getting people to accept the new technologies in the government realm requires dependably functioning services. In principle, all official documents can be made available though the Internet. For citizens who frequently use the system, the present intranet, which is in place for the exchange of official documents, must also be made accessible to the population. For instance, access needs to be given to citizens through computers at local district offices, while the Web-based access needs to be continually improved. The next step for the city of Stockholm will be to start implementing interactive services such as permit issuing. Citizens will not accept walls between different levels of government In the future, citizens will no longer accept walls between the systems of municipal, regional, and national government systems. In order to unleash the full potential of e-government, these systems will eventually need to be seamlessly linked. Old rules encumber new processes such as citizen contact by e-mail However, constructing and running an e-government comes with many hurdles and difficulties. I regularly receive e-mails from citizens with questions, including e-mail campaigns , for instance, against high taxes. Recently, 60 e-mails arrived in one day with the same question: "Why do I only get to keep 39% of my income?" According to the law, the mayor must answer all of these e-mails. The citizens have a right to have access to their elected officials, and the mayor should indeed be in touch with citizens, answering their e- mails and maintaining a dialog with them. However, within this context, the Swedish Law of Transparency poses a problem: According to this law, each piece of correspondence has to be registered and subsequently filed away and kept in storage, which is not yet possible electronically . This means that each e-mail needs to be printed out, given a number and filed away. When the citizens' questions are answered , every answer has to be printed out, given a number and filed away. The law requires this procedure in order to guarantee accountability of government officials. Ensuring the manageability of the newly increased flows of correspondence may well necessitate some changes in the national law. This is where the feasibility of implementing the e-government becomes an issue. When these laws were being written by the Royal Commission, starting in 1980, e-mail did not yet exist. Ensuring the implementation of an e-strategy thus requires a strong belief in the possibilities of new technologies. Officials need to understand that if they are really determined to offer this service to their citizens, they must be willing to go through the existing rules and regulations and to rewrite the law in numerous aspects. If officials are not ready to do this, they will soon find out that the entire vision of what could be achieved with these fascinating technologies will be destroyed by some old rule that was written before computers even existed. It will be inevitable to run into political conflicts. In order to enable an e-government, officials will have to change rules that may infringe on a right that has been existent for over 100 years . | We have shown some examples of how high-tech “ related government initiatives can effectively support the development of regions. However, for these initiatives to become successful, the different levels of government must be fully convinced of the potential benefits offered by new technologies and must be willing to act against existing barriers in order to reap this benefit. On an economic level, the Stokab example implies that market deregulation can be aided by market-focused government intervention, and in turn can benefit the long- term social democratic aspirations of a nation. In Sweden, the social democratic aspirations of an "ICT Nation" could not have been possible without an appropriate information infrastructure. The Teknikh jden case demonstrates that incentives and leadership need to be present at different levels throughout a country's government and educational system in order to develop a successful technology transfer program. Integrating new technologies into government policies has the potential to improve the efficiency a government's operations and empowers the citizen to increasingly take place in the democratic process. However, our discussion with Carl Cederschi ld indicates that that transfer to an e-government involves many potential hurdles, such as rewriting existing legislation, and thus requires strong government commitment in order to be feasible. We will now focus on how human resources are attracted and leveraged in Sweden. We will examine how Sweden uses its international "cultural fit" in order to create an international business environment, which is regarded as critical for success in global high-tech markets. |
