UN Report on E-Parliaments
The Global Centre for Information and Communication Technologies in Parliament, a partnership initiative of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, has released a considerable World e-Parliament 2010 report. (Aussi disponible en français.) According to the executive summary [PDF]:
The Report presents the latest data on the use and availability of systems, applications, hardware, and other tools in [134] parliaments around the world, based on the global survey conducted by the Global Centre for ICT in Parliament in 2009.
. . . The Report highlights two critical issues – communication with citizens and the demand for transparency. It also proposes a methodology for assessing ICT in legislatures and provides a de- tailed description of the status of e-parliament world-wide. It concludes with an analysis of inter- parliamentary cooperation and proposes to the parliamentary and donor communities a shared framework for e-parliament based on strategic goals that serve democracy, good governance, and the attainment of the internationally agreed development goals.
For the most part data is presented in the aggregate — e.g. 60% of responses said this, 31% said that — which tends to dilute the usefulness of the report, given that comparing “parliaments” is not just to compare apples and oranges but all the items in the fruit basket. Stories involving individual nations are brought in as occasional colour commentaries, and Canada figures indirectly in one of these, worth quoting entire:
Over the last year I found myself as parliamentarian at the centre of a legislative issue that provoked global interest: the import of the products of seal hunting into the European Union. I must have had snail mail and e-mail from at least half of Canada, many people in the United States of America, most of Greenland, many indigenous peoples of the Artic and a few of my own voters in the United Kingdom. My frustration in all of that communication was that despite our attempts with videos and statements to get a real debate going, what we experienced instead was “astro-turf lobbying”.
Diana Wallis, Vice President of the European Parliament
Statement at the World e-Parliament Conference 2009
“Astro-turf lobbying” was a new term to me, by the way. Wikipedia explains:
Astroturfing denotes political, advertising, or public relations campaigns that are formally planned by an organization, but are disguised as spontaneous, popular “grassroots” behavior. The term refers to AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.
I might have guessed, I suppose, given that “half of Canada” is deeply implicated in the giant seal product industry that keeps our nation economically sound.
I suppose labelling a point of view ‘astroturfing’ is a good way to avoid thinking that the people holding that point of view may be more numerous than one thought. Otherwise one might have to re-examine one’s own views.
There is I think a difference between a letter-writing campaign, where a lot of people send the same form letter to the government or other target, and astroturfing, where the numbers are fake and the comments are all coming essentially from the same source, though made to look varied. The first case may demonstrate a lot of people holding the opinion, even if they aren’t very articulate on their own, or if they just find it more convenient to stick to a standard text (compare Amnesty International letter-writing campaigns for political prisoners). The second are made up, as the name suggests, fake grass roots.