E-democracy in Development: A Case Study of d:mo in Molde

Judith Molka-Danielsen, Beinta Jákupsstovu og Eli Kjersem

Historic: What is d:mo ?

• D:mo the concept, is to be a debate platform for citizens and politicians on the Internet. – Participants can have a dialogue about current topics. – Anyone can read the debate page, organize a theme, read others

contributions, and post comments of their own viewpoint.– Anyone can follow the dialogue and contribute comments and answer

questions.

• D:mo is a further development of the website demokratitorget.no that was open for use in connection with the Town Elections in 2003. The website was a cooperative project with the county government (fylke) of East and West Agder and the software producer ErgoEphorma. – It was the impression that the pilot project functioned well and that it was

used in the short period before and during the election. – After the election the use of the website dropped quickly. The website was

then taken out of operation. – It was decided to develop a long term strategy to promote a new application.

Actors in the Pilot Project d:mo Molde Norway

d:mo Molde

1. Ergo Group

5. AdministrationMolde _____________Municipality

6. Political Representatives

2. Municipality Management Team

3. Private Consultant

7. Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development

4. Evaluation Project Møre Research Molde

Overview

D:mo was implemented in Molde in August 2004. After one year of little website activity, it was decided that the project would be evaluated. We would explore:

1. Citizen’s knowledge to use the website.2. Different group’s need and use of the website.3. D:mo’s legitimate role in Molde.4. D:mo’s layout and design.5. D:mo’s user friendliness.

Count of those surveyed that have been in the town’s website of Molde and in d:mo’s website

All those surveyed

Home town Molde

Have been in the Moldetown’s website

61 66

Have been in d:mo’s website 19 20

N (100 %) 211 170

Percentage of users that use the Internet (national statistics) compared with the percentage of those surveyed that have been on

d:mo’s web page

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

15-24 år 25-44 år 45-66 år 67 år eller mer

bruker internett jevnlig

vært på kommunens web

vært på d:mo's web

skrevet på d:mo

Not Timely

“5 på Gata”: Posted on the website 31.10.05

:run debate

is little used

Different representation.Last updated17.09.04

Article is read 2595 times.

Article is read 2363 times.

Responsible Persons are not

visible.

Link doesn’t work.

Link doesn’t work.

Technical Recommendations• Include information that has meaning, exclude information with no meaning.

• More user friendly: i.e replace IP-address with domain name.

• Site usage statistics should be collected.

• Have an expiration date for the display of the most visual information.

• Make d:mo look and work more like a Weblog.

• Decide if the d:mo portal is to have an independent identity from Molde municipality (or be a page under it), and then correct all links to it that you have control over.

• Have an active Web Administration for the d:mo web page.

• Accept participation in as many input forms as possible.

• A web portal may not be able to change the distribution of political activity: if they are treated as non personal meeting places.

Touchgraph visualization on www.molde.kommune.no

Cumulative distribution of incoming links for political blogs, separated by category. A power-law with an exponential cutoff, shown as a solid line, is

the best fit. (Source: Adamic and Glance, 2005).

Networks within the Mayfield

Network Ecosystem Model

Democratic Participation Framework (Torpe, 2004)

Torpe’s models of democracy

• Participatory democracy – – based on socially formed interests and opinions– Involve direct and active participation by citizens – Parents meeting at school (example)

• Network democracy – like Participatory democracy but,– Citizen participation is more self organized, informally structured, less

planned.– Emergent democracy– Product of those currently present and interested in a particular topic.

• ICT can support different forms of democracy. • Weblogs have not been evaluated.

– How open are they? – Who can participate?

How various digital instruments may support key features in different normative models of democracy.

(Source: Torpe, 2004)Models of democracy Key features Principles of publicness Digital instruments

All models Autonomy and equal access

Informed opinion-formation

Digital access to public documents and information about public services

Competitive democracy Individually formed preferences

Representation

Aggregation of interestsAccountability

E-hearings of groups and affected citizens

Consumer democracy Individually formed preferences

Self-determination

Aggregation of interestsDirect influence of users

on service provisions

E-hearings of usersE-voting among users

Participatory democracy

Societal formed preferences

Self-determination

Direct involvement of citizens in decision-making

Deliberation

E-hearings of citizensE-voting among citizens

Network democracy Societal formed preferences

Self-determination

Involvement of citizens in policy networks

Deliberation

User-groupsMailing listsDigital forums with restricted access

Deliberative democracy Societal formedpreferencesrepresentation

DeliberationAccountability

Public digital debate forums

Public digital chat forums

The Future• D:mo functionality will be revised and the site will be re-launched.• New functionality:

– Modify the d:mo registration system to maintain profiles on participates. – Enable posts of official town documents (i.e. town plan) on the d:mo site

and enable a comment-board to receive citizen comments under topics.– Implement a voting function where votes on topics are tallied and the

tallies are revealed.– Accept other input formats: blog-like comments, receive sms.– Post multimedia clips on d:mo i.e. student radio interviews and local TV

interviews.

• Molde Town Council committee will debate in a council meeting on 16.04.02 the role and use of d:mo by the town council.– Will the council members and other political representatives:

• contribute comments on the site, (?)• contribute to debate, and (?)• what will they do with the feedback of the voting system. (?)

• Re-launch and market d:mo through meetings to town political representatives, middle and high school students, and voluntary organizations.

Questions for discussion

• What is the expected impact of the technology (d:mo) on e-debate and e-democracy?

• What types of performance indicators should we use to evaluate if the proposed technology gives added value (qualitative) to the participants (citizens and political representatives)? – Should we count users of the site or topics discussed?– What benchmarks should be used to measure affects on

democratic governance (the actions of representatives) in the town of Molde?

• Can technology like d:mo help to integrate the actions of those operating under different democratic frameworks: representative versus self-determined frameworks?