E-government and Social Media: How can social media increase transparency?

ATHANASIA DASKALOPOULOU (ATHANASIA.DASKALOPOULOU@POSTGRAD.MBS.AC.UK) FEI WU (FEI.WU-5@POSTGRAD.MANCHESTER.AC.UK)

LARASTRI KUMARALALITA
ZOLBOO LKHASUREN

(LARASTRI.KUMARALALITA@POSTGRAD.MANCHESTER.AC.UK)
(ZOLBOO.LKHASUREN@POSTGRAD.MANCHESTER.AC.UK)

Table of contents
Introduction Social media and transparency The ladder of accountability Indonesia - Governor of Jakarta

China - Micro blogging

Conclusion

Introduction

Various nations, now more than ever, have adopted access-toinformation laws and laws that increase government openness

Open access to government information will:

Increase citizen participation Increase trust in the government Prevent corruption Reduces the contact between corrupt officials and citizens Increases:

E-government:

Transparency Accountability

Introduction

Government agencies use social media in order to:

Improve the quality of government services

Increase citizen engagement

Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Blogs, Wikis and Mashups:

Are widely used Have influenced the way people interact with each other and with their governments Provide governments with an attractive and easy way to interact with their citizens Offer many-to-many interaction

We posit that social media can be used in order to increase transparency

Social Media and Transparency

With social media, both governments and citizens have a lot to gain: Open communication Connecting the citizens with their government Citizens can:

Share and access information easily Form communities

Direct interaction with citizens

The Ladder of Accountability to Assess Transparency Delivery

Transparency is achieved when the e-government system offers a two way interaction with citizens and allows benchmarking of the public servants performance.

Step 3: - Accountability: reward & punishment Step 2: - Transparency: two-ways interaction & benchmarking

Step 1: - Reporting: information dumping

Step 0: - Publication: providing basic information

Adapted from Heeks 2012

Indonesia - Governor of DKI Jakarta

Transparency of Budget through YouTube

October 2012: Jokowi-Ahok the governor of Jakarta started using YouTube to upload internal meeting (Ardiansyah 2012)

PemprovDKI has more than:

148 videos 19 thousand subscribers 5 million views Account 2012) (Pemprov DKI YouTube

Internal meetings are recorded and published almost without any editing (Mimin 2012) This initiative will:

Visit on: http://www.youtube.com/user/pemprovdki

increase transparency
assist citizens monitor the work of their leaders quicker and easier

Indonesia - Governor of DKI Jakarta

Transparency of Budget through YouTube

Citizens are able to:

Monitor the performance of the public servants from meeting to meeting Compare it against pre set benchmarks

Interact with the officials

Two: Transparency "I told Public Relation Department, if it is uploaded to YouTube, upload it in its entirety so people know what was discussed during the meeting, how their money was spent." (Ahok cited in AsiaViews 2012)

We classify this initiative at step:

Lesson from this case:

Facilitating public opinion Educating citizens on how government works Changing the way monitoring government

China - Micro blogging as The Gate for Transparency

Chinese government:

Has built a firewall to prevent the access to foreign social media Has strong relationship with the local social media such as Sina Weibo, Renren etc

Government agency started building their own microblogging accounts in order to:

Disclose government information Enhance citizen participation Improve service delivery

There are more than 19 thousand certified accounts by government agencies and officials. Every two weeks the Sina Weibo will publish a case study called Example Analysis of gov.weibo.com, that will share the governments experiences on using microblogging.

We should ask the people what they need, hear the voice of them, and concern about the sufferings of the masses of them. Attention to the network of public opinion, especially microblogging. ----(Government China 2012)
the 2012 report on work of the government of Shandong province

China - Micro blogging as The Gate for Transparency

Limitations:

The government controls to a certain extent microblogging

There are sensitive words that cannot be used either by citizens or officials

Social media can facilitate change but cannot bring revolution

20021 illegal content, please check

We classify this initiative at step:

Zero: Publication

Lesson from this case

changing the way in monitoring government social media is not a panacea for increasing transparency Restrict comment

Conclusion

A number of nations use social media in various ways:

Countries such as Indonesia use them to:

Inform citizens about the governments activities Receive feedback

In countries such as China:

Transparency initiatives still lag behind even though individual agencies and officials use them, since the published content is controlled by the government

Social media provide governments the potential to achieve openness and accountability The citizens can monitor the governments activities and give feedback which governments can use in order to reduce corruption Even more roles for social media in government transparency will develop in the future

Reference

Adriansyah, Y. (2012) Jokowi-Ahok, Again, Set Up A New Way Of Transparent Governance: YouTube, Projecting Indonesia [Online]. Available: projectingindonesia.com/country/jokowi-ahok-again-set-up-a-new-way-oftransparent-governance-through-youtube/ [Accessed: 20 November 2012] Anderson, T. B. (2009) E-government as an anticorruption strategy, Information Economics and Policy, 21, 201-210. Bertot, J C., Jaegar, P T., Grimes J M. (2011) Crowd- sourcing Transparacy: ICTs, Social Media, and Government Transparancy Initiatives, dg.o 2010, May 17-20, 2010, Puebla, Mexico. ACM [ISBN] 978-1-4503-0070-4/10/05 Bertot, J.C., Jaeger, P.T., Grimes, J.M. (2010) Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency, Government Information Quarterly, 27, 264-271

Cullier, D., & Piotrowski, S. J. (2009). Internet information-seeking and its relation to support for access to government records, Government Information Quarterly, 26, 441449.
Government China. (2012), The 2012 report on work of the government of Shandong provience [China][Online], Available:http://www.gov.cn/test/201202/20/content_2071612.htm [Accessed:30 November 2012]

Heeks, R. (2012) e-Citizens: Connecting Citizens and Government, e-Government course unit handout, IDPM, University of Manchester, Manchester, 2 Oct.

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Questions?