PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

A parliament that is open and transparent I 61
As the current information from our parliamentary respondents shows, their
websites are continually being developed in response to user feedback and
user priorities. For example, the activity of the Italian Senate and its staff ‘has
been strongly influenced by the added push coming from the web: constituents
increasingly want to email their elected representatives and find out on line
how he or she voted and what opinion he or she expressed on specific issues.’
In Australia, the online summary of the week’s business in the House of
Representatives has proved particularly popular. In Latvia, the Saeima’s database
containing the full text of draft laws has enjoyed the most use ‘because
every citizen can follow the development process of the draft law he or she is
interested in.’ However, the Latvian communication also draws attention to
the limits on accessibility. Not every citizen can use this facility in practice.
When we talk about involving the public in strengthening democracy,
we should not rely on information and communication technologies
(ICT) too much. We have to take into consideration that the current
availability of personal computers and, in particular, the availability of
and access to the Internet is not as evenly distributed and as broad as
we would like. A knowledge society is not about the availability of
knowledge on the Internet or elsewhere, but about maximally even
distribution of knowledge among the citizens, thus enabling democratic
processes……A true expression of democracy is to let every person
choose the form of communication that is more convenient for and
accessible to him or her.’
The figures provided in this communication for the levels of Internet use in
Latvia reinforce this caution: only 24% of the population had used it in the
previous six months; only 47% of public libraries had access to the Internet
and 71% of schools. If this is the situation for a European country, then how
much more is it true of many developing countries in the South. While access
to ICT, therefore, enormously increases the range and speed of communication
possibilities for its users, by the same token it also intensifies the inequalities
between users and non-users. Table 3.2 shows the huge inequalities
between the world’s regions in access to the Internet. Within the low access
regions and countries we must also assume a huge gulf between those with
access and those without. One way of bridging this gap is through a system of
‘cascading’, whereby information is disseminated in electronic form to local
agencies (constituency offices, community centres, etc.) and thence by more
traditional means to wider sections of the population. Nor should we overlook
the use of other new technologies, which are not covered by the figures in the
table. For example, Africa currently has the fastest growth in mobile phone