Australian Governments Bid to Promote Transparency through Social Media - Case Study Example

Australian Government’s bid to Promote Transparency Through Social Media [Name] [Professor Name] [Course] [Date] Introduction E-government comprises the use of ICT tools, more so the internet, by government agencies with the view of achieving better governance. Some researchers have interpreted better governance to mean transparency, openness and accountability of the government. Indeed, transparency is a key pillar for better governance since it promotes accountability (Idumange 2012). It is also based on the principle of full disclosure of government information to the citizens. The use of technology by the Australian government -- particularly the internet -- has increased substantially in response to massive technology adoption by citizens (Banks 2011). However, there have been concerns over the future of e-governance and its impact on the citizens. This essay argues that in order for the Australian government to promote a culture where agencies and ministries are held accountable for the successes and failures, these agencies and ministries should be made to leverage the power of the social media in making information accessible. Perceived benefits of social media to transparency Basically, social media can be defined as publication and dissemination of multimedia content such as videos, images and texts through social interaction on the internet using highly scalable and accessible social networking platforms such as blogs, websites and social networking sites. Social media consists of suite of networking tools that present forums for discussion, collaboration, network building and knowledge sharing (Deloitte 2011). In all, they include blogs, micro-blogs, podcasts, virtual reality, wikis, tagging, discussion boards and Web meetings. Social media and social networking have becoming indispensable instruments for communication (June et al 2011). Across the globe, studies have showed that governments are increasingly leveraging on social media to promote greater citizen engagement. In Australia, there is an increased use of the social media by the Australia government, with a survey showing that some 73 percent of the government agencies use at least one of the social networking tools (Thomler 2012). This indeed has been observed to have a direct effect on promoting transparency. For instance, it provides information for individuals about the activities of their governments and citizen participation in forums that question and appraise the undertakings of the government (Magro 2012). Social media provides a single-most effective tool to engage with hard to reach sections of the population. In Australia, where the internet penetration is 82.3% with over 18, 129,700 internet users as of June 2013, citizen’s expectations of e-government services have grown beyond service-delivery to accountability, with greater demand for horizontal coordination, transparency and responsiveness. Under such circumstances, the key impact of social media has been felt on promoting transparency (Howard 2012). The benefits of social media in promoting transparency are indeed demonstrable and have been realized. Social media platform enables fast and low-cost dissemination of information and feedback. The benefits of public engagement can positively impact policy development, public engagement and public oversight (June et al 2011). There is indeed great potential for social media to affect public oversight and policy development in constructive patterns. Some researchers have demonstrated that social media users are not merely consumers of information disseminated by the government over the platform, but are increasingly becoming creators and contributors of information through the platform. With that regard, it is indeed perceivable that the activities and the tendencies of the public have shifted towards increased probing into government policies, decisions or activities directly through the social media. Through the platform, more users get into the discussion, which give weight to their probes hence prompting the government agencies to act appropriately (Hollingworth and Cooper 2011). Towards this end, social media as a tool provides opportunities for barriers to public participation in public forums that involve the government. Such barriers may comprise lack of lack of knowledge on policy development and institutional or political literacy, as well as how it affects lives of the citizens (McGoveran 2012; Patterson 2011). Social media offers immense opportunities to communicate government policies that ensure effectiveness and help in encouraging political accountability and fighting corruption. Within the perspective of the government, social media can promote two types of transparencies. These include corporate transparency, which implies that all barriers to easy and free access to information on government enterprises are removed. Next is radical transparency, which means that all government’s decision-making processes are available to the public for scrutiny. With this regard, the government uses the social media to disclose budgetary and decision-making processes. Other information includes the due processes followed in awarding contract, and how the public participation in activities that affect people is promoted (Idumange 2012). Traditionally, public service in Australia has been government-centric exemplified by bureaucratic processes, all aimed at promoting legality and equity of public services. Such an approach had often undermined the principle of openness and transparency. However, the social media has encouraged the government to begin to view the citizenry as clientele, with the aim being customer satisfaction. Such citizen-centred approaches include the government listening to the views and opinions of the public. Indeed, citizens become involved in each step of policymaking processes through constant interaction and collaboration with government agencies (McGoveran 2012).   Challenges to universal adoption of social media It can indeed be argued that social media is limited in its capacity to positively impact public oversight and policymaking since it is time consuming and not absolutely representative. With regard to engagement, some scholars have questioned the effects of social media particularly its potential to promote “cyberpolarization”, and hence has been named as “slacktivism” (Grant et al 2012; Christensen 2011). For instance, social media has the potential of influencing the public to think along the same line or an argument, while missing the key facts since most of the discussions in social media tend to be subjective rather than objective. A range of challenges exists when it comes to adoption of the social media to promote and increase transparency. Another key challenge is that social media can be very resource-intensive presenting internal administrative challenges. Among the key internal administrative challenges comprise the intricacy of the department paradigm, human resource or IT infrastructure constraints, including lack of financial resources to procure up-to-date ICT equipment, lack of skilled personnel to keep up with the dynamic technologies as well as the reluctance of government departments and agencies to share resources (Deschamps, McNutts and Zhu 2012). Government agencies have also been greatly dependent on third party service providers to use the social media. A major challenge is in holding such firms wholly accountable to the incumbent governments’ policies, particularly when it comes to information security and privacy. Social media also raises the potential for violation of the government’s stated agency of responsibility (Haller 2012; Bajkowski 2013). In the same breadth, Australian government’s current hierarchical government structure runs against key concepts of social media use – participatory and collaborative. This implies that once the government releases information to any of its agency, the relevant agency would have to surrender its control of the information since the information released would by then have become communal property (Deschamps, McNutts and Zhu 2012). Such inhibitors have slowed the rapid adoption of social media by governments. Case Study: Canada The Canadian government has been at the forefront of adopting programs and policies that can promote digitization. In 2011, the Federal government explored new ICT programs such as internal government wikis and social media platforms to promote public participation and intergovernmental participation in communication. The main one includes Service Canada and Second Life (Deschamps, McNutt and Zhu 2012). Within the same year, the government formulated a blue-print for information sharing and citizen engagement called Action Plan on Open Government, which comprised a three-year commitment to transparency and open governance. The decision was encourage by the government’s need to reach out to all parts of the country easily, conveniently and at low-cost, since 28 million Canadians used the internet. Later, the Canadian government introduced Web 2.0 technology dubbed GCpedia. GCpedia is a government-wide wiki that provides a collaborative web space. In more recent times, a number of federal department integrated external Web 2.0 technologies to engage the citizenry. Among them include the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) that was aimed at engaging the legal immigrants. Recently, CIC began using Web 2.0 tools including YouTube to promote the need of integration of the Canadians with the immigrants. CIC also uses Twitter to provide rapidly updated information on immigration policies (Deschamps, McNutt and Zhu 2012). Australian Case Scenario In 2009, the Australian government formed a task force to explore opportunities for using the social media. The report titles “Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0, presents several recommendations for integrating the social media, among them including promoting an open government (Deschamps, McNutt and Zhu 2012). In 2010, the Australian government responded with a declaration of open government through promoting citizen participation and engagement in governance and citizen access of government information. Today, the government offers a range of social media tools that assist in more horizontal discussions on policymaking. For instance, Govdex refers to the Australian government’s collaborative workspace that has enabled civil servants, the public and government agencies to share information. Another one includes GovLoop, which has over 60,000 members (Howard and Bateson 2012; Deschamps, McNutt and Zhu 2012). Conclusion Capitalizing on social media by the government agencies, departments an ministries indeed has the potential to promote transparency in manner in which they are held accountable for the successes and failures, as well as reporting their plans, these agencies and ministries. A key feature relevant for this purpose is that social media promotes unrestricted access to government information by the citizens. It also enables the citizenry to monitor government activities and decisions as well as provide feedback on policies and their implementation. Since 2010, the Australian government has proactively engaged in promoting transparency through the social media. However, such efforts have been thwarted by a range of challenges such as the intricacy of the department paradigm, human resource, lack of financial resources to procure up-to-date ICT equipment, lack of skilled personnel to keep up with the dynamic technologies as well as the reluctance of government departments and agencies to share resources and possible violation of privacy and information security. Key recommendations include the government must create privacy policies, training of personnel and offer subsidies for ICT procurement. 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