=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2813/rpaper23
|storemode=property
|title=On the Role of E-Technology Innovations in Agile and Interactive Policymaking
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2813/rpaper23.pdf
|volume=Vol-2813
|authors=Vladimir Gutorov,Georg Sootla
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ims2/GutorovS20
}}
==On the Role of E-Technology Innovations in Agile and Interactive Policymaking==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2813/rpaper23.pdf
300 Young Scientists Symposium
On the Role of E-Technology Innovations
in Agile and Interactive Policymaking
Vladimir Gutorov1 and Georg Sootla2
1St. Petersburg State University, 191124, St. Petersburg, Smolny St., 1/3, Russia
2Tallinn University, 10120, Tallinn, Narva st. 25, Estonia
gut-50@mail.ru, gsootla@tlu.ee
Abstract. The main goal of the article is to present a theoretical analysis of the
current state and prospects of the “digital government”, to identify the most
priority aspects of its interpretation in political theory. It is also important to
outline the new opportunities that are provided by the e-technologies and new
information potential for connecting citizens to the Internet and promoting
actively both the principles of “digital democracy” and a new vision of the tasks
of public policy. Particular attention is paid to the problem of implementation
of e-technology innovations in the different levels of public policymaking. We
demonstrate and problematize the role of four digital technologies in ensuring
transactive institutional mechanisms in the policy process: block-chain
technology, Issue-Based Information System, General Morphological Analysis,
and Information System Integration. We regard these technologies and
techniques as complementary ones.
Keywords: policymaking, digital government, e-technologies, information,
design rationality, public policy, blockchain technology, political discourse,
globalization, democratic governance.
Introduction
In modern scientific literature, the terms “digital management” and “digital
government” refer to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT),
in particular the Internet, to transform relations between government and society
positively. At the state level, this implies the development and active implementation
of standards for interaction between administrative services so that they can exchange
data and integrate their actions while respecting the principle of confidentiality.
Citizens of many states share the belief that digital governance can be used to increase
overall confidence in public institutions in public policy and to create an atmosphere
of goodwill, competence, honesty and predictability of government at the level of
everyday political processes. At the same time, up to the present, specific features and
difficulties of organizing the public management sector contribute to the emergence
and implementation of poorly integrated and difficult to maintain applications. For
example, individual administrative structures support various heterogeneous
Copyright ©2020 for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
International Conference "Internet and Modern Society" (IMS-2020). CEUR Proceedings 301
applications for open databases to ensure transparency in public services, which leads
to duplication of effort and waste of resources.
The costs associated with maintaining such poorly integrated systems may limit the
use of resources attracted for future management projects and innovations.
Meanwhile, the following fundamental question is still very urgent: how can
information and digital technologies influence the management processes and
transformation of leading political institutions? To answer this question, scientists
often have to refute a very common point of view, according to which the new era in
governance is nothing more than a continuation of the paradigm of "electronic
government" and, therefore, it is simply a matter of pouring "old wine into new wine-
bag". One of the goals of the article is to present a comprehensive analysis of two co-
existing and mutually complementary managerial paradigms - the participation
paradigm and the management paradigm. Besides, the article will develop general
theoretical contours and parameters of a model aimed at explaining and predicting the
most promising forms and methods of public administration at the federal, regional
and municipal levels.
The immediate purpose of our review article is to explore core dilemmas which
modern democratic governance have faced due to the inability to respond effectively
to basic challenges of welfare state crisis from the 1980s onwards. The first failure
was the inability of traditional governance machine to provide individualised public
services of high quality in reasonable economic terms. Different policy innovation
generalized under the doctrine of new public management was able to accomplish
only an “icebreaker” role and trigger the service provision which could combine the
strength of public-private-third sectors in partnership-like networks. Applications of
e-technologies and programs in public sector service provision have concerned
mainly responses to these challenges as well as the other complicated problems,
especially in public policymaking
Secondly, the emergence of different type of organisations, in particular, the
networks type structures between them causes huge questions of coordination because
of extremely complex, uncertain and ambiguous institutional/organisational
environments. The overall re-design of the public sector into nested hierarchies and
networks type heterarchies as well as the high contingency of governments task
environments should rely on the considerably higher capacity of information systems
design and processing capacity.
Third, in this institutional context failed classical Eastonian policy input-output
model of modern liberal democracies to ensure its legitimacy. This deficit of
democracy was revealed in serious impasses in representation of public interests, in
lack of accountability and the absence of enough legitimate policy outputs. The first
response to this failure was the trend of depolitization of the policy process in which
new public management and public choice theory played a central role. Thus a need
to build up the policy process as highly open and interactive one presumes also the
governing mechanisms in which policy and politics become intermingled. Hence, the
policymakers faced with enormous complexity and volatility of policy process which
traditionally has been built up as on the standardized elitist and formalized legislative
procedures. In many countries, they refrained to meet this challenge and turned back
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to the traditional style of governing which draws on the policy vs. politics dichotomy.
However, at the same time, the innovative approaches of agile and iterative logic
software development have become a benchmark experience for future innovations
and should be used in the design in the policy process.
The latter trend indicates that the application of crucial innovations in e-
technologies and instruments as an input of policy innovations would enable to
respond to those challenges of democratic development in a longer perspective. Those
innovations demonstrated in the current article are only selected examples. We intend
to demonstrate first of all possibilities of joint innovations in two rather different
sectors and to learn how such symbiosis would be developed in multiple other
dimensions and in longer time perspective.
In the first chapter, we give an overview of recent developments in the research
agenda on e-governance. The second chapter indicates the nature of shifts in
interactive policymaking in the last decades. In the third to fifth chapters, we explore
main responses to the need of interactive government and e-technologies and software
development which have a great potential for the development of integrated responses
to those challenges.
1 Theoretical Frameworks of Modern Scientific Debates
Over the past two decades, one can state with confidence a significant increase in the
interest in the problems of digitalization and digital management. The attention of
political scientists, sociologists, specialists in the field of strategic management,
management theory, public policy, mass communications, etc. is concentrated on the
current state, prospects and foundations of the “digital government”. To coordinate
scientific and expert activities in this direction, joint international projects are being
created. Combining examples and cases from administrative practices, they strive to
cover all important aspects related to digitalization of management processes, first of
all, to study strategies, principles and practices of digital management, the importance
of the Internet for government and society, to achieve a deeper understanding of the
concept and possibilities of “digital democracy” as well as problems associated with
the translocation of public services on the Internet. For example, the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is financing a special series -
OECD digital government studies, dedicated to the introduction of digital
technologies in public administration in various regions of the world [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. In
different countries of the world, many studies devoted to the above problems is
constantly growing [see, for example, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. The works of specialists in
the field of mass media and political communications deal with the diverse problems
associated with the analysis of the importance of digital and social marketing for
management processes, the dynamics of emerging markets, forms and methods of
social policy, in particular, how digital media and wireless communications,
especially mobile phones and social networking platforms provide specific
opportunities for transforming various sectors of public policy, economics
and culture. One of the main research topics is the impact of social media
International Conference "Internet and Modern Society" (IMS-2020). CEUR Proceedings 303
on consumer behaviour through the use of digital marketing methods [12, 13, 14, 15,
16, 17].
The fact that the study of the role of digital technologies in the structure of modern
mass communications is not limited to purely pragmatic aspects is evidenced, for
example, by Alberto Romele’s recently published work Digital Hermeneutics:
Philosophical Investigations in New Media and Technologies (2020). It undertakes an
“ontological understanding” of digital technologies as “creative machines”. In
particular, Romele notes that today the boundaries between real and virtual, of course,
are becoming more transparent. The human imagination has its analogue in the digital
dynamics of articulation between databases and algorithms [18, cf.: 19].
Particular attention is paid to the implementation of digital governance principles
in local government structures. For example, traditional urban planning has advanced
significantly due to technological developments. New technological advances have
created a new form of urban planning called e-planning, which combines the
traditional elements of urban planning with information and communication
technologies. However, as Carl Nunez Silva’s Handbook of Research on E-Planning
emphasizes, despite rapid progress in the professional world, the research on the use
of ICT in urban planning remains extremely scarce and minimal [20]. This
circumstance is also noted in a comprehensive study by David Holdstock on the
problems of strategic planning in local government systems [21]. To compensate for
this gap at the theoretical level, scientists, using the method of comparative analysis
of specific situations in different countries and regions, set an important task to solve
the problem of bridging the gaps between the federal, regional and municipal levels of
government and to offer practical political solutions to promote municipal “e-
governments” [22, 23,24].
As noted above, despite the high costs, many initiatives and projects in the field of
“e-government” do not live up to expectations and systematically fail. This is
because, although such projects were mainly focused on technical aspects, quality of
service, usability and theoretical developments aimed at transforming management
using ICTs, they had a limited impact on practice. Here are still gaps in the scientific
literature related to the analysis of the failures of digitalization management projects,
the lack of a deeper understanding of the reasons for the decline in citizens’ trust in
the government and scientifically developed hypotheses explaining how the state can
solve this problem using digital technologies. A key study by the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) confirms that in industrialized
countries, public confidence in governments has continued to decline over the past
few decades [25]. Other studies show that a similar phenomenon can be observed in
many other regions of the world, including the countries of the Middle East, North
Africa, East Asia and Latin America. Although there is currently extensive literature
on the analysis of declining confidence in governments in various regions of the
world, several scholars insist on the need for further research to better understand this
phenomenon [26, 27, 28, 29, 30]. Besides, there is no agreement on a common set of
factors that contribute to lowering the trust and confidence of people in their
governments.
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For example, one of the factors that were identified as the reason is the decrease in
the efficiency of their work. Another factor is growing inequality among the
population [31].
Similar results are often found in studies on the effectiveness of new digital
technologies and management. Although digital governance initiatives have long been
implemented in most parts of the world and are already at a fairly “advanced stage”,
citizen confidence in governments remains a challenge. Moreover, several works cite
numerous facts indicating that only a few of the implemented initiatives have
achieved a real transformation of management (that is, fundamental changes in the
way the government performs the basic functions in terms of achieving a marked
increase in productivity and efficiency) [32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37].
Studying the processes of the impact of digital technologies on power structures,
some scientists emphasize that in the scientific literature there is no single definition
of the term “power transformation” [38]. In many works, this term refers to increasing
operational efficiency and changes in the process, structure, lines of power, focus,
power, etc. [38, 39, 40, 41]. Some researchers consider the transformation of power to
be the most important stage in the development of digital management [42]. M.
Janssen and W. Shu define “transformational management” as “transparent,
accountable, efficient and flexible” [43]. Transformation of management is often
studied exclusively in terms of public services that stimulate confidence in the
authorities and is much less focused on what role ICT plays in transformational
processes.
2 The shift towards interactive policy process
In our recent article in Politex “Policy Analysis in uncertain and ambiguous context:
agenda for methodological pluralism” [44] the main conclusion was: the focus of
policymaking has shifted from the analytical design of policy content (policy program
and deliberate intervention’s plan) to the design and steering of policymaking arenas.
This was a deeply practical shift at the end of the XX century. Theories of the policy
process are generalisations of real practices of policymaking [45, 46, 47].
The science of policymaking largely refrained the presumption that policy is an
enterprise of creating order, achieving intended aims and re-engineering the activity
of social actors from the top and by elites assigned with powers. The latter could
expect that they can engineer processes if they command substantial powers as
sovereign holders of resources and means of compulsion. This remains today
increasingly at the level of rhetoric, which would be convincing because of high
capacity of mediatisation.
On the one hand, the policy becomes faced with high contingency because of
increasing complexity and fostered tempo of changes. It becomes obvious that social
substance and especially social transactions between individuals and between
individual’s networks and institutions have its own spontaneous (and largely
unpredictable, also in sense of positive surprises) logic of unfolding. This awareness
that maximum that we would hope to do is the adapt and harness changes means not
International Conference "Internet and Modern Society" (IMS-2020). CEUR Proceedings 305
the diminishing of the capacity of social actors. Rather reverse, because of the
successful solution of simple or brute social problems in advanced democracies policy
become increasingly faced with wicked issues, which are not possible to define and
solve because those are endless and eternal. We could at best to harness them, to
trigger and nudge [49] actors. Foucault defined this level of policy development as the
normalisation [48], i.e. as a state of affairs in a domain (let say traffic or community
safety) which consist of huge number interdependent and intermingled issues and
variables. For this reason, we cannot cause the expected change via direct
interventions and to reshape the domain at our will, but only to give triggers to the
largely spontaneous re-arrangements.
On the other hand, not only the complexity and globalization were the main reason
for the emergence of wicked issues, but a changing role of individual actors in a
democratic society. Basic technologies and motivational factors (vs hygiene factors)
become to support individual-specific (instead of average mass) needs which presume
constitutive forms of social relations, i.e. active citizenship and everyday involvement
in determining policy inputs, as well as the responsive state. The very idea of
constitutive institutions would date back to Vico and Hegel. The Marxian concept of
capital was truly constitutive pattern of social relations. As an example would be the
social constructivist conception of learning and pedagogy, in which Piaget, Vygodsky
and Dewey played a central role in Europe and the US at the eve of XX century
[50,51]. We cannot by-pass also the relational-constitutive concept of power.
However, the Foucault conception of power relations [48] as the constitutive
mechanism of transactions (visavis exchange) was even in the 1980s a shadow. Today
the understanding of power as a productive constitutive mechanism (similarly to
capital) becomes the presumption of new avenues of democratic governance.
Further, we would focus on three blocks or dimensions of innovation in the modern
policy process where there is already provided certain digital solutions (digital info,
methods, an analytical requirement to software and methods). Those solutions
functionality could overlap and mutually complement specific hard- and software
infrastructure.
3 Contingency governance as normality
In Mary Douglas classical group-grid theory the hierarchy, market (exchange) and
community were presented as archetypical patterns of modern governance [52].
However, the fourth quadrant of cross-tabulation – the pattern of fatalism or social
insulation - has remained largely unexplained. This was interpreted as the pattern in
which individuals are atomized, surrounded by chaos, but governed by the intensive
set of rules – like the prison, monastery or organisation in the crisis [52, 53].
However, the grid in post-modern society could be based also in norms, meanings or
digital networks and through the constructivist prism, those are presented as
continuously negotiated patterns. Digital infrastructure in this quadrant can diminish
the weakness of asymmetrical relations (domination or negative-sum games) and
increase their strength – providing scope for action that corresponds to the capacities
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and incentives of an actor. I.e. digital technologies would enable the maximal
“inclusion” of individual capacities and contribution of the networks, and hence, a
new type of solidarity, which is based on sustainable long-term wins. Thus, in our
time of digital technology, this pattern could be perceived as topological space which
could be integrated through voluntary transactions between individuals as well as
individuals and institutions. See upper left quadrant in figure 1. [Images from 51:96])
Fig. 1. Patters of transactions in different social space
This reminds our immediate past during CIOVID19, when we were “imprisoned” into
our homes, but were able to be integrated into high-level communication via the
internet and even carrying out regular lectures and seminars. Needless to say, I am
signing my bills and documents at home to trigger numerous transactions, events,
temporary action patterns with highly various partners. Topological space is
organized differently but could be easily constructed by digital technologies. I.e. this
is actually our social and political space in the XXI century. Government and
governance are not exceptions.
To act, we should explore and organise this space differently. As Prigogine and
Stengers demonstrated [54], this space should be conceived through the prism of
contingency, not order. Order is emerging out of chaos as a largely self-organising
process. So, we are living firstly in the context of market failures. New institutional
economics teaches us how to achieve positive-sum transactions and how to
institutionalise our transactions [55]. We cannon in this context to conceive and
operate government as a completely organised hierarchy, but we should develop a
vision on governance that considers government failure as normality and as criteria of
normalisation (Foucault) [48]. Not only in the market but also the public sphere we
should conceive contingency (uncertainty, ambiguity, volatility) not as a disaster but
as an opportunity to constitute ourselves and our resources.
International Conference "Internet and Modern Society" (IMS-2020). CEUR Proceedings 307
In XVI century Hobbes explored the government as sovereign force to pacify (even
violently) or ramify chaos, to defend an individual’s freedom or better to say – their
lives. At the end of XX century, we had government and politics which were targeted
to overcome the market and government failures. In the XXI century – we should
become to master the contingency or failures’ governance.
This means the emergence of the model of network-patterned social space or
heterarchies. It is a highly contingent pattern, but at the same time, it enables a
maximum of self-organisation and mobilisation of individuals to constitute via
transactions their capacities. The organisational learning is such kind of transactive
relational pattern, and we could live with contingency as soon as in all our
transactions we are ready to learn. It’s an opportunity of renewable resource
generation, like weak ties or images (prestige); but these patterns highly probably fail.
Digital technology enables us to build up this topological space, to predict and
recognize those failures.
Governance in these conditions is steering via networks as heterarchies, i.e.
metagovernance without direct domination. As Foucault says “the conduct of the
conduct”, or steering the big game which is assisted voluntarily by our small games in
which we see our individual interests. Risks of failure increases, what is needed is a
shadow of hierarchy (Scharpf) [56] as a warrant of possible dissolution in the context
of failure. Network pattern has extreme complexity and unpredictability. The
institutionalisation of networks presumes mechanism of negotiated rules (orders) and
meanings or cognitive frames [57] In this context the focus of policymaking is not
targeted so much on the development plan or program, although we as actors should
have the action scenarios in any way; central focus of policymaking becomes the
communication or dialogical construction of joint understanding through adequate
communication. The communication is understood here not as an exchange of
information but as the construction of joint meaning. Reflective communication could
harness the extremely high-level conflicts and incompatibilities of people, who would
not like to be any more the mass of similar pieces. This is also the new content of
politics – to make those conflicts predictable.
Hence, the second role of governance (as meta-governor, as director of the big
game) is to “switch on” networks and to switch back hierarchies (or strict disciplinary
powers) in case of failure. The art of governance is the capacity of balancing between
those ends. A completely new phenomenon like the COVID-19 pandemic and hybrid
war presumes this capacity already. Northern Europe has managed to develop such
capacity already.
Policymaking in this context is not the intervention (and politicians as creators) and
even not as the solution of problems. This could be a case for simple issues. You
cannot prevent or even reduce immigration by the high wall at state borders! At best
you could start to know what is going on and what we should do at that moment
collectively if we do not will to lose and crumble. I.e. the primary task of policymaker
is the mediation of continuous dialogue between actors who should develop ad hoc
responses. Policy actors could promote the unfolding the problem situation to identify
and define interactively possibilities to adapt or to respond to the context or to trigger
or harness of processes. This is summarised in Checkland’s soft systems theory [58]
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and Schön and Rein design rationality and learning in the policymaking [57]. Or, as
Ch. Winship [59] said: „You don't’ know where you are going, you might actually get
there“.
The case of digital innovation in managing this contingency. What would be the
digital support for networks governance and metagovernance? Our first hypothesis is
that blockchain technology would solve the same set of issues of transactions in
networks as it is presumed by the new institutionalism and networks theories. Several
important everyday transactions are ensured by this technology or its analogues
(voting, ID certifying, real estate reliable databases, health services provision ect.)
[60, 61]
This is the technology that makes possible individual’s direct transactions with all
constituencies of the network whereas metagovernor would be a guarantee that
transactions are correct and safe; when at the same time autonomy and openness and
impersonality (for others) of individual will be ensured. We expect also that based on
this technology it’s possible to reduce the miscommunication and legitimise the
transaction context between constituents, and in case of increasing trust the
transaction costs in networks could be lowered and reciprocity increased. Thus the
application of this technology would support the long term rationality of calculations
based on cooperative games and Pareto optimum without central intervention [62].
I.e. stable agreement or institutional patterns are not any more mediated, only
warranted by the governor. Those aspects are summarized in table 1 below.
Table 1. BCT as enabling governance mechanism
Governing Tools BCT opportunities
dimension
Aсcess Identify actors Free access, only technical capacity needed
Connect actors Decentralized: dispersed nodes, but the central store of info
Grant decision Decision right embedded in the network, irreversible but
rights openly revisable transactions
Transparency for all
Control Shared rules Transactions transparent via central consensus ledger rules
openly shared
Smart contracts: algorithms of rules and penalties for
transactions, automatic enforcement
Collaboration/ Info encrypted: opportunity of decentralized transactions
competitors Transparency: through central ledger visible, restraints to
opportunism
Consensus vs. Irreversible: initial transaction fixed, all changes visible
conflict
Incentives Motivate Transparency and decentralisation motivate to participate
participation
Motivate Smart contracts which are ensured by general rules and
specific actions sanctions that are enforced automatically
Facilitate General rules as preconditions for trust promotes interest in
innovative interaction and cooperation
outputs
Source: adapted from [61]
International Conference "Internet and Modern Society" (IMS-2020). CEUR Proceedings 309
The other hypothesis is that BCT would support the holographic principles of
organizing. Holographic structuring is characteristic for open learning organisations
and widely used currently in the policy analysis [63]. It is the other angle of the
topologic or relational organisation of a networks’ space. This conceptual issues
would be subject to further discussion.
4 Agile and iterative policy design
Principles of the agile and iterative process come from the world of technology
innovations, especially from software development. [64] In the policy sciences (as
well as in art sciences) it is known as design rationality in handling wicked problems
[57, 65] It means that the policy development is similar to software development or
sculpture design: as the dialogue between the designer and its product or between
provider and client in which the formation of product’s format is simultaneously
practical innovation and cognition of own needs and contextual possibilities. Already
Rittel and Webber [66] pictured this as a solution of wicked problems. I.e. policy
design is simultaneously multi-actor reflective communication, cognition and action-
based innovation. This is a profoundly iterative process in all in all dimensions, levels
and time points, and is a never-ending process (as complete mess). This pattern is
demonstrated in a very simple form in figure 2. [60 pg.15] which is the result of the
empirical study of car’s door design. Usually, the policy dialogue is much complex
and multidimensional - in one arena there could be dozens of “designers” and in one
domain there could be a few arenas in different tiers of governance [67].
Fig. 2. The pattern of the iterative innovation process
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Policy analysts have elaborated rather sophisticate conception of such critical or better
to say unfolding and practice-based dialogue [68,69], which contains three stages:
dialogue (learning of mutual listening or hearing others), debate (learning of
argumentation) and negotiation (reaching ad hoc patterns of compatible interest). All
those capacities of policymaking are practical. Policymaking becomes similar to the
process where small kid, who cannot still speak, is learning via trials and errors to
handle the e-tablet to listen video-clips. True, modern politicians are as a rule not yet
so clever in a practical sense.
The theory of critical dialogue [see overview: 70] dates back to Dewey [50] and
Mead/ Bulmer) symbolic interactionism, Gadamer’s theory of fusion of horizon’s,
and on Bateson/ Goffman concept of cognitive frames, which was first formulated in
the policy analysis by Schön, Rein [57] concept of action-framing. This understanding
explores the policymaking process as practical communication of meanings between
actors which command different “languages”.
The case of digital innovation in policy design (1). Such a complicated process
of critical dialogue is not possible to organise sustainably without sophisticated
methods and software support. This method was developed by German engineer
Horst Rittel [71] which later was adapted into digital format (64, 72). It is the Issue-
Based Information System which principles have become a basis for different other
development of digital support to social innovation [73]. We applied this method in
the development of education steering network in Rapla county in Estonia in 2019-20
[74].
This is a sophisticated web-based instrument and method of steering of critical or
reflective dialogue, which enable firstly, to develop the context of critical listening,
secondly, to direct the argumentation towards well-structured logic of reasoning
(argumentation culture and logic), and thirdly to save into collective memory and to
reproduce in integrated form all the semiotic chain (Pierce) of debate. This enables to
make the discourse into transactive and reflective: it enables us to observe yourself
via the eyes of the audience and to observe one’s actual performance in the context.
This enables also mutually to learn and to discover new dimensions of actors as well
as a context which initially was out of reach of all participants. Participants could
figuratively to say “unpack” the initial problem situation into components which are
unfolding and revealing, and enable to reach the points of compatibility or mutual
fit1. This process and its outcomes Winship [59] compares with the puzzling game.
The case of digital innovation in policy design (2). The use of general
morphological analysis method in the policy analysis and harnessing wicked
problems in the context of high contingency. General Morphological Analysis [75] is
the non-quantified problem structuring method (PSM) and an inference model which
strives to represent the total problem space, and as many of the potential solution to
the given problem as possible.
1
About compatibility logic: If you can tell me why you say that plan A is great, and I
understand your judgments, you have succeeded in objectifying your space of judgment to me.
And although I might not share your judgment and might not be convinced, I understand you
now. (Horst Rittel 1972)
International Conference "Internet and Modern Society" (IMS-2020). CEUR Proceedings 311
A morphological field is constructed by setting the parameters against each other,
in parallel columns, representing an n-dimensional configuration space. “Solution
space” is synthesized by a process of internal cross-consistency assessment (CCA),
and through pair-wise comparisons a cross-impact matrix forms. Such an inference
model ensures that any parameter (or multiple parameters) can be selected as "input",
and any others as "output". This is not a kind of causal matrix but a framework matrix
to select and focus any pattern of variables. “With computer support, the field can be
turned into a virtual laboratory with which one can designate initial conditions and
examine alternative solutions, or conversely, designate alternative solutions to find
the conditions that could generate such solutions.” [76 p. 6).
5 The Institutionalisation of Policy Networks
How it’s possible to the institutionalisation of transactions in networks which are in
the process of unfolding and constitution? Already Karl Weick spoke not about the
organisation as a noun but about organizing as the verb. In institutional terms, this
means a question: how to support mutual constitutive relations between citizens and
institutions to ensure the positive-sum game of outputs. Here we should expect that
Easton’s classical input-output model and of formal/ official representational politics
would work only in a very general or symbolic terms [78].
Foucault’s biopolitics or policy which is targeted to the capacity-building of
(productive) citizens should be supplemented with relational (and at least
disciplinary) power (and policy) mechanisms. This mechanism must ensure
continuous feedback mechanisms between citizens and institutions. Institutions
should not only enforce policies but also should be able to trigger incentives of policy
responsive behaviour of citizens (in environmental, health promotion, SME business,
career development etc. policies). Foucault sees here the governmentality trend [48],
i.e. institutionalisation of politics in everyday patterns of individual behaviour. Colin
Hay [79] provides a new-institutional explanation to patterned contingency and
demonstrates the new ontology of institutions. We demonstrated [44] that interactive
policy process, which presumes merely citizens’ participation is not sufficient for the
institutionalisation of network patterns under contingency. The policy should become
transactive: input-output mechanisms should be continuous along all the policy cycle,
from the stage of problem definition up to implementation and output evaluation. I.e.
to ensure the quality of our social space we should be continuously involved into
politics and policymaking, like already today in many countries in the health
promotion, in transaction cost reduction, community safety development, and giving
feedback as consumers of public goods in the framework of relational contracting etc.
The case of digital innovation. To ensure such continuous citizens – institutions
transactions the - ISI - Information systems integration should be designed and build
up [80]. Currently, ISI is already applied in some areas of public service, like health
services. ISI could connect continuously all constituents of a network pattern and can
integrate their hard and software developments and integrate a huge variety
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of individual-level transactions [81]. In building up ISI one should give solutions to
the following problems:
− To bound together with various autonomous organisation’s inputs, outputs and
throughputs and at the same time to retain their technical specific and autonomy;
− Technical solutions are needed to balance the networks units’ autonomy needs,
their heterogeneity and smooth distribution for end-users;
− To ensure direct communication (contacts) in the topological space to make
transactions between them possible, but without their physical proximity and
catch in a topographic space. This is a case for glocalisation of public services.
− To mobilise information and resource input from individual users (i.e. taxes) but
also to combine different capacities of units to solve ad hoc individual (patient,
student, family, consumer group etc.) issues, especially in a crisis.
− To make contacts with citizens available in case of crisis and to certify every
transaction (paying taxes, receiving service).
− Technical solutions are capable to ensure a full picture of a domain from the
access point of the individual user. This is a step towards holographic principles
of organizing.
In Conclusion
Three main challenges have been analysed in our article. Firstly, it is a need for
governing in a highly uncertain institutional and social environment. Secondly, a need
to develop agile and interactive policy style to harness wicked policy problems.
Thirdly, to develop reliable modes of institutionalisation of governing networks. In
our analysis, we tried to find out what innovations in the IT sector would support
responses to those specific challenges and how these IT and software solutions would
meet concrete innovations in the public policy. We revealed extensive affinities of IT
solutions and needs of public policy innovations identified in the article. We focused
on the one hand on two ongoing innovations streams in IT development: opportunities
provided by Block-chain technology and Information System Integrations which
contain huge possibilities to contribute to the “flattening” the topological space of
governance and providing a technological framework for social as well as institution-
building transactions to make them increasingly constitutive. On the other hand, we
identified and analysed opportunities provided by two software solutions - Issue-
Based Information System and General Morphological Analysis – which are already
largely applied can contribute to the process of policy design. We consider those
cases as an intermingling of IT solutions and governance needs at the level of
institutional and policy design. However, opportunities for their application in
governance innovation practices are still waiting for further studies
In the article, we proceeded from the premise that a “transcendental” growth of
information and communication technologies (ICT) around has triggered a
fundamentally new stage in the restructuring of governing mechanisms and processes
aimed at a radical replacement of traditional ways of governing with a new modus
operandi both at the level of intellectual potential and in the field of purely technical
International Conference "Internet and Modern Society" (IMS-2020). CEUR Proceedings 313
means. With the penetration of the Internet into all spheres of public life, the need for
digitalization and electronic control is constantly growing. New technologies offer the
possibility of significant changes in the provision of public services as part of public
administration. In order to ensure that all the advantages of digitalization are revealed
is the combination of strategic initiatives with the ability to provide results that
indicate the effectiveness of the governance. The sustainable nature of this process
will largely depend on the coherence of political incentives and initiatives across the
entire spectrum of public policy and administration. We tried also to explore which
new opportunities are provided by the “digital government” for connecting citizens to
the Internet and to modernize the sphere of public services?
However even more important issue is the active promotion of the principles of
“digital democracy” and a new vision of the tasks of public policy. This implies a
need for theoretical solution to the following fundamental problem: how the processes
of digitalization and digital governance ensure the effectiveness of representative
democracies in terms of new opportunities of the central government policymaking
and citizen participation in decision-making at all tiers of governance.
Discourses on post-democracy [82] and anti-politics and de-politicisation of
governance [78] on the one hand, and between the right wing conservatism versus
liberalism, on the other hand, have indicated obviously the failure of classical
Eastonian policy input-output model in modern liberal democracies to ensure its
legitimacy. Recent COVID crisis in Europe indicated that government has either
extremely limited capacity to govern in the context of high fragmentation of social
space when everyday institutional patterns are broken down. This is because
enhancing the sphere of collective choice and self-organized actions supported by
different means of e-transactions in networks weakly fits with the official layer of
modern representative democracy. It means that governance institutions should
enhance the dispersion of power centres and draw on relational-constitutive power
mechanisms in which network organisations and transactions prevail. As we
demonstrated governance may extensively rely on different innovation in digital
technology and software development.
Our main message was that today the relativist liberal democracy, as well as
conservative rigidity, are both highly normative and highly politicised responses to
rather untraditional and messy societal problems to be solved in order to retain
already achieved quality of life across different borders. We expect that at the
moments of high uncertainty and unpredictability those normative lighthouses could
direct us to endless and incompatible rhetoric [79]. Instead, we expect that in such a
context, the most reliable way is to draw on critical pragmatist angle, which could
integrate different research and innovation strategies in different domains of activities,
first of all in promoting jointly agile and interactive policymaking in different
institutional-cultural contexts [44].
Acknowledgement. The paper was prepared with the support of the Russian Foundation for
Basic Research and the Expert Institute for Social Research, project No. 20-011-31349 “Liberal
values in the modern world: the main trends of transformation”. It was supported by the
Estonian Research Council with a personal grant “PUT1485 A relational approach to governing
314 Young Scientists Symposium
wicked problems” and EU project Horizon 2020 857366 “Migration and Integration Research
Network”.
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