6. Citizen participation

Online engagement, consultation,³⁵ and eDemocracy all form part of the Australian Government’s current digital strategy. This ranges from the use of technology in the co-design of services, to wider digitally enabled public consultation methodologies such as citizen juries. The Australian Government Commission of Audit has noted these as areas where there is scope for future development.

“Improved collaboration among government agencies on data and infrastructure can facilitate innovation and increased productivity. Shared service platforms can reduce duplication, achieve economies of scale and reduce support and maintenance overheads.

Government collects and holds a large amount of data for administrative purposes. Greater use could be made of this data to inform policy and decision-making and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of programme and service delivery.

Emerging digital technology, including cloud-based services, offers great potential for the government to improve online service delivery and public interaction. E-Government also has the potential to deliver significant efficiencies in service delivery.”³⁶

There is clearly a move towards re-conceptualizing the user’s role in e-government as that of an active collaborator, rather than as a recipient/client to whom services are delivered. However, recent studies reveal that there is no explicit mention of gender analysis in the requirements to be followed by government agencies when designing their portals and online services. The consideration of the participant-user is strictly a gender-neutral one, as Martin and Goggin (forthcoming) highlight, in their analysis of e-government frameworks in Australia:

“There is no explicit mention of gender awareness or analysis in the mandatory requirements for Australian Government agencies to consider when developing and maintaining their online presence, or in the Government 2.0 Primer, which provides participatory scenarios and tools for government agencies. The Access and Equity in Online Information and Services policy has linguistic and cultural diversity as its meter of accessibility and disadvantage. It also mentions disability, but again gender is not discussed”.³⁷

The Australian Government Digital Transformation Office in the months following this analysis has established a suite of policies and guidelines for government agencies. Whilst continuing to remain silent on the issue of gender it might be argued that risks of gender inequality associated with digital modalities are addressed through its Digital Service Standard.³⁸ The Standard outlines a user centric agile development methodology supported by design guides, which addresses the importance of intermediaries.