Transparency and Teledemocracy: Issues from an ‘E-consultation’
Article published in: Journal of Information Science 27(4), 2001, pp. 187-198
Angus Whyte, Ann Macintosh
International Teledemocracy Centre, Napier University
Transparency is a term common to distributed computing, communications studies and other
fields that information science draws upon. It’s everyday uses and connotations are carried over
into these domains, coalescing around some common issues relevant to knowledge
management. Transparency is also a common term in political theory and practice, and one that
has been associated with teledemocracy; the application of information and communication
technology (ICT) to support democratic processes. For example, ‘greater transparency’ is
commonly used to justify the use of ICT by governments to consult with the governed, the topic
of the work in progress reported here.
Transparency is an abstract benefit, perhaps more so than ‘knowledge management’ itself. It
promises gain for all, but risks being lost between expectations first raised by political and
managerial ‘spin’ and then deflated by the same corporate forgetting it is meant to address. The
paper explores some of this dangerous territory, reflecting on how everyday notions of
‘transparency’ relate to two current issues in knowledge management and social informatics.
Firstly, the design of systems to promote shared awareness of activity and identity, and secondly
the study of ICTs to illuminate the invisibility of the ‘social infrastructure’ they depend upon.
The paper briefly reviews uses of the term ‘transparency’, drawing on literature from the fields
mentioned above. The aim is to delineate dimensions of transparency that may help designers,
policy makers or citizens to evaluate what can or should be made transparent in the interplay
between technology and due political process. Ethnographic methods were used to document
outcomes of an “electronic consultation” project that contributed to a government consultation
of 11-18 year-olds in Scotland. A website “e-consultant” was developed, and its usage
monitored on-line and off-line, including in events leading up to a “Scottish Youth Summit”.
Using brief extracts from field notes, the web site itself, and audio and video transcripts of the
site in use, the paper will show how those participating in the consultation collaboratively
shared and managed awareness of their activities and identities. Reflecting on what was made
visible through the e-consultant site, and what was hidden by it, we will discuss the realised and
potential “transparency-enhancing” effects of this and similar prototypes. The discussion
focuses on the roles of intermediaries and social infrastructure in the project, illustrating the
trade-offs between transparently simple design, and transparency of information on the
collaboration between consultants (those doing the consulting) and consultees (those consulted).
Finally, indications are given of the direction of our ongoing research.
1. Introduction
Terminological confusion is bread and butter to legal theorists and practitioners, as well as a
prime concern of information scientists and knowledge managers. So while the focus of this
paper is on information and communication technologies (ICTs) designed to enhance the
transparency of public consultation practices, it is worth beginning with a cautionary note.
Should we expect transparency in governance to be defined unambiguously in the domain of
constitutional law we would soon be disappointed. Curtin [ 1 ] for example discusses it in
general terms of “access to information held by public authorities by both individuals and

legislative assemblies”, admitting that “it is a notoriously imprecise term and is to be understood
more as the expression of a political objective than anything else” [ibid.].
Transparency as a political project typically expresses aims “to enable effective participation in
the policy process itself by means of effective access to the deliberative process and voice
within it” [ibid. emphasis in original]. This fits neatly with what many see as the potential of
Internet-based technologies to enhance political transparency. We will briefly review in the first
half of this paper some of the literature articulating this potential. In the second half of the paper
we describe and critically reflect on our application of an internet-based “e-consultation”, part
of a government consultation with young people aged 11 to 18 years in Scotland. Our aims in
this were in keeping with the objective of using technology to provide effective access to the
deliberative process and voice within it.
Should we look on this as a technical or a political objective, then, or both? It seems safe to say
‘both’. But does that imply evaluating technical means against their political or their technical
ends, and on what basis would we tell the difference anyway? The problem of ‘enhancing
tranparency’ is framed politically and so must be answered by referring at least to political
practice, if not theory. Conversely though, to regard the outcomes of technology implementation
solely in terms of political ends would miss both the political and technical nature of design
deliberations as the means to those ends. Attending to these deliberations would also give voice
to the parts played by particular technologies in the orchestration of policy-making practice. To
summarise these issues: What forms of work produce techno-political objects that ‘enhance
transparency’, what do we mean by that, in what circumstances can it be said to happen, and in
whose interests?
This multi-part question can be approached from various domain-specific and theoretically-
informed directions, all pointing across the famous divide between the social and technical
disciplines. There is no lack of socio-technical bridges available, but (to begin to answer the
question) viewing teledemocracy research as enquiry into ‘techno-political’ objects implies
saying that these objects are at least socio-technical, if not something qualitatively more
complex. But having said that, our problem is that we come across paradoxes that differ
depending on which direction we move from the social to the technical. In this paper we will
first look at one paradox, then argue that it is more productive to view it from a different angle,
even though this brings a different paradox into view.
The first (apparent) paradox is that in the social sphere the term ‘transparency’ seems to be used
for completely different ends than in the technical sphere. In political and everyday discourse
‘transparency’ is a quality associated with openness, understanding, accountability and, perhaps
most of all, seeing through whatever barriers restrict our action or disguise that of others. But in
the discourse of distributed computing, on the conceptual basis of internetworking,
‘transparency’ refers to the maintenance of an illusion – that of “cyberspace”, a world famously
without boundaries – or at least only virtual ones.
It would be easy to dismiss this paradox by arguing that if virtual spaces and boundaries are
‘just an illusion’ then so what? They can be very useful ones, and is ‘enhancing political
transparency’ not a matter of negotiating which virtual boundaries to open up and which to
maintain or even create? That is a shortcut to the conclusions drawn here, but not a very useful
one because it says nothing about how to get there. The route taken in this paper involves
dismissing the idea that ‘transparency’ is essentially a different quality when viewed from
technical and social perspectives. It follows that enhancing transparency with technology is not
work that can be evaluated by looking at separate technical and social factors, but at varied
socio-technical working practices that differ in what kinds of work they make visible and when.
Our (second) paradox is that enhancing the transparency of some forms of work diminishes
others.