Web-Based Participatory Democracy: Findings from Italy - Information and Communication Technologies in Public Administration - page 88

to view web participation as a long-term investment. Although initially fulfilled
in the presence of a low budget and with a small staff, the Dialogue soon led to
additional costs due to the need to manage a constant increase in interactions and
to deal with emergencies. As a consequence, the staff dedicated to the Dialogue
almost doubled in 1 year. Additional expenses come from the workflow delay. As
already argued, a substantial and systematic increase in citizen comments might
lead public powers to strive to satisfy those who file comments instead of select-
ing the policy option that best fulfills the statutory mandate or public interest
(Coglianese, 2005).
What is particularly striking is the fact that, as argued by many scholars, public
administrations could not noticeably reduce their costs through the web (Wang &
Bryer, 2009). With specific reference to the Italian case, in 2012, the School of
Management of the Polytechnic Institute of Milano estimated that the introduc-
tion of a system of electronic payment, the full implementation of e-procurement,
and the digitalization of the management and conservation of administrative acts
would allow Italian public administrations to save €20 billion in 3 years.
There is not a single successful strategy to limit the expenses. Public institu-
tions interested in e-democracy can decide only on a case-to-case basis. In 2012,
the Italian government relied on the usage of the web, as well as on what the Aspen
Institute has defined “soft power,” namely, the use of communication built on per-
suasion trough transparency and information, to secure public support of interests,
values, and policies (Bollier, 2003).
4.9 Conclusions: Dilemmas of e-Participation in italy
Sections 4.1 through 4.5 of this chapter has touched on the intense debates dating
from the early phases of widespread Internet use. As Section 4.1 has explained,
this debate involved academics, media outlets, and politicians who believed that
the web would herald a new age of democratic participation. Many, at that time,
pointed to the web's capacity to host deliberative dialogues among large groups
of individuals. Others focused on the capacity of the web to host rapid real-time
interactions and described it as a beneficial mechanism for citizens and their politi-
cal leaders to interact more regularly and openly. The effects, they implied, would
be threefold. First, citizens would be better able to communicate their needs and
preferences to their political representatives. Second, having received this input,
these representatives would make better decisions that more accurately reflected the
will of the people, and citizens, in turn, would develop a greater sense of trust in
their political system. Third, drawing on the concept of “digital natives”—a term
that some have applied to the millennial generation, given the ubiquitous role that
ICTs tend to play in the lives of those born from the early 1980s onward—authors
argued that the Internet would prove particularly potent as a means of engaging