Parliament and democracy in the 21st century: the impact of information and communication technologies.

• Author: Alcock, Reg

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have affected all aspects of life in the industrialized world. They have changed the ways in which we communicate, the way we create and share knowledge, how we organize ourselves, and most importantly ICTs have profoundly affected the speed at which change occurs. Consider the rate at which we create knowledge.

In the period from 1500BC to 1945AD total world knowledge doubled three times. From 1945 to the present it is estimated to have doubled 14 times. Some of the largest companies in the world today did not exist thirty years ago. Some of the most secure, most dominant companies in existence then, are no longer in business.

It is not surprising that Government and Parliament wil be affected by these changes. They are archetypical information organizations, and yet rather than being enhanced by these very dramatic changes they have both been diminished. The major government reform movements of the last thirty years have served to remove services from government. Every time pressure for change has grown in a specific sector, the institutional response has been to "privatize". While this may have met the immediate need it has also allowed government to escape the pressure for true institutional reform.

In Parliament the situation is much the same. As the rate of change increases, the demand for faster responses becomes more intense. Over time the institutional response has been to move authority from the Commons to the Executive. Bills are written with clauses enabling regulation rather than defining action in legislation. Increasingly public services are removed from oversight by Parliament. Process changes are introduced in order to speed things through the House. Time-allocation, a process that did not exist prior to 1972, has become routine. Television, another form of ICT, has shifted public focus off of Parliament and onto Cabinet and ultimately the Leader, off debate and onto conflict with the result that the centre necessarily assumes more control in order to manage a more chaotic environment.

The question that we must now ask is: Do the same tools (ICTs) that created the problems also contain the solution? Much as I believe and would like to proclaim a resounding YES, I am forced by experience to be more cautious. The changes enabled by ICTs are neither linear nor incremental. They are the result of use, examination, modification, more use, more examination, more modification, etc...