E-government and Social

Media: How can social

media increase
transparency?
ATHANASIA DASKALOPOULOU (ATHANASIA.DASKALOPOULOU@POSTGRAD.MBS.AC.UK)
FEI WU (FEI.WU-5@POSTGRAD.MANCHESTER.AC.UK)
LARASTRI KUMARALALITA (LARASTRI.KUMARALALITA@POSTGRAD.MANCHESTER.AC.UK)
ZOLBOO LKHASUREN (ZOLBOO.LKHASUREN@POSTGRAD.MANCHESTER.AC.UK)

Table of contents
Introduction

Social media and transparency

The ladder of accountability

Indonesia - Governor of Jakarta

China - Micro blogging

Conclusion






Introduction
Various nations, now more than ever, have adopted access-to-
information laws and laws that increase government openness
Open access to government information will:
Increase citizen participation
Increase trust in the government
Prevent corruption
E-government:
Reduces the contact between corrupt officials and citizens
Increases:
Transparency
Accountability
Introduction
Government agencies use social media in order to:
Improve the quality of government services
Increase citizen engagement

Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Blogs, Wikis and Mashups:
Are widely used
Have influenced the way people interact with each other and with their
governments
Provide governments with an attractive and easy way to interact with their
citizens
Offer many-to-many interaction

We posit that social media can be used in order to increase transparency
Social Media and Transparency
With social media, both governments and citizens have a lot to gain:

Open communication
Connecting the citizens with their government
Citizens can:
Share and access information easily
Form communities
Direct interaction with citizens
The Ladder of Accountability to
Assess Transparency Delivery
Transparency is achieved when the e-government system offers a two way interaction
with citizens and allows benchmarking of the public servants performance.

Step 3: - Accountability: reward & punishment

Step 2: - Transparency: two-ways interaction & benchmarking

Step 1: - Reporting: information dumping

Step 0: - Publication: providing basic information
Adapted from Heeks 2012
Indonesia - Governor of DKI Jakarta
Transparency of Budget through YouTube
October 2012: Jokowi-Ahok the governor of
Jakarta started using YouTube to upload
internal meeting (Ardiansyah 2012)
PemprovDKI has more than:
148 videos
19 thousand subscribers
5 million views (Pemprov DKI YouTube
Account 2012)
Internal meetings are recorded and
published almost without any editing (Mimin
2012)
This initiative will:
increase transparency
assist citizens monitor the work of their leaders
quicker and easier
Visit on:
http://www.youtube.com/user/pemprovdki
Indonesia - Governor of DKI Jakarta
Transparency of Budget through YouTube
Citizens are able to:
Monitor the performance of the public servants
from meeting to meeting
Compare it against pre set benchmarks
Interact with the officials
We classify this initiative at step:
Two: Transparency

Lesson from this case:
Facilitating public opinion
Educating citizens on how government works
Changing the way monitoring government

"I told Public Relation Department, if it is
uploaded to YouTube, upload it in its entirety so
people know what was discussed during the
meeting, how their money was spent."
(Ahok cited in AsiaViews 2012)

China - Micro blogging as The
Gate for Transparency
Chinese government:
Has built a firewall to prevent the access to foreign social media
Has strong relationship with the local social media such as Sina Weibo, Renren etc

Government agency started building their own microblogging accounts in order to:
Disclose government information
Enhance citizen participation
Improve service delivery

There are more than 19 thousand certified accounts by government agencies and
officials.
Every two weeks the Sina Weibo will publish a case study called Example Analysis of
gov.weibo.com, that will share the governments experiences on using microblogging.

We should ask
the people
what they need,
hear the voice
of them, and
concern about
the sufferings of
the masses of
them. Attention
to the network
of public
opinion,
especially
microblogging.
-----
(Government
China 2012)
the 2012 report on
work of the
government of
Shandong province

China - Micro blogging as The
Gate for Transparency
Limitations:
The government controls to a certain extent microblogging
There are sensitive words that cannot be used either by citizens or officials
Social media can facilitate change but cannot bring revolution

We classify this initiative at step:
Zero: Publication

Lesson from this case
changing the way in monitoring government
social media is not a panacea for increasing transparency

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content, please
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Conclusion
A number of nations use social media in various ways:
Countries such as Indonesia use them to:
Inform citizens about the governments activities
Receive feedback
In countries such as China:
Transparency initiatives still lag behind even though individual agencies and
officials use them, since the published content is controlled by the government

Social media provide governments the potential to achieve openness and
accountability
The citizens can monitor the governments activities and give feedback which
governments can use in order to reduce corruption
Even more roles for social media in government transparency will develop in the
future

Reference
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Questions?