Positioning Citizens as Agents of Governance: MyQ2

Krems.
The final speaker in this session at EDEM 2010 is Matthew Allen, who examines the Queensland State Government's MyQ2 initiative. He notes that e-government is about government, citizens, political governance systems, and governmentality (through which we make sense of government). Additionally, we are talking both about the past in governance, the present moment of development, and our visions for the future. In e-government, then, there is both a structural quest for a model of connecting the four elements, and a rapid temporality that aims to move through the trajectory for development. This also mirrors our debates around the introduction of other technologies, from automobiles to television.

The Internet appears especially mutable and flexible, though - it works for both the governed and the governing, and all stakeholders in between, and provides for new connections between the actors within the governmental system. Through this, governmentality extends into a broader range of the aspects of life.

MyQ2 is an example for this. The site is part of a wider strategy called Towards Q2, a relatively conventional, government 1.0-style campaign to canvas future directions for the state; in that context, it invites citizens to select and commit to various desirable actions - living more healthily, helping to protect the environment, participating in civic activities, etc. This creates an interesting interplay between the self as an object of government, and as a self-determined actor responding to government activity. For example, MyQ2 users can choose and commit to specific government-suggested activities, but may also personalise them (thus adding their own active and personal touch), but are then also reminded by the site - i.e. the government - of their commitments, which are also tracked by the government.

Social media challenge government - engaging with them is a risk for a traditionally risk-averse institution. Often e-government projects ask people to provide input so the government can act on their behalf; here, however, the site asks people to act upon issues set by the government (to act on its behalf, as agents of government). In some ways, the site is a very democratic one, then, asking citizens to accept their responsibilities - by making people servants of government goals, then, it also connects them more closely to government activity (but also places them more strongly as subjects of government as the goals are set by the government in the first place).

The interactions that sites like this enable are both political and bureaucratic at the same time, then - so we need to ask more questions about governments adapting their processes to information technology as much as responding to citizens' uses.

Technorati : EDEM 2010, MyQ2, Queensland, e-democracy, governance, government, participation
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