Use of ICT by Members of Parliament (original) (raw)

Members of parliament (MPs) have, like the majority of citizens in the European countries, increasingly taken up the use of information-and communication technology (ICT) as a part of their everyday work routines: in their information gathering, in dealings with parliamentary and party staff, in contacts with voters and citizens, organised interest groups, the media, etc. This use of ICT is likely to have an effect on both the volume and content of information-and communication flows between the MP and his/her political environment, and possibly also on the different roles of the MP. However now little research has been carried out in this field, and not much is known about the changes that the different uses of ICT have brought about in the work routines, roles, political agenda setting and decision making processes in which MPs are involved. For this reason a group of European researchers under the auspices of COST A14, a European research network on "Government and Democracy in the Information Age" funded by the European Union Cooperation on Science and Technology, 1 decided to undertake a comparative study of the use of ICT by MPs. A common survey questionnaire was developed for surveys including all MPs in the countries, which decided to join the Parliamentary project. These countries were Austria, Norway, Portugal, the Netherlands and Denmark, where surveys were done in 2001, followed by Scotland and Germany where surveys were done in 2002. Also, a survey was conducted in Switzerland, using a similar but not identical survey format. In some of the countries a number of follow-up qualitative interviews with MPs were done in order to elaborate on answers and correlations that seemed unclear or contradictory in the survey responses, and to bring in perspectives that might have been neglected in the surveys. Also, attempts were made to have surveys conducted in France and the UK, in order to bring in more of the bigger European countries in the study. Unfortunately, these attempts were unsuccessful. The results of these surveys are presented in the different articles in this volume. In order to bring forward the comparative perspective the results are not presented country by country. Instead the articles are organised thematically, apart from an introductory article by Hoff, Kleinsteuber and Fries giving an overall presentation of research questions, methodology, data and some of the main results. Thus, in the second article, Filzmaier, Stainer-Hämmerle and Snellen elaborate on the institutional framework of the project, spelling out the internal and external factors that could be seen to influence the appropriation of ICTs by MPs. Narrowing the analyses down to a comparison between Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark, different modes of utilisation of ICTs are analysed. It is concluded that the Internet is used more frequently for internal communication (with party and parliamentary staff) than for external communication (with voters, lobby groups, etc.), and that political campaigning and marketing on the Internet is not very common and has a low status, but might be on the rise. Concerning differences between the three countries in the volume and type of ICTs used, such factors as the structure of the 1 COST A14 ran from 1998 to 2003, involved around 70 researchers from 16 different European countries, and was funded by approximately 300.000 Euro.