Like their prehistoric forebears, academicians survive by seeking and gathering. But instead of edible plants, academicians seek and gather information. Because of this, electronic communication has been a boon to university research. But the spread of this form of communication has been quite uneven across the various disciplines. Physicists have led the way, as exemplified by the recent development of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN.
Among those who concern themselves with public policy, the spread of electronic communication has been both slow and uneven. Some of us are just beginning to use electronic mail, some are venturing into somewhat more sophisticated forms of communication while others are only now giving up their electric typewriters.
There is little doubt, however, that the increased use of electronic communication will have an impact on us. In contrast to those whose work is more abstract, policy researchers and policy makers can communicate directly with the objects of their study - the public itself. The new electronic media and their rapid spread into homes and offices, hold out the promise - and the danger - of greater communication between policymakers and those for whom policy is made.
The optimists among us see the evolution of a more tightly knit human community, characterized by a more sophisticated understanding of different viewpoints and easier access to information that can inform those viewpoints. Ideally, the public will be willing and able to find policy analyses more complete than those appearing on the nightly news - and will be willing and able to comment on those analyses.
A considerably less rosy scenario is one in which policymaking power becomes even more concentrated than it currently is. If electronic communication remains limited to the small, highly unrepresentative group of current users, only those users will be able to exploit its power and will therefore be able to push others to the margins of the policymaking process.
So we are uncertain about the likely effect of greater electronic communication on the extent of public participation in policymaking. Within the current Canadian policymaking community, however, we believe that the newer forms of communication will be able to create closer ties than were heretofore possible. Policymakers and public administrators might work more efficiently if they can communicate with a wider set of colleagues. Because this community is relatively wealthy and relatively well-educated, we can perhaps presume that it will be able to master the technology, given time and inclination. At the moment though, the sort of community we have in mind requires a "thick" set of electronic tools - encompassing several different levels of electronic sophistication - in order to meet the needs of users who are quite variable in their interests and quite variable in their technical competence.
At Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, we have laid the groundwork for a computer-based public policy "site" that can be a convenient electronic entry point for those interested in public policy, either in the academic community, in government agencies or in the general public. In this paper, we outline the current state of communication in the public policy community, the potential benefits of electronic communication, and the way in which we have gone about setting up VPAC, the Virtual Policy and Administration Community.
Links Within the Canadian Policymaking Community
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In this section, we briefly describe communication within the academic public policy community and between the academic policy community and government policymakers. Our primary concern is the nature of informal communication. We avoid what may be the more important and more controversial issue of how the general public communicates with the overall policymaking community.
By and large, the connections among those interested in Canadian public policy are rooted in geographic proximity. Several universities operate academic programs that teach students about public administration or public policy. Within each university, the physical proximity of other faculty provides the opportunity to discuss common research problems and to engage in collaborative research and consulting. Extramural academic connections generally arise informally and are sustained by participation in joint research projects, in annual conferences and in irregular symposia.
Academics often work in association with research groups formed by the various levels of government - task forces, Royal Commissions and so on. These research groups generally mix academic researchers with government officials (and public figures) so that there is fertile ground for the exchange of views. Another relevant institution is the Institute for Public Administration (IPAC). The membership of IPAC includes people from both academia and government agencies. At its annual conferences, and within regional working groups, IPAC members are able to forge working relationships with like-minded colleagues. Finally, there are a number of government efforts to involve academics directly in the public service. These efforts have resulted in academics spending periods of time working within the government, before returning to their "home bases."
Finally, a limited number of "think tanks" such as the Institute for Research on Public Policy, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Fraser Institute and the Public Policy Forum, bridge the boundary between government and academia with well-publicized studies of government policy that lead to academic-government dialogue.
The Promise of Electronic Communication
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Despite the presence of interpersonal networks, policy journals, conferences and interchanges, the web of tangible connections within the public policy community remains spotty and haphazard. Until recently, great physical distances, a relatively small economy and a dispersed population were factors inhibiting the formation of Canadian public policy community linkages, with no apparent solution in sight. Electronic communication, however, affords Canadians the opportunity to overcome this "communication deficit". While electronic communication cannot substitute perfectly for the more personal interaction provided by face-to-face meetings, it can be an important part of a "second-best" solution.
The Virtual Policy and Administration Community aspires to overcome spatial constraints electronically by using the speed and efficiency of electronic communication to connect universities, governments, other organizations and the people working in them. VPAC's function is to serve as a first class vehicle for the "second best" solution, through the provision of policy and administration information and resources. The aim of all of this activity is to lay a foundation for improved policymaking in Canada.
Framework Principles
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One important means of ensuring growth is to build a policy "site" with a framework in mind. The framework we have developed and its animating principles are sketched out in the sections below. One of our foremost aims in constructing VPAC is coherence, because we believe that coherence is essential to VPAC's becoming the primary electronic resource site for the public policy community. We want VPAC to be the anchor point around which the electronic public policy community can situate itself.
A coherent framework must be comprehensive, logical and interactive , in that it encompasses everything that members of the public policy community feel may assist them in their work, in that organizes "everything" in an intuitively appealing hierarchical fashion and in that it allows users to interact with each other and with developers. A site that is both comprehensive and logical has gone part way towards being accessible, especially when the set of intended user vary greatly in their technical expertise.. The final component, then, is interaction - a feedback loop so that users can communicate with builders, and thus become builders themselves, creating the fundamental aspects of "community" - responsiveness and accessibility. Some of the interactive components that can fulfil this requirement are also described in the sections below.
In the long term, we would like broad public participation - but that aim requires widespread public access to the Internet, access which does not yet exist. In the short run, then, we are trying to tighten the links among those who are currently active in the policymaking field. This incipient community includes academics and students in universities, practitioners in government agencies and those who work in "special interest" groups. Most, though not all, of those in this more narrow community do have Internet access. The task then becomes one of identifying what an information base should contain if it is to meet the needs of the community.
The information needs of this broad community can be divided into the following areas: means of realizing intellectual stimulation and partnerships; services enabling users to access information quickly; policy analysis materials; government information; academic program information; organizational/personal contact information; and employment leads. To get from planting the seeds to harvesting results in terms of value-added, VPAC has to address all of the above categories.
Priorities
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To date, VPAC is concentrating on achieving the necessary groundwork to flesh out the information needs identified above. This necessitates a concentration on areas defined as critical. The need for intellectual partnerships and stimulation is really the raison d'etre of the project. Therefore, efforts to address this need through the creation of an electronic mailing list that connects academics, students and government personnel has received top priority. But intellectual stimulation requires intellectual input, so policy research materials are also high on the list of priorities. The analytical content of these materials constitutes an important source of value-added. Consequently, one of the first WWW initiatives was to begin placing analytical pieces at the heart of the VPAC web site, a place called the 'Virtual Policy Shop'. The third component on our list of priorities, a 'Help Desk', will ensure that when users arrive, they will be able to access resources as quickly and efficiently as possible. Finally, in keeping with the emphasis on community building, interactive web components are planned for every corner of the web site.
The remainder of the information needs identified above will be addressed once the basic infrastructure is in place. In certain cases, these needs are satisfied to some degree by other web sites already in existence, requiring only a hypertext link to enable user access. For example, the Open Government Pilot provides links to federal government information currently available on-line, thereby constituting an important link on the VPAC web.
Getting Started: E-mail for Community Building
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Our aim of enhancing the existing policy community through the creation of a well-functioning electronic policy network requires a critical mass of people who are willing and able to communicate electronically. At a minimum, this requires access to the Internet and the ability to use electronic mail. The growing use of the Internet and of electronic communication is well-documented but "growing" does not mean "universal." In fact, those interested in Canadian public policy vary tremendously in their access to and use of the Internet. Most academics have access through their university computer system. But that access is not always easy and not all academics take advantage of whatever access exists. For example, only in the past year have the majority of Faculty at Carleton's School of Public Administration become regular users of electronic mail and only three of the fifteen faculty have high speed Ethernet connections in their offices.
Access and utilization are even less universal within the Federal and Provincial governments. Few Federal ministries have Internet connections. Use within those that do is fairly limited (though Industry Canada is a notable exception to this generalization). This situation is rapidly changing, of course, but we are far from being able to assume that all government ministries have access to the Internet and the ability to use that access.
Our first step in establishing VPAC was to establish a listserver whose subscribers would be those who were both involved in Canadian public policy and who were comfortable with electronic mail. The list was "closed" in the sense that potential users could subscribe only by informing us of their interest. Given that interest, we, as listowners, would then enter the subscription. By the end of September, the list had grown to about 60 members, including faculty from the majority of the schools of public administration in Canada, a number of civil servants employed by the federal government and a group of others who work in related fields.
Our listserver is functioning as a pan-Canadian electronic link for the policy community and will soon include fairly comprehensive set of faculty. Participation by practitioners in the government is limited by the extent to which their agencies are connected to the Internet. But, within a year or so, we expect that we will have a good cross-section of government participation.
Virtual Policy Shop: The A-WWW Index of Policy
Areas
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One of our original purposes in setting up the list was to consult with "the community" about the form and content of a World Wide Web site. But the list was not of much help to us in that regard, probably because so few of the list members had either knowledge of, or access to, the Web. So we have proceeded to design the WWW site independently, beginning with what we intimated list members would most want to see: policy research material and government documents.
Construction of a number of Virtual Policy Shops (VPShops) that can meet these needs has begun. VPShops are designed to house information and analysis on a range of policy and administration subjects that are as comprehensive as possible. Categories are continually refined and updated, but a user will be able to locate an area of interest with ease by scanning an index of topics. The list begins with Aboriginal Self-Government, ends with Taxation, and features everything from Environmental Issues and Management, to Cultural Policy, Domestic Economic Policy , Public Service Functions and Performance and many other topics in-between.
Once inside the VPShop, the user is presented with Canadian sources of information available on the net, as well as a separate section on American and Other sources. The primary focus of each VPShop is on analysis of government policies. Because hypertext links allow the user to access remote sites, many of the working papers that make up the storehouse of analysis and knowledge will be archived elsewhere. At present, development of the indexes is in the rudimentary stages, as we ferret out information on the net or solicit material for publication from members of the public policy community.
The long term plan is to turn the VPShops the information archive of choice for users in search of Canadian public policy information. The Virtual Policy Shop, however, is meant to be more than a reading room - interactive discussions will take place on the electronic discussion lists that will be attached to each subject-specific VPShop, and on the interactive forms to be built into the web site.
The ABC's: Help Desk
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In keeping with the emphasis on community building, we have tried to
build in features that are user-friendly and interactive. Because we
cannot assume that all who come to the VPAC home page will be
experienced Internet users, we have placed a link to a"
The Help Desk also includes a range of links to "help" that is already
available on the Internet. These include well-known guides such as
the Big Dummies Guide to the Internet, HTML tutorial documents and so
on.
We wanted to create a site that allowed for substantial
interconnections among the users of VPAC and between its users and
ourselves as its operators. And we know that making the Web more
interactive is a topic of more general interest at this conference.
One kind of interaction that is immediately possible is the inclusion
of HTML forms that allow visitors to leave messages for other
visitors, to construct their own profile for the "members" section or
to make suggestions for the future evolution of the site.
Interaction can also be encouraged by having pages within VPAC that
are directed at particular subgroups of the community. For example,
the Managers'
Forum is intended to be a place where administrative
issues are both raised and discussed. The Managers' Forum will
contain the kinds of information generally available on the Web,
including electronic documents and links to other Internet resources.
But it will also provide easy access to Usenet and local discussion
groups pertaining to managerial issues as well as e-mail access to a
set of volunteer managers who are willing to answer questions.
Another example of this kind of interaction is the University section
of the site, where students from the various universities across
Canada can find information pertaining to potential job openings,
grant programs, essay contests, calls for papers, and the opportunity
to visit the home pages of colleagues with similar interests. HTML
forms will eventually allow applications to be submitted
electronically.
Ultimately, though, the interaction that we would like to see involves
the construction of the site by its users. For example, within the
electronic documents section of the Virtual Policy Shop, we would like
to make it possible for visitors to place their own hotlinks to copies
of documents that they themselves have authored. Creativity and
collaboration will be strengthened by the discussions that will take
place on listservers married to each Virtual Policy Shop.
To date, the interactive capabilities of our site consist only of the
Help Desk along with HTML forms placed at various locations within the
site, allowing visitors to leave us information about themselves or to
ask for further information about the site.
The Virtual Policy and
Administration Community provides a model of an information service
founded on coherence: comprehensive coverage of policy areas in the Virtual
Policy Shop, logical organization of information in a world of hypertext
links, and interactivity as a foundation for community building. The
"community" now includes academics and government personnel, but is set to
expand to include others. Despite the logical appeal of the framework, and the
encouraging growth in the use of the Internet, it is difficult to make
concrete predictions about the future of the Virtual Policy and
Administration Community. It is possible that VPAC will not attain
the critical mass to become a widely shared, well-known Canadian
public policy resource.
VPAC has just begun (in July of 1994) and compounding uncertainty about
its future is the fact that it is part of a large and relatively new
communications development, the World Wide Web and its accompanying
software tools. If the intense interest in the Second International
World Wide Web Conference is any indication, however, the Web will
become an increasingly important information tool for many
communities, of which the policymaking community is one. The
challenge is to make web sites friendly, accessible and useful. Some
of the factors that will determine accessibility are beyond the
control of individual web builders (e.g. socio-economic affects on the
distribution of home computers), but it is important to learn today
how to do things better tomorrow, through experimentation in
community-building. Our hope is that experiences with VPAC will add
to the knowledge base of how to build electronic communities so that
they can have a positive influence on the lives of people.
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John Vekar is a graduate student in the School of Public
Administration of Carleton University. Saul Schwartz is a member of
the faculty in the same School of Public Administration. Vekar can be
reached at jvekar@ccs.carleton.ca, and Schwartz can be reached at
schwartz@ccs.carleton.ca. We welcome your comments and suggestions.
Encouraging Community Interaction
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