Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have dramatically increased people’s capacity to access information and to communicate with others in almost any part of the world. The volume of information available through the Internet in particular has provided new opportunities to strengthen democratic processes and institutions through greater public awareness, understanding and participation.

One aspect of the e-democracy trend given much attention in the industrialised world is the possibility of ICTs to enable direct participation of citizens in decision-making and policy deliberations, for example through electronic voting. However, in a broader vision more relevant to world development, and particularly to the needs of developing countries and countries in transition, it is more appropriate to examine how digital technologies can strengthen the institutions of representative government and civil society, including parliaments and political parties, by promoting transparency and accountability in the decision-making process, effective party competition, the formation of interest groups and new social movements, and the basic conditions of human rights and civil liberties necessary for the open expression of dissenting points of view by citizens and the media.

ICTs can in this sense provide an important means of increasing citizen participation, which is at the core of democratic government. The Internet can facilitate the ability of citizens to gather information about campaign issues, to mobilise community networks, to create diverse coalitions around policy problems, and to lobby elected representatives. It also has the potential to foster dialogue and consultation between citizens and government, between citizens and political parties and between groups of citizens, by which government and social representatives seek to understand people’s needs, and in which citizens seek to contribute actively with their knowledge.

But despite the potential of ICTs to reduce barriers to political participation and civic engagement for groups currently marginalised from mainstream politics, the digital divide between ‘information rich’ and ‘information poor’ represents an important obstacle to such participation.

About three quarters of the world’s Internet users still live in the high-income OECD countries, and this figure becomes more salient when one considers the much larger number of people living in developing countries, where only a very few per cent have access.

Inequality in Internet access is especially severe for the populations of rural and disadvantaged communities, particularly in developing countries, and for the disabled, estimated at about ten per cent of the global population but biased towards the world’s poor. New policy concepts of universal access are needed to ensure that all citizens and societies can benefit from information networks and through them from e-democracy.

An international symposium about the role, value, and limits that the public domain and open access to digital scientific and technical data and information have is being held on 10 and 11 March 2003 at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.

But access to networks is not enough. Access to content, such as laws and regulations, policy statements, basic statistical data and social and political analysis, is also critical. A key to ensuring equitable access to content for democracy is the public domain of information, also known as the ‘information commons’ – the realm of works which can be exploited by everybody without any authorisation. Although many people first associate the public domain with classical literature whose copyright has lapsed, the most important store of public domain information for development is undoubtedly government information and other information produced with public funds. All would gain if governments and other public service organisations identified, digitised and made available through the Internet their rich and diverse information stocks.

The public domain principle can be conceptually extended by considering ‘open access’ information which is freely available for the common good by rights holders. Among the many such works and databases accessible on the Internet without cost, the vast information and documentation produced by the United Nations and its specialised agencies are of particular interest to e-Democracy.

The open access movement is likely to gain importance as standard legal instruments become available to enable rights holders to accord certain authorisations while specifying conditions or restrictions, somewhat like the model of the Open Source software licence by which computer programs are distributed free of charge by their authors for exploitation and cooperative development.

A UNESCO Panel Discussion in Tokyo agreed cultural diversity, including multilingualism must be a key principle of the Information Society in the Asia-Pacific region.

Another obstacle to the democratisation of cyberspace is the barrier to people’s accessing and generating information in their own languages, as seen from the fact that about 45% of the online population is English speaking, with ten international languages accounting for about 90% of the total. National policies are needed to promote mother tongues, the teaching of languages, and the publishing of local content in cyberspace, as well as research and development on multilingual communication and translation instruments.

Finally, the participation of the poorest and most marginalised communities requires a targeted strategy to encourage empowerment, ICT training and infrastructure development at the grass-roots level, for example through community information and communication centres.

As promoted by UNESCO, such centres not only offer access to information and ICTs but also actively participate in communicating, discussing, contextualising and exchanging information and knowledge in local languages, through an appropriate mix of ‘modern’ information and communication techniques and traditional approaches such as community libraries and radio.

Of course, even with these concrete measures we must be wary of the downside of ICTs, that while appearing to be egalitarian, they may in practice strengthen the power of entrenched authorities, heavy-weight media and multinational corporations, rather than challenging them. In authoritarian regimes, the Internet may serve as an agency of state propaganda, strengthening the government, rather than providing a channel for opposition parties and groups.

Ensuring the access of all citizens to government information and to essential information for human development is a must for every democratic society. UNESCO’s commitment to the free flow of information and access to knowledge is mandated in its constitution, which states that ‘the wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace are indispensable to the dignity of man and constitute a sacred duty which all the nations must fulfil in a spirit of mutual assistance and concern.’

UNESCO is thus working to study and achieve consensus on the role of ICTs in societal transformation and on the adoption of best practices in e-governance services and e-democracy. The organisation is specifically working with member states to establish a right of access to information and means of communication in the form of a Recommendation on the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace to be considered in 2003 by the UNESCO General Conference. It is assisting upon request in the formulation of corresponding national policy frameworks, and is encouraging the definition of self-regulatory, professional and ethical guidelines by all actors concerned including media professionals, information producers, service providers and political and social groups.