Innovative applications and strategy For the Empowerment of People with ICTs

1. E-democracy is the key for the future action As for the term “E-democracy”, many definitions focus on the usage of ICT into political process and public decisions based on needs of citizens. As the idea of e-democracy is continuously improved, my approach to e-democracy as a phenomenon resulting from the usage of ICT as a tool is to enhance democratic system of governance. There is no doubt that both technology and innovation are quite important, but the focus must be the governance system with accountability and transparency. Some of the major challenges that e-democracy faces include the issues such as availability, accessibility, affordability and usability, especially in low income countries. Also, other challenges on e-democracy are the information security policies for ensuring an appropriate handling in protection of personal data and information from the users and political commitment with e-democracy as well as its engagement from citizens E-democracy projects and initiatives are increasing. They can be national scope projects or local ones. Valuable lessons can be obtained from them. The advantage for a local scope is that small projects can be used as pilot projects to evaluate the benefits and convenience for major ones. From the side of citizens, e-democracy practices include the cases such as online petitions for the government, e-discussion forums, social media and politician’ web pages. Government portals are focusing on supplying their citizens with services, adding applications such as open data, e-procurement and digital inclusion, in an attempt to facilitate the relationship between citizens and government. One of the most known experiences of e-democracy is the one related to e-voting. In Japan we have experienced e-voting in some of local elections and from this national election in July, a full scale of internet campaigning has started. In the end, e-participation will be easier if e-democracy will become matured in the society.