ICT in Norwegian local government – empowering the politicians?

Abstract

Information and communication technology is often presented as having a built-in potential to reduce the information gap between the politicians and administration in local government. This assumption is discussed in the article, by analysing two surveys among politicians in Norwegian local government. The findings show that municipal politicians to a large extent utilise ICT in finding information for decision-making purposes. They also, to a certain degree, consider their ability to control the administration to be enhanced, even if we also find that access to digital monitoring systems can be limited. Furthermore, the findings show variation due to hierarchical seniority (mayor v. rank-and-file politicians), age and education. Thus, our observations, based on data of local politicians' own experiences, indicate that ICT contributes to reduce the possibilities of the administration manipulating the politicians in local government.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions were presented at NOPSA (Nordic XIV Congress of Political Science), Reykjavik, 11–13 August 2005, and at the workshop ‘Internet, politics and democracy’ at the National Conference of Political Science in Norway, Bergen, 4–6 January 2006. I want to thank the working groups at both conferences for useful comments.

Notes

1 A few of the mayors had answered both surveys, and one of their answers was therefore removed.

2 Missing values are removed, and not replaced with for example series mean, because this would imply taking a risk of suppressing the true values of the standard deviation and the standard error in regression analysis (Field, 2005: 184–185).

3 In the appendix the coding of the different variables is explained.

4 The variables were ‘Websites of other municipalities’, ‘Websites of ministries, county governors etc.’, ‘Websites with databases’, and ‘The website of the political party’.

5 ‘The case documents diverge from the information I obtain by being in contact with citizens and public employees’ and ‘The case documents diverge from the information I obtain from reports, websites and databases’.