7 - Supervisors of eGovernment

Summary

We have already discussed many of the ‘supervisors’ of eGovernment in previous chapters. They are bodies charged with reviewing the ICT-related aspects of the relationship between government and the citizen, forcing changes where necessary, and/or urging such changes. This chapter looks more closely at the responsibility that these organisations bear in relation to government's digitization projects and programmes. Our main focus, however, will be on how they perceive their role and how they actually fulfil it. Various actors have been assigned, and in fact play, a role as critical observers of eGovernment, making them vital to the necessary system of checks and balances. In recent years, the Council of State, the Data Protection Authority, the Office of the National Ombudsman, the Netherlands Court of Audit, and – to a lesser extent – the judiciary have all developed into more or less critical ‘supervisors’ of government's ICT policy aims. They influence the design and ongoing development of eGovernment and the direction that it takes, all within the context of their own responsibilities and with their own set of tools. Yet another, exceptional, supervisor is ‘the citizen’, who monitors the development of eGovernment in many different ways. Technology has also dramatically altered the nature of such supervision in recent years. There are definite assumptions in eGovernment relating to the role of citizens: what they need to be vigilant about, how much vigilance is required, what they can object to, and how.

EXISTING SUPERVISORY BODIES

COUNCIL OF STATE

The Council of State advises on legislation and as an advisory body, it also evaluates the construction of eGovernment. In addition to analysing the legal substance of legislation proposing the use of technology or information for a particular purpose, the Council of State also analyses the policy-related aspects and assesses the quality of the proposed legislation on technical grounds, i.e. as a piece of legislation. Because the Government is not obliged to follow its advice, however, the Council of State must ultimately depend on those to whom it addresses its recommendations, the quality of their responses and – if its advice is rejected – whether the Government's arguments in fact hold water (Raad van State 2010: 127).