"Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people." - Abraham Lincoln
Representative democracy was created in the 18th century and reflects the environment of its time: poor communication tools and limited access to knowledge.
Early adopters of 21st century e-participation technology were initially protest groups, but it has not gone mainstream yet.
Young people are often not participating in the traditional democratic process, and the system is at a risk of being hijacked by extremes.
Policy-making has to address increasing complexity, and is sourcing expertise from interest groups and lobbies, while collective intelligence from citizens is not harvested.
Government is often acting as a centralized monopoly providing bad service at a high cost. In the industry, such behavior would be challenged by agile and innovative new entrants.
As geographic borders become less relevant, governments are exposed to competition between themselves (see the example of Estonia).
Poorer countries cannot afford expensive eGov solutions from large IT vendors, but could benefit from a bottom-up approach involving startups.
The life-cycle of policy-making: digital apps for each stage of the process
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