Results
How is all this transforming political life?

Europe’s early (ICT) adopter parliamentarians are:

• Mobile parliamentarians who use most ICTs themselves, using     email and SMS daily and generally answer directly their own email correspondence

• Representatives have more overall contact with their citizens and parties through the use of ICTs but are not necessarily reaching new citizens or groups

• Through using ICTs, they feel closer to their citizens, although they don’t feel they understand their citizens’ needs or interests any better.

• While citizens are engaging more online with their Representatives, they are not necessarily saying very much.

• The main positives for Representatives are faster dissemination of information about their views and activities and, easier and broader contact with their citizens.

•  …but they would still like to enhance their consultation and dialogue capabilities

• The principle negatives of using ICTs is the information overload, too much spam, and higher public expectations of faster, direct and personal responses from their politicians.

• As Party Actors, our parliamentarians are wired mainly in terms of party and campaign organisation, and information and message dissemination.

• While parties are using ICTs to better inform and coordinate, some Parliamentarians are concerned that their parties are not taking advantage of the opportunities provided by ICTs for greater bottom-up inputs and internal democracy.

• Some parties have experienced an increase in membership, but the new breed of virtual members want a looser and less active association with the party

• On balance, the Party Actor is satisfied with the organisational benefits afforded by the new technologies, as well as the opportunities for more ‘bottom-up’ inputs within the party decision making, (although this time, they are confronting the ‘communication’ overload).

• The Legislators work in a fairly wired environment, able to conduct much of their preparatory work electronically but still (in most cases) having to meet physically for committee and plenary sessions.

• Some feel that through ICT more people (citizens and organisations) are able to, and do, input into parliamentary decision making processes, some, but not all. of which takes the form of spam petitions.

• The Legislator is would like to see more technical innovations in their parliaments, including better remote working and wireless capability, improved information management and formal consultation technologies.

• One of the main concerns expressed by those surveyed as Legislators, is, once again, the information overload problem, with the vast new opportunities to access relevant information and expertise in their legislative work, which ICTs afford them.

• On the whole, the Parliamentarians surveyed feel that the existence and use of ICT has had a positive impact, which has been most evident in their role as Legislators

• They do feel however, that ICTs have the most potential to transform and enhance their work, in their role as Representative.

• Representatives are beginning to have more ‘continuing conversations’ with their citizens, perhaps a start to bridging the much discussed gap between elected and electors – but at least making them feel slightly closer to their citizens.

• The Party Actors are able to be more ‘on message’ than ever with better and tighter central coordination - but now have a significant opportunity for more independence from their parties, and greater customisation in their (unmediated) self-presentation, and campaigning.

• Legislators are rightly concerned by the perceived speeding of the legislative process – with the possible negative consequences for the quality and ‘shelf-life’ of the legislation they produce.

• The key problem to be tackled, is that of information and communications overload: This includes the great wealth of information and expertise they now have access to, at the click of the mouse – and the excessive amount of inbound communications from their constituents, citizens, organisations, parties, parliamentary colleagues and spam.