Ways Forward

Abstract

This chapter considers how policy makers might think about selecting the e-governance tools that are of the greatest use to them, given their particular situation, in order to help them to sustain political judgment, and also offers some considerations that the information technology industries supplying e-governance tools might want to bear in mind when designing for and selling to policy makers. The second half of the chapter is concerned with the wider issues of public policy that are raised by or in association with the growing use of e-governance tools, in particular for the forms of accountability in which their use is embedded. Finally, the chapter considers the question of the larger relationship between e-governance as something which can be used by policy makers to sustain their own political and policy judgment, and democratic renewal, which calls both for the political judgment of policy makers to be held to account and to be responsive to the popular will, but also requires that popular judgment should also be supported, and — subject, of course, to important safeguards — cultivated.