The Institute of Association Management (IofAM) is an independent professional body made up of managers and senior staff responsible for the management, development and governance of trade bodies, professional institutes, societies, chambers of commerce, voluntary organisations, charities and other representative groups.
The purpose of the Institute is to develop, promote and share best practice for the benefit of IofAM members and all those involved in the governance of associations. ERS are proud to have been recently invited to one of the IofAM events to discuss the benefits and practicalities of digital democracy.
Digital democracy
There is currently much discussion about digital by default; does it apply to democracy?
Online voting is an effective way to reduce your organisation’s printing costs, provide wider communication choice for your members and be more environmentally friendly. However, not everybody is comfortable with computers and it is vital in a democracy to ensure that no voter is disenfranchised: the right mix of communication methods need to be employed.
Maximising communications to make use of social media within an election context is a powerful way to raise the profile of an election and foster engaging discussion with the electorate. Digital democracy is about much more than just social media, however.For example, the effective capture and use of data allows for truly targetted communications and a continuing migration to cost saving online elections. We also have software to enable online meeting and agenda management through ipads and other tablets, which brings technology to the democratic decision making process.
The discussion
It was great to talk through some of barriers to voting online, which include lack of trust in the security of a process. Our online voting platform is encrypted to a level of security required by business banking, and we have been at the forefront of secure internet voting for over a decade. Historically, negative perceptions of online security have been a barrier to the implementation of online voting. However, as more commercial transactions take place digitally, electorates are becoming increasingly comfortable with online security standards.
We used our SMARTvote devices to take quick polls from the floor and encourage discussion around various points of our presentation.
Below are some of the results from the day.
Overall for reasons including cost benefit, learning and futureproofing, incorporating digital democracy into existing governance processes was seen as both positive and progressive. Key to including digital communications in any ballot is understanding the electorate and ensuring that no voter is disenfrachised.
With thanks to the Institute of Association Mangers for hosting us and Michael Hoare for photographs.
