Congress and Digital Democracy: A Case study of Internet Video on Demand System (IVOD) in Legislative Yuan

• Main Authors: Huang, Wun Ci, 黃文琪
• Other Authors: Hsiao, Naiyi
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/04646517279551068734

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 公共行政研究所 === 101 === In response to the trend and impact of digitalization, services provided by government also advance with the times. Through internet, general public can express their opinions to government directly, and government can respond to public’s demand quickly in return, which increases citizens’ opportunity to participate in public affairs and forms the core value of digital democracy. However, the scholars concerning legislation and e-democracy rarely discuss operation and influence of information communication technology (ICTs), making e-parliament seemingly a missing link under the digital government framework. Additionally, the citizens’ trust in legislature has declined in recent years, so that both academics and practice launch congressional reform on information transparency. Consequently, with the society’s expectation, Legislative Yuan implemented Internet Video on Demand System (IVOD) in the 7th Session 3, allowing general public to watch the real-time video of congressional proceedings online. It is not only the crucial method of e-parliament and digital democracy, but also an opportunity for government agency to improve quality of democracy through ICTs. Accordingly, this exploratory case study of IVOD aims to review its history in Legislative Yuan, examine the system’s operation process, and identify the implementation difficulty. In addition, this study also explores how the various users apply IVOD, and further discusses IVOD’s different functions including informing legislative proceedings, stimulating development of information society, improving democracy. This study even compares the operation of national Parliaments in different countries, diagnoses users’ complaints, and draws lessons from foreign countries in order to improve IVOD for Legislative Yuan in Taiwan. The results show that IVOD in Legislative Yuan, Taiwan, is a significant approach to information disclosure in the context of e-parliament. Watching IVOD effectively diminishes citizens’ negative impression with legislators. IVOD is also another approach to understand and monitor the legislators’ behaviors and the process of law-making. Besides, IVOD contributes to accountability and transparency in general, and helps establish the responsive government. Nevertheless, the findings indicate that, in addition to the controversy of digital divide, the general public remains low willingness to participate in public affair. The current operation of IVOD falls short of an interactive service, which constrains citizens’ participation. To sum up, the existing IVOD remain much room to improve its real power contributing to responsiveness and accountability. Transparent access in Congress, IVOD makes democracy work better, despite of its under-expected performance in theory. More precisely, it remains useful and effective to enhance communication among attentive public and government, rather than among general public.