E-democracy perspective in Lithuania

Perhaps soon we will not need to wait in long queues to be almost dribbling through the entire municipality or other similar body corridors and expect to get one or more piece of paper with a stamp and signature made by our hand. Also will not need to go Election Day into polling station to vote, or go to a meeting with a politician, to whom we prepared the entire tirade your questions and observations. All this and much more, it should gradually change until 2020, the year in which Lithuania hopes to have fulfilled all the requirements for the introduction of e-democracy and engage in a joint project of the European Union countries – “e-Europe”.

According to e-democracy expert Steven L. Clift,” E-democracy is one of the essential conditions to help citizens to actively participate in the daily life of society and in the government”. Therefore, the development of e-democracy, is supposed to change the current situation where the voters have become particularly inactive, disillusioned political order, distrustful of government, which is increasingly composed of representatives of the populist parties. E-democracy can help develop communication between the state-citizen-state, through virtual communication. After all, our society today is the knowledge society, from the old industrial has long been turned into a post-industrial, which live in the age of information technology and already cannot imagine life without information for technological. Therefore, it was important to change the current situation into one that is more favorable in the future and will use a great tool - the Internet and new technologies.

However, the process of e-democracy development involves many steps, which are necessary for the project. First of all, it is important to ensure that every state resident access to the latest information for technological, using an internet connection, which should be available in all rural areas. Of course, it is important to ensure a relatively high level of computer literacy of citizens, because only in this case we can think about the people that will be no problem to get involved in e-democracy. The online voting referendums, elections and general population surveys - this is one of the goals of e-democracy. A well-organized system not only facilitates the part of voters, but also would help save a lot of money. 

It is also important to distinguish e-signature, as a very important tool for the direct communication with the government. The system is already operating in Lithuania and includes a number of different companies and institutions that use this system, including the Government of the Republic of Lithuania. How the e-signature to be useful to us? We could communicate with the authorities to provide a range of applications and receive answers using the e-signature, and thus confirm the authenticity of your personal data. But along with the e-signature will be available at the e-passport. The electronic ID card or other e-passport ensures citizen participation in all state matters in the virtual level. This card with the names of all human identifying the most important data: the public health and social insurance, bank cards, demonstrating aspects of education.  This is a very safe way of signing documents. The service is already available online and orders it. I think this is a very convenient method, which saves a lot of time. And when we have an e-passport and e-signature authorities can use electronic services provided. It would be possible to comment on legislation, enforcement, obtain the necessary information, even documents and forms sent to them by filling in the appropriate body. A number of those functions already carried out by our country's municipalities, 30 of which are already fully engaged in e-democracy.

Another tool that I want to discuss is very important for politicians and voters mutual communication and understanding. It is noted that the elections in Lithuania is more going on than propaganda public relations campaign, politicians often do not have their serious political programs ignore ideologies, resulting in declining voter wheel and the country's political alienation. It is estimated that electronic communication can help to identify voters and politicians the way for mutual understanding and the reduction of electoral passivity. It was decided to create an online program, which for years have been successfully operating in Switzerland. This program would help voters according to certain criteria to determine their political views and select candidates that their views are consistent; it would help to decide the election. 

All the above-mentioned measures for the implementation of e-democracy in the country, of course, require a lot of reflection, opinions and some major changes. Sometimes certain adaptation measures are very complex and lengthy process. It is very important that more developing information technologies and procedures for the transfer of the most important on the Internet, it is necessary to ensure the safety and reliability of it. Technologically, probably it will not be possible to protect databases, to avoid manipulation of e-democracy system. Resulting in more and more will return to their old methods. So it is very important to keep Lithuania educated and highly skilled information technology, as well as other specialists of related fields.  Rural districts problem today is also increasingly considered as yet surveys show that most of the population do not use ICT, it is too expensive for them or they do not indicate any desire to acquire the necessary knowledge. It is therefore a high probability that in the future they cannot be claimed to use the developed e-democracy development necessary information technology infrastructure.

The project of e-democracy is implemented in Lithuania in 2010-2020, but it is stated that if not be achieved the objectives Lithuania may remain retarded part of the e-Europe. This means that the majority of the society will remain passive and still uses the traditional democratic forms of government. This would mean an even stronger gap in the single European countries view. However, it is expected that by 2020 Lithuania will be able to engage in collaborative e-Europe project, which aims to build closer ties between countries using electronic communications.