Untitled DocumentOverview
NDI's ICT and democracy programs are typically designed to support general democratic principals such as good governance, accountability, transparency, efficiency, communication and outreach. ICTs are used to support these principles in all our functional areas: governance, political parties, election processes, citizen participation, security sector reform and gender programs. ICT programming is crosscutting, but it is always program based, needs driven and built with a strict eye on developing sustainability. NDI positions our ICT and democracy programming to support the emerging democratic processes within an emerging democracy: programs that are targeted at particular institutions or supporting democratic processes in response to a specific need or deficit. NDI has established itself as a leader in this area—what we call our "ICT and Democracy Programs".
NDI is well positioned to provide relevant and high-impact ICT-related programs because it has existing field offices, relationships and contacts in dozens of countries. The Institute has program staff around the world that has established these relationships and is involved in various forms of institutional support that inevitably uncovers core needs within the partner organizations that technology may assist in addressing. The ability of NDI to complement our program staff with the skills to assess proposed ICT systems and assist in developing such systems is unique in the democracy support field.
NDI's most visible ICT work to date has been in the areas of governance, predominantly in legislatures. NDI also does some elections work, usually databases to support the work of election observation missions and to conduct election "quick counts"—parallel vote tabulations from a representative random sample of polling stations. Technological assistance to political parties and civil society organizations in emerging democracies is also provided. These programs typically involve establishing communication systems, employing the Internet for outreach and research purposes, developing contact tracking and organizing systems, or building networks and providing equipment for internal operations.
There are several aspects of the Internet and democracy field where NDI's work often intersects, including concepts such as E-Democracy, E-Government and E-Governance. E-Democracy typically includes new ways of using the Internet in democracies, such as online voting or "virtual town hall" forums. Although NDI is all about "E" and democracy, NDI doesn't usually conduct typical "E-Democracy" types of programs because the countries where we work often have low levels of infrastructure and tend to have low connectivity levels among the general public. However, the Institute does employ the same concepts, techniques and technologies that are then adapted to the needs of our partners and communities in emerging democracies giving consideration to the local conditions.
There are also several ways of understanding E-Government or E-Governance. E-Government generally refers to government service delivery using the Internet, often in the form of a citizen centric "portal" that is used to provide a range of government services to citizens at a municipal, state or national level. NDI has not traditionally been too involved in service delivery programs for government. Instead, NDI's governance work tends to emphasize the political dimension of democratic governance within four main practice areas: constitutional reform, legislative development, local government and public integrity (for detailed descriptions, see our Governance Section). It is sometimes suggested that using the Internet in a legislative context could and should be considered eGovernance, NDI is often involved in strengthening legislatures using technologies and thus we consider much of or ICT work to be "E-Governance".
Contact Information
For further information on information and communications technology, please contact:
Chris Spence
Director, Technology Strategy and Programs Send Email
Printer-friendly version
