e-Governance: A New Reality for Legislative Drafting?

Abstract

The rapid development of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) over the past decades have led to changes in almost all areas of society. There are many ways in which governance can use ICT in order to become more efficient, user-friendly and transparent. e-governance has become a fashionable term, even if the definition of what it actually is can vary or be vague.357 In any event, it means the use of ICT in matters of governance and normally includes some form of interactivity – not just electronic access to information. Some questions of governance can be quite different in the framework of e-governance while others remain the same, only in a new form. For legislators and thus for the drafters of legislation the question arises how a transition to more e-governance should be reflected in law. There will be a need for some new legislation but even more than that, it is essential for legislators and regulators to determine how to fit new phenomena into legal frameworks created for a different situation.