Polish e-democracy: legal state of affairs

Abstract

One of the elements upon which e-Government is based is electronic democracy. It stands for a broad range of activities engaging citizens in state matters. In Poland, it is difficult to find examples of such activities whether in the area of e-Voting, e-Engagement, e-Controllership, or e-Consultation. This is due to many reasons, one of which may be errors committed by the legislator, and upheld by it, with respect to the conceptual framework related to the e-Government, as well as the conceptual framework used in acts of law, while another reason may be the legislative quality of some of them. The phenomenon which raises the highest concern, however, is the fact that the initiatives that are undertaken, usually at local, not central, level, arouse very little interest among citizens, who do not trust public administrative authorities providing the solutions to question. By way of illustration, the paper presents local solutions related to electronic voting, and central solutions related to public information. Due to the scarcity of solutions and their often questionable quality, it is hard to say that in Poland electronic democracy solutions are well developed and shaped.