Virtual policy networks: navigating the policy web

Governing in an information-rich environment necessitates a redistribution of power and new approaches to policy learning. The key basis for this organizational repositioning is the accommodation of information. For the first time in human history mass amounts of information may be collected, stored, and searched using networked technologies. While informational assets are a critical commodity in the policymaking process, the extraordinary increase in the creation and dissemination of information has triggered sectoral instability and political turbulence. This storm of information affects both the internal and external organization of state institutions and public administration strategies. This project provides an exploration into virtual policy spaces, and the communities of actors and institutions that reside on the Canadian policy Web. The national policy Web is a supplemental informational space used for the communication of policy ideas and the exchange of policy resources (information and advice), hosting various collections of actors and institutions engaged in complex interdependencies. This study asks a number of questions concerning policy communities’ uses of the Web, hypothesizing that virtual policy networks reproduce the communication habits of their real-world counterparts. The role of the state on the national policy Web is also considered in detail, assuming that the institutional structures of a virtual state provide the requisite enablers for electronic policymaking and Web governance. The findings presented here reveal that policymaking on the Web is neither inherently democratic nor necessarily more participatory. Using a sample of fifty virtual policy networks and analyzing the national policy Web using network analysis this project describes the virtual state in Canada, measures the federal government’s use of informational policy instruments, and maps formal relations among networked policy actors. This re search provides evidence that the Canadian policy Web hosts a number of virtual networks that exchange and communicate through hypertext, and that the Canadian government uses the virtual state to manage these communications and direct flows of information.