The story of ASEAN and ICT may well be a tale of two ASEANs — the “Young ASEAN” and the “Official ASEAN”.

Young ASEAN is comprised of “digital natives” — tech-savvy, digitally-nimble, and multi-tasking individuals who are fluent in digital devices and the Internet. Official ASEAN, on the other hand, is composed of “digital immigrants” who are learning to adapt to their new environment but still “retain, to some degree, their ‘accent,’ that is, their foot in the past”.

The Young ASEAN

The youth of Southeast Asia are at the forefront of the global social network revolution. In the first quarter of 2011, there were an estimated 131.3 million Facebook (FB) users in Asia. The top five countries in Asia in terms of FB users are Indonesia (35.2 million), India (23 million), the Philippines (22.4 million), Malaysia (10.1 million), and Taiwan (9.1 million). A recent study showed that the Philippines posted the highest FB penetration rate across the globe, making Filipinos “the world's heaviest users of social media”. In fact, Asia is FB's fastestgrowing region. In the last two years, FB has seen 1,000 per cent growth in Malaysia and 4,000 per cent growth in Thailand (4,000 per cent!). As Patrick Winn notes, “As of 2010, the largest Facebook population outside America is no longer the United Kingdom. It's Indonesia, an archipelago where 80 per cent still lack Internet access.”

Young ASEAN is also at the forefront of Twitter use. A 2009 report revealed that two ASEAN countries are in the top twenty global list of those with the largest share of Twitter users. They are Indonesia (ranked 6th) and the Philippines (ranked 15th). In terms of Twitter activity, Indonesia is 6th (accounting for 2.3 per cent of the world's tweets), Singapore is 12th (with 0.88 per cent), the Philippines is 13th (with 0.85 per cent), and Malaysia is 18th (with 0.47 per cent). Young ASEAN is multi-taskers too.

The emergence of ASEAN 2.0 can best be appreciated through the lenses of international institutions. This study looks at the institutional design of ASEAN 2.0 as part of the broader effort to understand the linkage between the design features of regional institutions and regional integration and community building. It also gives special attention to the constitutive role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the institutional design of a network organization.

Institutions

International institutions are “explicit arrangements, negotiated among international actors that prescribe, proscribe, and/or authorise behaviour”. The term “institutional design” is understood as “those formal and informal rules and organisational features that constitute the institution and that functions as either the constraints on actor choice or the bare bones of the social environment within which agents interact or both”.

For Klijn and Koppenjan, “Institutional design is aimed at deliberate changes in institutional characteristics of networks.” They are wilful activities that are not tied to “(re)interpretations of actors (creating gradually different understandings of the rules) or more or less conscious ignoring or changing the application of rules”. Institutional design “refers both to the activity of trying to change the institutional features of policy networks, as [well as] to the content of the institutional change that is aimed for”. (italics in the original)

Although actors consciously (and rationally) change the design of institutions (as ASEAN did in signing and implementing the Charter), institutional designs are not “rational designs”. Rather they are:

The actual “shape” of the design of ASEAN 2.0 will be determined by a series of actions and activities by designated actors, as well as the interplay of these actions and activities.

ASEAN faces the challenge of how to evolve into an organization that is capable of effectively and efficiently realizing its goal of regional integration. This study argues that it can be done if ASEAN exploits its character as a network organization. In particular, this study points to the important role ICT plays in responding to the challenge of regional integration and community building. So far, this has been substantiated through a discussion of the role of ICT in three areas:

1. 1) horizontal and vertical coordination;

2. 2) the inclusion of non-government organizations in policy making; and

3. 3) the creation of an ASEAN identity and community.

This section will be devoted to a discussion of ICT and network management.

Scholars have recognized the importance of network management for intergovernmental organizations. Some argue that “inter-organisational networks centralised around a primary coordinating agency — a network administrative organisation — produce better outcomes”. Jordan and Schout, who prefer the term, “network manager”, recognize the importance of this agency “to the stability of the network and to the handling of issues with high transaction costs”.

Jordan and Schout posit that the “network administrative organisation” can act as a “secretary” whose role is to achieve “greater efficiency in decision making” by “gathering and distributing information as part of the benchmarking and peer review exercises”. Or, the organization can serve as network manager — one who “seeks actively to manage coordination in the network”. The network manager arranges and facilitates the “interaction process within networks in such a way that problems of under or non-representation are properly addressed and interests are articulated and dealt with in an open, transparent and balanced manner”. Network management involves three activities:

1. 1) intervening in existing patterns/restructuring of network relations;

2. 2) furthering conditions for cooperation; consensus building; and

3. 3) joint problem solving.

Joaquin Herranz identifies four archetypes of the network manager: reactive facilitator; contingent coordinator; active coordinator; and hierarchical-based network administrator.

From its inception, ASEAN can be viewed as a governance network which, according to Sørensen and Torfing, can be characterized as:

1. • A relatively stable horizontal articulation of interdependent, but operationally autonomous actors;

2. • An organization with actors who interact through negotiations;

3. • An organization whose negotiations take place within a regulative, normative, cognitive, and imaginary framework;

4. • An organization that, to a certain extent, is self-regulating; and

5. • An organization which contributes to the production of public purpose within or across particular policy areas.

Moreover, Hadi Soesastro's description of ASEAN “as a loose form of inter-governmental cooperation that accords highest priority to the preservation of national sovereignty” allows us to view ASEAN from a network perspective.

One reason networks are formed is to “enhance horizontal coordination”, and they are partly held together “by the anticipated gains from resource pooling and joint action and partly by the development of mutual trust that helps to overcome collective action problems”. Take for instance the reasons given by Thanat Khoman for the founding of ASEAN:

States have agreed to coordinate policy for a variety of reasons. In the case of international macro-economic policy from 1945 to 1988, policy-makers had a “preference for coordination based around targeting of exchange rates”. Exchange rates were targeted because: 1) exchange rates stability is important in itself; 2) it helps “dampen fads and speculative bubbles in foreign exchange markets”; and 3) it serves as a discipline on the monetary and fiscal policies of the participating countries.

According to Pelkonen, Teräväinen, and Waltari, vertical policy coordination “refers to managing relationships between various levels of government and proceeding from priority-setting to policy implementation”. On the other hand, horizontal policy coordination refers to the “management of interdependent policies across the state administration”. In this study, vertical policy coordination in ASEAN is synonymous with sectoral policy-making (i.e., the policy-making activities of the various sectoral bodies and processes such as the ASEAN Telecommunications and IT Ministers Meeting (TELMIN) and the ASEAN Meeting of Energy Ministers (AMEM)). Horizontal policy coordination refers to the procedures and offices that are established to ensure that the overall goal of community building is served and that there are minimal overlaps or inconsistencies in the output of the various sectoral bodies and processes.

ASEAN has created new institutions to ensure the implementation of horizontal policy coordination as reflected in its new charter.

One such institution is the ASEAN Coordinating Council, composed of ASEAN foreign ministers, which is specifically tasked to “coordinate the implementation of agreements and decisions of the ASEAN Summit” and “coordinate with the ASEAN Community Councils to enhance policy coherence, efficiency and cooperation among them” (Article 8, Section 2). Like other ASEAN bodies, the ASEAN Coordinating Council is supported by the “relevant senior officials”.

Three ASEAN Community Councils (Political-Security, Economic Community, and Socio-Cultural) were also created. These Community Councils are mandated to “coordinate the work of the different sectors under their purview, and on issues which cut across the other Community Councils”, (Article 9) among other responsibilities.

There are two other ASEAN bodies relevant to horizontal policy coordination: the ASEAN Secretariat and the Committee of Permanent Representatives to ASEAN.

INTRODUCTION

On 20 November 2007, the leaders of the ten states comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed the ASEAN Charter. After forty years of existence, the Southeast Asian intergovernmental organization codified the key principles and purposes of the association through the Charter. Then ASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong declared that the Charter serves the organization in three interrelated ways: it formally accords ASEAN its legal personality; it establishes greater institutional accountability and compliance system; and it reinforces the perception of ASEAN as a serious regional player in the Asia-Pacific region.

Signed with the ASEAN Charter are three blueprints that serve as the pillars of the Association towards building and creating an ASEAN community. The first pillar is the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) blueprint, with the goal of forging economic integration within the region by 2015. The AEC is part of the Association's efforts to “modernise the group's commerce and economic systems to facilitate a better flow of people and goods between countries”. The AEC anticipates the following: a single market and production base; a highly competitive economic region; a region of equitable economic development, and; a region fully integrated into the global economy.

The second pillar of the ASEAN community is the ASEAN Political Security Community (APSC) blueprint. The APSC Blueprint envisages ASEAN as a rules-based community of shared values and norms; a cohesive, peaceful, stable, and resilient region with shared responsibility for comprehensive security; as well as a dynamic and outward-looking region in an increasingly integrated and interdependent world. With the APSC, the members of the community pledge to rely exclusively on peaceful processes in the settlement of intraregional differences. The APSC recognizes that each member country's political security is fundamentally linked to those of the other member countries, as the community is bound by geographic location, common vision, and objectives.

ASEAN 2.0 is an effort to address my two interests: ICT and global governance. ICT — with its ability to overcome distance and time — should be the ideal tool for enhancing collaboration in creating global rules. Yet, ICT is still largely absent in the current literature on increasing stakeholder participation in global governance.

This study is one of eight projects being undertaken by the Pan Asia Network for eGovernance (PANeGOV). PANeGOV is a network of scholars from South and Southeast Asia and is funded by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The ASEAN Studies Centre, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ASC-ISEAS), Singapore, also supported the conduct of this study. With the ASC-ISEAS behind this project, I had the pleasure of getting another opportunity to work with former ASEAN secretary general and current ASC-ISEAS head, Ambassador Rodolfo C. Severino. In the mid-1990s, I attended ASEAN Senior Official Meetings (SOMs) as a member of the Philippine delegation led by Ambassador Severino.

While my name appears as the author of the study, any text is hardly the product of one person alone. As noted by cultural critic Roland Barthes in Death of the Author, “the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture”. The brief description of the research and writing process that follows will illustrate the collaborations involved in producing this study.

With the help of Mina Peralta, who served as research associate for this study, a first draft was completed at the end of January 2010. Ambassador Severino and Dr Pavin Chachavalpongpun, lead researcher, Political and Strategic Affairs, ASC-ISEAS, read and commented on this draft of the study.

A revised first draft was then made and was reviewed by the following:

1. • Dr Aileen Baviera, Professor, Asian Studies Centre, University of the Philippines — Diliman, the Philippines;

2. • Hans Bayaborda, Business Development Director (ASEAN and India), Oracle Corporation, the Philippines;

3. • Seow Hiong Goh, Executive Director, Global Policy and Government Affairs for Asia Pacific, Cisco, Singapore;

4. • Ramon L. Jocson, Vice-President, IBM Global Technology Services, Asia Pacific, Singapore;

5. • Dr Maria Consuelo Ortuoste, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, California State University East Bay, California, the United States; […]

This study looks at four areas that will be important to the future success of ASEAN:

1. How to use Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to achieve better policy coordination, particularly horizontal and vertical policy coordination;

2. How to use ICT to incorporate non-state actors in regional policy-making, thereby creating a more inclusive regional organization;

3. How to use ICT to develop a regional identity and community; and

4. How to use ICT for ASEAN “network management”, which involves determining the purpose of the network, as well as establishing all the activities and operations to achieve that purpose.

At present, ICT use in the ASEAN organization is largely limited to a web browser and office productivity tools, including email, word processing, and spreadsheets. This study presents several recommendations for ASEAN to take full advantage of the benefits that ICT use offers.

It is argued in this study that ASEAN should examine new software-based conferencing solutions to complement existing face-to-face ASEAN meetings. Moreover, ASEAN can use collaborative software to respond to the challenges of horizontal and vertical policy coordination within the organization.

ICT can also help ASEAN achieve its goal of becoming an inclusive institution of regional governance. eParticipation — the use of ICT for enabling appropriate stakeholder participation in decision making — can enhance stakeholder participation in creating and strengthening ASEAN processes and policies. For instance, the Senior Official Meeting (SOM)'s engagement with ASEAN Institutes of Strategic International Studies network (ASEAN-ISIS) can be bolstered using ICT.

ASEAN should also consider online engagement with “Entities Associated with ASEAN” — approximately seventy-two organizations that support the purposes and principles of the ASEAN Charter.

In terms of promoting inclusive regional governance, it is suggested that ASEAN consider the use of wikis — web pages that anyone with permission can create or edit — as well as blogs — shared online journals also called web logs. Wikis and blogs may be used to widen participation in ASEAN policy development and strengthen people-to-people exchange.

In its preamble, the ASEAN Charter declared the commitment of the peoples of Southeast Asia to intensify:

In 2009, in its summit in Cha-am, ASEAN adopted a roadmap for an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC). ASEAN's 2010 theme was:

Despite its success in political security and economic community building, ASEAN has yet to gain traction in sociocultural community building efforts — the crucial third leg of the ASEAN community. It has been observed that:

A recent meeting of ASEAN observers identified the following challenges in designing the ASEAN Socio-Community Blueprint:

1. • Unlike the AEC, the ASCC lacks concrete drivers, as the stakeholder are far more diverse and complex;

2. • While the AEC Blueprint has specific targets and timelines, it will be difficult for the ASCC Blueprint to follow the same format. As many of ASCC goals are driven by national agendas, implementation of initiatives has to be done both at national and regional levels and hence may require two types of score cards;

3. • ASEAN member countries may not have a common understanding of social issues, such as values, ethics, and social justice. Furthermore, unlike the European Union, ASEAN does not have the institutional capacity to translate these social issues into legislation;[…]

ASEAN's champions and critics alike believe that in order to remain relevant, the organization must change. For Acharya, “ASEAN should seize the moment or fade away as a new regional and global leadership takes over.” Acharya believes that ASEAN's ability to implement the ASEAN community blueprint faithfully and its capacity to deal with new challenges will determine its success or failure. Others, such as Thitinan Pongsudhirak, believe that ASEAN's future lies in its ability to transform from a “top-down intergovernmental organisation driven by policymaking elites and bureaucrats” to a “bottom-up process via the third-track of peopleto-people enmeshment” as envisioned in its new charter.

This study shares the view that ASEAN must be able to respond decisively to changes in the global order (marked by globalization) and changing constellations of actors (emergence of global, non-state actors) to continue to be relevant.

The main argument of this study is that ASEAN should harness ICT to enhance its network form of organization and thereby become more effective and remain relevant.

Following Castells, this study believes that networks are “the most flexible, and adaptable forms of organisation, able to evolve with their environment and with the evolution of the nodes that compose the network”. Historically, networks are weak in coordination, particularly, the management of complexity. But this historic weakness has been superseded by the use of ICT by networks. Castells believes that ICT not only allows networks to keep their flexibility and adaptability, but ICT also allows:

ICT could become ASEAN's most useful tool in achieving its goal of “One Vision, One Identity, One Community”.

It has been observed that “One of the most profound trends in global governance over the past two decades is the growing extent to which international institutions offer mechanisms for the participation of transnational actors.” These “inclusive institutions of global governance” offer private actors from the business sector and/or civil society with the possibility of formal participation, decision-making in the policy-making process.

As an organization, one of the primary objectives of ASEAN is the institution of an inclusive kind of governance.

During the 38th anniversary of ASEAN, Indonesia's President Yudhoyono underscored the need to “enlist the people into the cycle of planning, implementation, monitoring and re-planning of programs and projects”. While acknowledging the important role played by the business community and academia in the ASEAN process, he acknowledged that “the perspectives from the boardrooms and from the groves of academia are not the same as the view from the grassroots. And that grassroots view can make a difference.” He concluded his talk by suggesting that “We can and should empower the people to become co-authors if not the principal authors of their own development.”

Soesastro argued that second track networks and processes, which include research and strategic studies by institutes and other non-governmental participants, is an important institutional feature of ASEAN. In fact, three non-state actors (the business community, research community, and non-government organizations (NGOs)/civil society organizations (CSOs)) have had varying degrees of success in terms of participating in ASEAN processes.

In the 1990s, the ASEAN Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ASEAN-CCI) was the private sector voice in ASEAN. The ASEAN-CCI is comprised of national level chambers of commerce and industry from each of the ASEAN member countries. ASEAN-CCI representatives attended Senior Economic Officials' Meetings (SEOMs) and ASEAN Economic Ministers' (AEM) meetings and have been credited for helping design the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA). But the ASEAN-CCI was eclipsed in 2001 when the ASEAN leaders established the ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ABAC).

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) could become the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN's) most useful tool for achieving its goal of “One Vision, One Identity, One Community”. More specifically, ASEAN's success in regional integration and community building is also dependent on its ability to use ICT in the areas of: (1) coordinating policies, (2) deepening participation of ASEAN stakeholders, and (3) creating a regional identity, particularly among its youth.

ICT and Policy Coordination

The ASEAN Charter created new regional bodies to enhance the organization's policy-making and coordination efforts. These newly formed groups include the ASEAN Coordinating Council, three ASEAN Community Councils, the ASEAN Sectoral Ministerial Bodies, and the Committee of Permanent Representatives to ASEAN (CPR).

However, creating more committees does not necessarily lead to greater policy coordination — only to more complex processes and increased transaction costs. A more intensive use of ICT by these new ASEAN bodies, including the ASEAN Secretariat, could facilitate better policy coordination at reduced costs.

At present, ICT use in the ASEAN organization is limited to office productivity tools (email, word processing, and spreadsheets) and a web browser. ASEAN should examine new software-based conferencing solutions for audio and web-conferencing to complement existing face-to-face ASEAN meetings. Private sector companies that use these capabilities have achieved increased efficiencies, total cost savings, and environmental footprint reductions. Similar outcomes can be expected if ASEAN use conferencing tools.

Another ICT application that ASEAN can use to respond to the challenges of horizontal and vertical policy coordination is collaborative software. Collaborative software enables teamwork by transforming the way documents and “rich media” are used in an organization. Web-based collaborative software, which includes scheduling, project management, online chats and meetings, allows various individuals in multiple locations to work jointly on a single document. Like conferencing, collaborative software can make ASEAN more efficient and even reduce the length and/or frequency of ASEAN working groups and senior officials and ministerial meetings. Collaborative software would also enable the ASEAN Secretariat to discharge its mandated functions more effectively and efficiently.

Myanmar RTD

The Myanmar Roundtable Discussion was hosted by the Tun Foundation Bank at The Chatrium Hotel in Yangon on 2 April 2010.

The discussants were U Thein Oo, president of Myanmar Computer Federation, Dr Myo Thant Tyn, president of Myanmar NGO Network, and U Tin Nyo, director general of Basic Education.

Comments from Discussants

The time has come for ASEAN to enhance the use of ICT and for a standardized ICT system to be introduced among ASEAN member countries. Steps should be taken to ensure the readiness of member countries to fulfil the necessary infrastructure requirements that would enable them to use ICT effectively. There was emphasis placed on the use of ICT to promote education by aiding teaching and learning.

Open Forum

Attention should be placed on the use of ICT as a tool to improve the ASEAN process and supplement the conventional modes of operation within ASEAN, such as face-to-face meetings, when possible. It was pointed out that ASEAN has not taken advantage of existing ICT tools, especially now when the cost of applications is not a major concern since these have become less expensive.

Government leaders in Myanmar should be urged to recognize the importance of ICT in fostering regional community building. This would lead to reconsidering the manner by which ICT is used at both state and grass roots levels. It was stressed that the government should learn that ICT diffusion results in democratization as it promotes free flow of information and is becoming increasingly important and powerful in sending messages to large numbers of people. However, participants did not see human capacity development as a problem since ICT has become relevant and, therefore, familiar among ASEAN youth.

Participants

1. Dr U Myint

2. U Aye Lwin

3. Daw Moe Marlar

4. U Than Lwin

5. U Paw Lwin Sein

6. U Tun Ohn

7. U Ohn Kyaw

8. Daw Sein Nwe Aye

9. U Thein Oo

10. U Tin Win Aung[…]