Such technology has the opportunity to become a rhetorical tool in the hands of politicians as well as a tool for democratic enlightenment and opportunity for exerting influence over decision-making processes on the part of citizens. Work in this area is limited to very few people within the IT field. Indeed, the field of e-democracy could contribute by widening the audience. Another aspect of such powerful tools and techniques that modern public servants have at their disposal is they strengthen the administrators' position toward the politicians. They tend to know better than their political counterparts about the real world of the politician's constituency.
Informed citizens approach the public servants directly.
Politicians themselves also rely more and more on the expertise, insights, and analytical power of the bureaucracy that are enhanced by ICT developments. In this way important intermediary roles for public servants are evolving. Snellen uses geographic information systems to exemplify this change, and contends it's time for a new political theory incorporating these new roles. Democracy is not just views or opinions, but also a view of where the money goes. They discuss efficiency and effectiveness as two complementary aspects of making democracy work, and they present a strategy for implementation.