When Matthew Taylor, the Prime Minister’s chief political adviser, addressed the Headstar conference on e-democracy in London earlier this month, he was talking about the potential for technology to address what he perceives as the central crisis of UK politics. But he could have been talking about the challenges of IT in business.

Taylor began on the positive note that expectations of the internet’s impact on grass-roots political involvement are proving justified. From Webcameron and interactive Prime Ministerial interviews, to e-petitions and online community groups, there are increasingly varied routes for direct engagement by, and between, citizens.

But Taylor has grave concerns about how far e-democracy will live up to its potential if it is part of the ailing relationship between the governors and the governed, rather than the cure.

The problems that threaten to undermine real progress are not about technology, but about culture.

Potentially, IT-enabled mobilisation of citizens and communities will help develop more engaged policy-making and breathe new life into an environment made barren by distrust.

The primary difficulty for governments is to navigate an acceptable course between citizens’ mutually exclusive demands – that the latest, expensive cancer drugs be available, free to all, without raising taxes or cutting spending, for example.

Informed and constructive debate needs an improved awareness among citizens of the compromises upon which all policy decisions hinge. But the biggest single contribution of IT to political debate so far is blogging. And because of the anti-establishment culture of what Taylor calls ‘net heads’, most blogs are not engaged in deliberative appraisal, but add to the corrosive atmosphere of oversimplification and ‘shrill outrage’.

‘The internet provides more interesting routes for citizens to mobilise and more ways to expose the limitations of politicians, but is technology yet providing sufficient opportunities for people to understand and engage in the real trade-offs we face as citizens and states?’ asks Taylor.

Computing has long championed IT’s place at the heart of the mainstream business agenda. E-democracy faces the same challenge: to move from the preserve of the specialist minority to a mature channel for the benefit of all.

As Taylor says: ‘The potential is huge, but technology is at its best when there is a real understanding of the fundamental problem, and that is not of a technical kind.’

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