Supporting public decision making in policy deliberations: An ontological approach

This is the post-print version of the Paper. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 SpringerSupporting public decision making in policy deliberations has been a key objective of eParticipation which is an emerging area of eGovernment. EParticipation aims to enhance citizen involvement in public governance activities through the use of information and communication technologies. An innovative approach towards this objective is exploiting the potentials of semantic web technologies centred on conceptual knowledge models in the form of ontologies. Ontologies are generally defined as explicit human and computer shared views on the world of particular domains. In this paper, the potentials and benefits of using ontologies for policy deliberation processes are discussed. Previous work is then extended and synthesised to develop a deliberation ontology. The ontology aims to define the necessary semantics in order to structure and interrelate the stages and various activities of deliberation processes with legal information, participant stakeholders and their associated arguments. The practical implications of the proposed framework are illustrated.This work is funded by the European Commission under the 2006/1 eParticipation call

A business model perspective for ICTs in public engagement

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published article can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 ElsevierPublic institutions, in their efforts to promote meaningful citizen engagement, are increasingly looking at the democratic potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Previous studies suggest that such initiatives seem to be impeded by socio-technical integration barriers such as low sustainability, poor citizen acceptance, coordination difficulties, lack of understanding and failure to assess their impact. Motivated by these shortcomings, the paper develops and applies a business model perspective as an interceding framework for analysis and evaluation. The underlying principle behind this approach is that it is not technology per se which determines success, but rather the way in which the businessmodel of the technological artifact is configured and employed to achieve the strategic goals. The business model perspective is empirically demonstrated with the case of an online petitioning system implemented by a UK local authority. The case illustrates the importance of considering ICTs in public engagement from a holistic view to make them more manageable and assessable

e-Participation in Austria: Trends and Public Policies

The paper is a first step to assess the status of e-participation within the political system in Austria. It takes a top-down perspective focusing on the policy framework related to citizens´ rights in the digital environment, the role of public participation and public policies on e-participation in Austria. The analysis of the development of e-participation in Austria as well as of social and political trends regarding civic participation in general and its electronic embedding, show a remarkable recent increase of e-participation projects and related initiatives. The paper identifies main institutional actors actively dealing with or promoting e-participation and reviews government initiatives as well as relevant policy documents specifically addressing and relating to e-participation or e-democracy. Finally, it takes a look at the state of the evaluation of e-participation. A major conclusion is that e-participation has become a subject of public policies in Austria; however, the recent upswing of supportive initiatives for public participation and e-participation goes together with ambivalent attitudes among politicians and administration towards e-participation.e-participation, e-democracy, citizens´ rights, institutional actors, public policies, government initiatives, evaluation

HEALTH SERVICE QUALITY VALUES OF PRIMARY CLINIC USING EPARTICIPATION SERVICE QUALITY ASSESSMENT

The use of technology to manage participation in the quality of health services needs to be carried out to produce relevant, valid and accurate assessments of service quality. Not all Primary Clinics have health service quality standards and quality evaluation data for participation services using information technology (via electronic media). This is crucial for evaluating clinic development, upgrading the status to Main Clinic, and improving the service quality. The methodology used adopts the eParticipation framework with the stages of Areas of Participation (determining the main areas of participation), Category of Tools (determining the categories of ICT support tools), and Technology (determining ICT support technologies). The participation area is limited to Primary Clinic patients who act as participants of 1,308 people. 14 elements with a total of 33 detailed elements are the basic elements for assessing service quality. Application of eParticipation SQA website-based is used to manage and present the results of service quality assessments by Primary Clinic Managers. The highest average service quality assessment is in the answers to Good (62%), the Worse and Poor options are minimized, and the options of Good and Very Good are maximized. The technology required consists of software, hardware, and network devices. The application is supported by Manager and is used easily, quickly, and precisely

The “tokenization” of the eParticipation in public governance: an opportunity to hack democracy

Currently Distributed Ledger Technologies-DLTs, and especially the Blockchain technology, represent a great opportunity for public institutions to transform the channels of citizen participation and reinvigorate democratic pro-cesses. These technologies allow the simplification of processes and provide a strong security management of the data stored in its records, guaranteeing the transmission and public transparency of information . Therefore, the possibility of developing a new citizen governance model using this technology as a BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) platform emerges. G-Cloud solutions would facilitate a fast deployment in the cities and provide scalability to foster the creation of Smart Citizens within the philosophy of Open Government. The development of an eParticipation model that can configure a tokenizable system of the ac-tions and processes that citizens exercise in democratic environments is an op-portunity to guarantee greater participation and thus manage more effective lo-cal democratic spaces. Therefore, a Blockchain solution in eDemocracy plat-forms represents a great opportunity to claim a new pattern of management amongst the agents that participate in the public sphere

Democratic Decision-making In The Infomration Society: Exploring Stakeholders’ VIEWS

Exploiting the relationship between democratic decision-making and the underlying technical infrastructure of the Information Society raises important issues of how various stakeholders perceive potential innovations and the role of technology in political activities. The connection between people, technology and politics is a concept usually referred to as eDemocracy. Its practices span from systems developed within the sphere of eGovernment to non-institutional initiatives which emerge through experience and mobilize political expression using ad hoc online means, such as blogs and social networking groups. This paper identifies this diversity and discusses explanatory findings on different perceptions of key stakeholders, examining how the concept of democracy as an online activity is compatible with their experiences and interests. At the next step, it suggests that research should compare and evaluate these diverse practices by importing concepts of stakeholder thinking. The outcome of this research would provide important added value into exploring and balancing different opinions and objectives towards sustainable development of the eDemocracy agenda within Information Society’s policies. We present our ideas by examining the case of a system which has drawn much attention during the last years: the UK Prime Minister’s ePetitions

Electronic participation through social media

It is widely acknowledge that many of e-Participation initiatives often attract wider audience and face serious limited citizens’ involvement. The use of social media has been seen as a hope to remedy such limitation. However, despite the recently adoption of social media the lack of citizens’ involvement in e-Participation initiatives still remains. This ongoing research paper aims at producing a general overview of e-Participation through social media. So far, the latest research works on such topic have been predominantly focused on a political context of e-Participation, where politicians-citizens interactions and activities are the central interest of the studies. Little existing studies investigate e-Participation in its own right in government context. The findings also reveal that the majority of e-Participation through social media initiatives are more informative than interactive, since few initiatives have been found that aim to considerably enhance citizen participation in policy decision making.This work has been supported by Portuguese FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology within the Project Scope UID /CEC / 00319/2013info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

e-Report Generator Supporting Communications and Fieldwork: A Practical Case of Electrical Network Expansion Projects

In this piece of work we present a simple way to incorporate Geographical Information System tools that have been developed using open source software in order to help the different processes in the expansion of the electrical network. This is accomplished by developing a novel fieldwork tool that provides the user with automatically generated enriched e-reports that include information about every one of the involved private real estates in a specific project. These reports are an eco-friendly alternative to paper format, and can be accessed by clients using any kind of personal device with a minimal set of technical requirements

The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area

The phenomenon of eParticipation is receiving increasing attention, demonstrated by recent technology implementations, experiments, government reports, and research programs. Understanding such an emerging field is a complex endeavor because there is no generally agreed upon definition of the field, no clear overview of the research disciplines or methods it draws upon, and because the boundaries of the field are undecided. Using conventional literature review techniques, we identify 131 scientific articles considered important for the field's theoretical development. This sample provides the starting point for a grounded analysis leading to the development of an overview model: the field of eParticipation seen from a researcher's perspective. The model provides structure for understanding the emerging shape of the field as well as an initial indication of its content. It also provides the basis for developing research agendas for the future