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

The Influence of Trust and subjective Norms on Citizens’ Intentions to Engage in E-participation on E-government Websites

Advancements in web technology have revolutionised the way citizens interact with governments. Unlike traditional methods of communication between citizens and governments, e-participation via e-government websites enhances communication and enables citizens to become actively involved in the policy-making process. Despite the growing importance of e-participation, the potential factors influencing citizens’ engagement in e-participation have not yet been investigated. Using responses obtained from Saudi citizens, this study examines a number of factors that may influence the intentions of citizens to engage in e-participation activities on e-government websites. The results suggest that the factors of trust and subjective norms have a significant impact on citizens’ intentions to engage in e-participation activities

An investigation of the impact factors to increase citizens' engagement in e-participation on e-government in Saudi Arabia

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.The growing use of web technologies has significantly influenced how governments work and provide services to citizens. Electronic government (e-government) has been one of the major developments in recent years in both developing and developed countries. The main objective of e-government is not limited to access information but also to create new ways to improve processes, integrate government services and increase interaction with citizens. One of these ways is electronic participation (e-participation), which offers citizens a two-way communication between them and the government. E-participation, a subset of e-government, has become a common phenomenon in the governments, which are serious about using the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for strengthening the government-citizen relationship, such as the use of social networking services, online polls, discussion forum and blogs etc. Unlike traditional methods of communication between citizens and governments, e-participation activities on e-government websites enhance communication and enable citizens to become actively involved in the policy-making process. While there are many researches conducted in the field of e-government, most of these researches investigate the adoption/usage of e-government. However, previous studies failed to investigate citizens’ intention to engage in e-participation activities. The purpose of this research is to investigate the key factors that influence on citizens’ intention to engage in e-participation activities on e-government websites in Saudi Arabia. Based on literature review a conceptual model for e-participation on e-government websites proposed. Data was collected from Saudi citizens to find out their perceptions towards e-participation. Following this aim, this research answers the following main question: What are the key factors that influence on citizens’ intention to engage in E-participation on E-government websites in Saudi Arabia? In order to answer the research question, a mixed-method research approach is employed in this study, which incorporated both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. First, a quantitative approach was applied to empirically test the relationship among the constructs of the proposed model. An online survey instrument is used as the method of data collection from Saudi Arabia citizens. A sample of 770 responses was used for data analysis. The data was analyzed using a structural equation modelling(SEM) statistical techniques using AMOS 22.0 to estimate the relationships between the different factors in the research model. Secondly, a qualitative study (a focus group discussion) was used to validate the survey results and provide more insights into the relationships identified. The participants in the focus groups were also the Saudi citizens. One focus group discussion, which consisted of eight participants, was conducted in this study. The participants’ responses throughout the discussion were recorded and transcribed for analysis. The quantitative results show that the proposed model is strongly supported by the data. The results of the focus group revealed the various factors influencing in citizens’ intentions to engage in e-participation, thus supporting the hypotheses and consistent with the quantitative results. The analysis of both the survey and focus group discussion results confirmed that trust, attitude, web design and subjective norms strongly influence citizens’ intention to engage in e-participation activities on e-government websites. This study contributes to the knowledge by providing an important insight and a better understanding of citizens’ intention to engage in e-participation activities on e-government websites in Saudi Arabia. The findings of this study will assist Saudi local government leaders and managers to better understand the major issues facing e-participation and enable analysis of the extent to which citizens’ online inputs reflect community-wide interests

Citizen Participation in Rulemaking: Past, Present, and Future

Administrative law scholars and governmental reformers argue that advances in information technology will greatly expand public participation in regulatory policymaking. They claim that e-rulemaking, or the application of new technology to administrative rulemaking, promises to transform a previously insulated process into one in which ordinary citizens regularly provide input. With the federal government having implemented several e-rulemaking initiatives in recent years, we can now begin to assess whether such a transformation is in the works-or even on the horizon. This paper compares empirical observations on citizen participation in the past, before e-rulemaking, with more recent data on citizen participation after the introduction of various types of technological innovations. Contrary to prevailing predictions, empirical research shows that e-rulemaking makes little difference: citizen input remains typically sparse, notwithstanding the relative ease with which individuals can now learn about and comment on regulatory proposals. These findings indicate that the more significant barriers to citizen participation are cognitive and motivational. Even with e-rulemaking, it takes a high level of technical sophistication to understand and comment on regulatory proceedings. Moreover, even though information technology lowers the absolute cost of submitting comments to regulatory agencies, it also dramatically decreases the costs of a wide variety of entertainment and commercial activities that are much more appealing to most citizens. Given persistent opportunity costs and other barriers to citizen participation, even future e-rulemaking efforts appear unlikely to lead to a participatory revolution, but instead can be expected generally to deliver much the same level of citizen involvement in the regulatory process

‘Probing with the prototype’:using a prototype e-participation platform as a digital cultural probe to investigate youth engagement with the environment

This study describes how we used a prototype e-participation plat-form as a digital cultural probe to investigate youth motivation and engagement strategies. This is a novel way of considering digital cultural probes which can contribute to the better creation of e-participation platforms. This probe has been conducted as part of the research project STEP which aims at creating an e-participation platform to engage young European Citizens in environmental decision making. Our probe technique has given an insight into the environ-mental issues concerning young people across Europe as well as possible strat-egies for encouraging participation. How the e-participation platform can be utilised to support youth engagement through opportunities for social interac-tion and leadership is discussed. This study leads to a better understanding of how young people can co-operate with each other to provide collective intelli-gence and how this knowledge could contribute to effective e-participation of young people

Republic of Macedonia and Citizens Participation in the Digital Age: Where Do We Stand?

The paper evaluates citizens’ participation in e-democracy processes in the Republic of Macedonia i.e. e-participation. It reflects upon the availability of digital tools and availability of online platforms set up by the institutions on their official webpages in order to enable active citizens’ participation. Methodological approach used in this research relies on analysis of the obtained answers from an online questionnaire that explores citizens’ awareness of the possibility to use digital tools in the democratic process, their participation via usage of digital tools and their attitudes towards e-democracy process. The questionnaire was distributed via social networks Facebook and LinkedIn in the period from November 2015 to February 2016. The empirical findings in this study research enhance our understanding of citizens’ awareness of the possibility to use digital tools in the democratic process, their participation via usage of digital tools and their attitudes towards e-democracy process in the Republic of Macedonia. As findings suggest, there is stillroom for improvement of the factors that determine citizens’ participation in digital age.

Understanding the Role of Language Style of Government Response in E-participation: Evidence from a Citizen Inquiry Forum in China

In response to the “Internet + Public Service” reformation, Chinese government organizations increasingly use e-participation platforms to interact with citizens, making how government respond to citizens\u27 inquiry increasingly critical in citizen participation. This study is one of the few attempts to study the effect of language style of government response on citizen participation. Based on the language expectancy theory, we hypothesize that government response using appropriate formal and emotional language will change citizen e-participation behavior. Using text data from 11,194 users in a Chinese citizen inquiry forum, we found that emotional language has the positive impact on citizens\u27 continuous participation significantly. And both emotional language and formal language can promote citizens’ participation quality. Moreover, we identified the complementary effects of two languages on e-participation. This study has implications for both researchers and practitioners

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-participation service in Saudi Arabian e-Government websites: The influencing factors from citizens' perspective

© 2014 The Authors. In keeping pace with the rapid developments in information and communication technology, the Saudi government has invested heavily, in recent years, in the development of e-participation services in e-Government websites with the aim of enhancing citizens' interaction with the government and thereby making the latter more responsive and accountable to citizens' needs. However, despite its significant efforts, a low level of use of the online opportunities by the citizens for interacting with the government is an endemic problem faced by the Saudi government. In contrast, many countries stand in very good positions compared to Saudi Arabia in terms of citizens' rate of adoption of e-participation services. This suggests that there are influencing factors that have a significant impact on citizens' intention to use eparticipation services in e-Government websites in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, this research aims to explore the factors, from a citizen perspective, that affects individuals' intention to use e-participation services in Saudi Arabian e-Government websites. In addressing its objective, this research commenced with a literature investigation which revealed that there are very few previous studies that have specifically examined the antecedents of citizens' intention to use e-participation services. Much of the existing literature on citizens' intention to use e-Government services have focused predominantly on the transactional services. Additionally, most of these studies have concentrated more on validating popular behavioural models in the context of citizens' use of e-services rather than looking at contextual factors that could impact individual's decision to use such services. Therefore, by reviewing different theories and empirical findings, a conceptual framework has been proposed in this study for understanding Saudi citizens' intention to use e-participation. The framework consists of five constructs, including, intention to use e-participation, attitude, trust, website design, and culture. The relationship between these constructs form the basis for the research hypotheses which will be tested using a quantitative research approach. Specifically, a survey will be used for gathering data from a sample of Saudi citizens and statistical methods will be used for analysing the quantitative data generated from the primary research. The findings of this research can assist the Saudi government and governments of other culturally similar countries in developing more effective citizen-centric e-participation services, thus implying that this study has significant practical implications as well

The potential of integrating E-participation in planning support systems

The increasing complexity of spatial planning issues and pressure from citizens to takepart in designing and deciding on spatial plans result in a need for improved methods to aidcommunication between governmental actors and citizens. These developments put high demands onparticipatory Planning Support Systems (PSS); instruments that can aid planners in doing theirplanning tasks. By using the accessibility of the internet, e-participation offers opportunities as a PSS.Although many advantages are attributed to participatory PSS, its use in the planning practice remainsmarginal until now. It is argued here that this is partly caused by the lack of empirical studies thatdemonstrate potential benefits and problems when applying PSS. This paper provides guidelines fororganizations that contemplate on using a participatory PSS. In order to do so, a framework isdeveloped, identifying obstacles that could block effective participation in a PSS. Three planningprocesses are evaluated to investigate the importance of these obstacles. It is demonstrated that,although e-participation has potential as PSS, the lack of political will blocks effective participationand a more profound link between the citizen input and the decision-making is neede