Evaluating E Participation

There is a widely acknowledged evaluation gap in the field of e-participation practice and research, a lack of systematic evaluation with regard to process organization, outcome and impacts. This book addresses the state of the art of e-participation research and the existing evaluation gap by reviewing various evaluation approaches and providing a multidisciplinary concept for evaluating the output, outcome and impact of citizen participation via the Internet as well as via traditional media. It offers new knowledge based on empirical results of its application (tailored to different forms and levels of e-participation) in an international comparative perspective.​ The book will advance the academic study and practical application of e-participation through fresh insights, largely drawing on theoretical arguments and empirical research results gained in the European collaborative project “e2democracy”. It applies the same research instruments to a set of similar citizen participation processes in seven local communities in three countries (Austria, Germany and Spain). The generic evaluation framework has been tailored to a tested toolset, and the presentation and discussion of related evaluation results aims at clarifying to what extent these tools can be applied to other consultation and collaboration processes, making the book of interest to policymakers and scholars alike.

This book examines the key issues for consideration when evaluating information, consultation and public participation.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0] License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Exploring academic and policy thinking on e-participation, this book opens up the organizational and institutional 'black box' and provides new insights into how public administrations in 15 European states have facilitated its implementation.

Ortwin Renn Thomas Wehler Peter Wiedemann In late July of 1992 the small and remote mountain resort of Morschach in the Swiss Alps became a lively place of discussion, debate, and discourse. Over a three-day period twenty-two analysts and practitioners of public participation from the United States and Europe came together to address one of the most pressing issues in contemporary environmental politics: How can environmental policies be designed in a way that achieves both effective protection of nature and an adequate representation of public values? In other words, how can we make the environmental decision process competent and fair? All the invited scholars from academia, international research institutes, and governmental agencies agreed on one fundamental principle: For environmental policies to be effective and legitimate, we need to involve the people who are or will be affected by the outcomes of these policies. There is no technocratic solution to this problem. Without public involvement, environmental policies are doomed to fail. The workshop was preceded by a joint effort by the three editors to develop a framework for evaluating different models of public participation in the environmental policy arena. During a preliminary review of the literature we made four major observations. These came to serve as the primary motivation for this book. First, the last decade has witnessed only a fair amount of interest within the sociological or political science communities in issues of public participation.

"This book examines the role that citizens play in the development of electronic government or e-government,specifically focusing on the impact of e-government and citizens, exploring issues of policy and management in government"--Provided by publisher.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference on Electronic Participation, ePart 2019, held in Linköping, Sweden, in August/September 2020, in conjunction with the 19th IFIP WG 8.5 IFIP International Conference on Electronic Government (EGOV 2020) and the International Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government Conference (CeDEM 2020). The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 11 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. The papers are clustered under the following topical sections: eParticipation developments; digital transformation; open government and transparency; and user perspectives.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 10th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference on Electronic Participation, ePart 2018, held in Krems, Austria, in September 2018. The 12 revised full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 29 submissions. The papers are clustered under the following topical sections: general e-democracy and e-participation; digital collaboration and social media; policy modeling and policy informatics; and social innovation.

The rapid development and the growing penetration of information and communication technologies (ICT) provide tremendous opportunities for a wide and cost effective application of the ideas of participative democracy and public participation in government decision and policy making. ICT can drive dramatic transformations in the quantity and quality of communication and interaction of government organizations with citizens, revitalizing and strengthening the modern representative democracy which currently faces big problems of reduced citizens’ trust and involvement. This book deals with the application of these e-participation ideas in the special and ‘difficult’, and at the same time highly interesting, national context of Southern Europe and the Balkans. The first chapter provides an overview of e-participation concepts and practices whilst the following chapters analyse pilot applications of e-participation concepts in eight different Southern European and Balkan countries (Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Serbia, Albania, Greece, Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)). They cover both the ‘classical’ e-participation paradigm, based on official e-participation spaces created, operated and controlled by government organizations as well as emerging new e-participation paradigms including e-participation based on web 2.0 social media, and ‘scientific-level’ e-participation, based on opening government data to the scientific community. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies.