The Gamification Of Citizens Participation In Policymaking

This book examines the use of game elements to encourage citizens to participate in political decision-making and the planning of large-scale public sector projects. It argues that success is based on a personal concern with the project and a belief in the influence on political decision making, but also on fun. Without fun, only a very small group of the ‘usual suspects’ will participate, especially in classic policymaking approaches like citizens’ panels which require time and physical attendance. The book also examines the relationship between representative democracy and citizen participation from the perspective of direct democratic instruments in Germany. Readers from different countries with different political systems can decide for themselves, if and how the results from Germany are transferable to their respective conditions. Grounded in theoretical literature and statistical data, the book also makes use of narratives, applying a ‘storytelling’ approach to the case studies.

This open access book presents a topical, comprehensive and differentiated analysis of Germany’s public administration and reforms. It provides an overview on key elements of German public administration at the federal, Länder and local levels of government as well as on current reform activities of the public sector. It examines the key institutional features of German public administration; the changing relationships between public administration, society and the private sector; the administrative reforms at different levels of the federal system and numerous sectors; and new challenges and modernization approaches like digitalization, Open Government and Better Regulation. Each chapter offers a combination of descriptive information and problem-oriented analysis, presenting key topical issues in Germany which are relevant to an international readership.

Picture a government that measures civic value on a numbered scale, with civic performances tallied on leader boards, like a football match. Imagine if civic value was viewed as a game played by everyday citizens, sometimes in competition, other times working in harmony towards a common goal. And imagine that winners were celebrated (and losers blamed) collectively. Sounds a little far-fetched? Think again. ‘Gamified’ public power is much closer to reality than it may first appear. Attempts to innovate policy-making through entailing game elements are ubiquitous, at both national and supranational levels. This book explores the potential - and describes the limits - of the use of gamification in the public sector. In doing so, this book aims to contribute to the task of imagining what the exercise of public power might become, including its promises and threats.

The relationship between citizens and city governments is gradually transforming due to the utilization of advanced information and communication technologies in order to inform, consult, and engage citizens. Citizen E-Participation in Urban Governance: Crowdsourcing and Collaborative Creativity explores the nature of the new challenges confronting citizens and local governments in the field of urban governance. This comprehensive reference source explores the role that Web 2.0 technologies play in promoting citizen participation and empowerment in the city government and is intended for scholars, researchers, students, and practitioners in the field of urban studies, urban planning, political science, public administration, and more.

In this book Pragati Rawat and John C. Morris identify and evaluate the impact of factors that can help explain the difference in e-participation, public participation using information and communication technology, in different countries. While cross-sectional studies have been covered, few have taken an in-depth look at cross-national studies. This book attempts to fill the gap using quantitative panel data to explore the influence of technology and institutions, and the impact of their complex relationships in a mediation and moderation analysis, on e-participation. The current study reviews the scholarly work in the field of “offline” and “online participation” to identify a set of antecedents that influence e-participation. A conceptual framework is developed, supported by the theories from the public policy and socio-technical premise. The authors utilize secondary data, primarily from the UN and World Economic Forum, for 143 countries from three waves of surveys to measure the dependent and explanatory variables. The panel data is statistically analyzed and findings reveal the role of technology as a mediator as well as a moderator for institutions’ impact on e-participation. The Effects of Technology and Institutions on E-Participation provides a groundbreaking country-level analysis that will appeal to academics and students of e-government and Digital Government, Public Policy, Public Administration, Public Sector Innovation, and Public Participation.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Web Engineering, ICWE 2021, which was supposed to be held in Biarritz, France, in May 2021. Due to the corona pandemic the conference changed to a virtual format. The total of 22 full and 13 short contributions presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 128 submissions. The book also contains 6 demonstration, 1 poster, 3 PhD, and 3 tutorial papers. The papers were organized in topical sections named: Semantic Web; social Web; Web modeling and engineering; Web big data and data analytics; Web mining and knowledge extraction; Web of Things; Web programming; Web user interfaces; PhD symposium; posters and demonstrations; and tutorials. Chapter “A Web-Based Co-Creation and User Engagement Method and Platform” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book deals with the issue of Digital Participatory Platforms (DPPs) for urban governance. It explains the role and potential that ICTs play in the decision-making processes of the Public Administration and citizens' participation. The book also illustrates the main technologies that encourage innovation and social inclusion, with particular focus on use of DPPs in urban regeneration programs and projects. It presents international best practices from local to European level and it describes the process of creation, development and testing of a DPP project with reference to the Italian case. The book is divided into three parts: the first one gives a framework of neighborhood urban and civic engagement through ICTs, studying in depth the role of ICTs in support of Public Administration’s processes and citizens participation; the second part investigates the topic of Digital Participatory Platforms (DPPs) with the description of their potentialities, the presentation of some international best practices and a specific focus on the Italian context; the third part draws the conclusions of this path by asking which are the main challenges in the adoption of Digital Participatory Platforms, in order to increase citizen participation and collaboration via technology.