issue9, July 2008
eParticipation Research Projects in the European Union: A Survey

  

In this article, projects that have been and are financially supported by the European Commision in the area of eParticipation are identified and analyzed. For this, a working definition of eParticipation is adopted as “efforts to broaden and deepen political participation by enabling citizens to connect with one another and with their elected representatives and governments by using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).”

Source material determination

The survey identified a number of databases that provide information about projects that were financed wholly or partly from the budget of the European Communities and a search was performed to these databases using predefined keywords relevant to eParticipation i.e. eParticipation, eDemocracy, eConsultation etc. The search in these databases resulted in a number of projects. However, the project summaries were examined further in order to identify the projects that are within the concept of eParticipation as outlined above.

In addition, the official eGovernment-related EU Web site (http://ec.europa.eu/egovernment) was searched in the eParticipation section. This search discovered a summary report of IST eParticipation research projects and a report on projects funded by the eParticipation Preparatory Action 2006.

Finally, this process resulted in a total of 36 projects that addressed eParticipation and were funded by the European Commission. These projects are:

  • Evaluating Practices And Validating Technologies In E-democracy And E-voting (EVE)
  • Western Balkans democratic participation (WEB.DEP)
  • Web Supporting Direct Participation in Democratic Processes (WEBOCRACY)
  • An Innovative Cyber Voting System For Internet Terminals And Mobile Phones (CYBERVOTE)
  • Electronic Democracy European Network (EDEN)
  • EUROpean CITIes platform for on-line transaction services (EURO-CITI)
  • Organizational Consequences Of E-mail Introduction, Adoption And Diffusion (COMMORG)
  • Democracy Network (DEMO-NET)
  • Electronic Polling System for Remote operation (E-POLL)
  • An Internet Based Electronic Voting System (E-VOTE)
  • Virtual Desktop for the Mobile Elected Representative (EREPRESENTATIVE)
  • A Secure and Trustable Internet Voting System based on PKI (TRUE-VOTE)
  • Delphi Mediation Online System (DEMOS)
  • IST for Parliamentarians (EPRI KNOWLEDGE)
  • Ιnnovative IST Platforms and Services to Support a Democratic Regional/Urban Planning Process (AGORA 2000)
  • Community Empowerment Network Through Universal Regional Integration for the 21st Century (CENTURI21)
  • E-Forum for European Government (E-FORUM)
  • The eParticipation Trans-European Network for Democratic Renewal & Citizen Engagement (E-PARTICIPATE)
  • TransEuropean Living Labs for an iMproved E-participation (TELL-ME)
  • EUROVOXBOX services for Improving Citizens' Participation in Democratic Life (EUROVOXBOX)
  • Automated Legal Intelligent System (ALIS)
  • Innovative Cities for the Next Generation (ICING)
  • E-Government for Low Socio-economic status groups (E-LOST)
  • The European project for Standardized Transparent Representations in order to Extend Legal Accessibility (ESTRELLA)
  • Quality of Service and Legitimacy in eGovernment (QUALEG)
  • Intelligent Cities (INTELCITIES)
  • Electronic Court: judicial IT-based management (E-COURT)
  • European Programme for an Ontology based Work Environment for Regulations and legislation (E-POWER)
  • Voluntary organisations and Social Inclusion in the Information Society (VSIIS)
  • Drafting Legislation with Ontology-based Support (DALOS)
  • Environment for Assisting the drafting and debating of Legislation (SEAL)
  • Enabling Participation of the Youth in the Public Debate of Legislation among Parliaments, Citizens and Businesses in the European Union (LEXIS)
  • Easing Participation in Legislative Processes (LEGESE)
  • An advanced ICT Tool for enhancing Citizen’s Participation in the Legislative Process (LEXIPATION)
  • Enabling citizen’s initiative to eParticipation (TID+)
  • Promoting eGovernment Actions in European Cities (E-CITIZEN)

 

In order to analyze these projects a simple framework describing eParticipation was adopted. This simple framework suggests that eParticipation consists of three main domains of interest: participation areas, tools, and technologies.  The participation areas define the context of the participatory process and are supported by ICT tools that enable some form of automation of the relevant processes.

Participation areas

eParticipation-related research projects that are and were funded by the European Commission are grouped according to public participation areas. All possible areas are listed, even if they do not have a project associated with them. An additional area is included in order to list those projects that did not develop or use a specific eParticipation tool or application but instead studied and disseminated findings (knowledge) in the eParticipation process. The Information Provision and Consultation areas were the most popular. They are followed by the Voting, Polling, Discourse, and Community Building areas. Campaigning and Mediation include only one project each. More specifically:

  • Information Provision: 12 projects (e.g. WEBOCRACY, E-PARTICIPATE, E-POWER)
  • Community building / Collaborative Environment: 4 projects (e.g. DEMOS, CENTURI21)
  • Consultation: 12 projects (e.g. WEBOCRACY, EURO-CITI, E-PARTICIPATE, EUROVOXBOX)
  • Campaigning: 1 project (TID+)
  • Electioneering: -
  • Deliberation: 3 projects (e.g. WEBOCRACY, DEMOS)
  • Discourse: 4 projects (e.g. WEBOCRACY, EDEN)
  • Mediation: 1 project (ALIS)
  • Spatial planning: 3 projects (e.g. EDEN, AGORA 2000)
  • Polling: 4 projects (e.g. WEBOCRACY, EURO-CITI, EUROVOXBOX)
  • Voting: 4 projects (e.g. CYBERVOTE , E-POLL)
  • Dissemination of Knowledge: 6 projects (e.g DEMO-NET, EVE, E-FORUM, COMMORG)

 

Categories of tools

Below are listed the most popular categories of eParticipation tools that were used and/or developed within the projects. The majority of the tools are part of the eConsultation systems category. This result was expected since the consultation participation area includes most of the research projects. The second most common category of tools is Combined Collaborative Systems, followed by Community Systems, and e-Polls. Although attention was paid to all tool categories, ePetition systems, online surgeries, and chat rooms are included in a small number of research projects. More specifically:

  • ePetition systems: 2 projects (INTELCITIES, TID+)
  • eVoting systems: 4 projects (e.g CYBERVOTE, E-POLL)
  • eConsultation systems: 9 projects (e.g. WEBOCRACY, E-PARTICIPATE, EURO-CITI, EUROVOXBOX)
  • e-Polls: 5 projects (e.g. WEBOCRACY, EDEN, EURO-CITI)
  • Community Systems: 5 projects (e.g. EDEN, E-FORUM, CENTURI21, EPRI)
  • GIS and Map-based tools: 3 projects (e.g. EDEN, AGORA 2000, INTELCITIES)
  • Online surgeries and chat rooms: 1 project (WEBOCRACY)
  • Combined collaborative systems: 7 projects (e.g. DEMOS, ALIS, ICING, SEAL)

 

Technologies

The main technologies that were used by the projects are listed below. Mobile technologies, ontologies, and semantic web related technologies are the most popular technologies.

  • File Sharing: 2 projects (WEBOCRACY, E-FORUM)
  • RSS Syndication: 1 project (TELL-ME)
  • Streaming Media Technologies: 1 project (E-PARTICIPATE)
  • Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) / Groupware: 2 projects (SEAL, EDEN)
  • Web Services: 3 projects (E-PARTICIPATE, QUALEG, ICING)
  • Data Mining: 1 project (WEBOCRACY)
  • Ontological Engineering and Semantic Web: 11 projects (e.g. WEBOCRACY, DALOS, SEAL, LEXIS, LEGESE)
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP): 2 projects (EDEN, E-POWER)
  • Mobile Technologies (e.g. WAP) : 12 projects (e.g. CYBERVOTE, EDEN, EURO-CITI, E-VOTE, E-POLL)
  • Web Content Management Systems:  1 project (WEBOCRACY)
  • Security and Cryptography (e.g. SSL, PKI): 5 projects (CYBERVOTE, EURO-CITI, TRUE VOTE)
  • Unified Messaging Systems (UMS): 1 project (EDEN)
  • Smart Card: 5 procects (E-POLL, TRUE VOTE, E-CITIZEN)
  • Biometrics: 2 projects (E-POLL, E-REPRESENTATIVE)
  • Artificial Intelligence: 1 project (ALIS)

 

Results and Discussion

This survey of European Union funded projects over the last decade identified 36 projects in the domain of eParticipation that had a total budget of 126 M € and a total EU-funding of 65 M €. Most of the projects were funded under two main streams.  The first was action line 1.4.2 on “online support for democratic processes” within FP5 that funded seven projects while the second is the eParticipation Participatory Actions that is currently funding six projects and will fund eight more in 2007.

The European Union has been flexible with regards to the areas and technologies that are researched by their sponsored projects. A notable exception is voting, which was funded under specific action lines in order to address large scale trust and confidence. The remaining EU projects indicate a preference for Consultation and Information Provision, with some emphasis on legislative processes.

For more information about the conducted survey and access to research results please contact Dr. Efthimios Tambouris (tambouris@uom.gr), Prof. Konstantinos Tarabanis (kat@uom.gr) or Evangelos Kalampokis (ekal@uom.gr)

Efthimios Tambouris is a researcher at CERTH/ITI and head of the eGovernment Unit at the Information Systems Laboratory of the University of Macedonia.

Konstantinos A. Tarabanis is Professor at the Department of Business Administration of the University of Macedonia, Greece. His current research interests include conceptual modeling of information systems, service models and architectures, as well as the domains of e-government, e-learning, e-participation and e-business.

Evangelos Kalampokis is a researcher at the Information Systems Laboratory of the University of Macedonia and a PhD student at the same University.

 

 

 

 

  
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