E-participation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The correct title of this page is eParticipation. The above appearance is for technical reasons.
Alternative spellings for eParticipation include e-Participation and e-participation
eParticipation is a recently invented term meaning “ICT-supported participation in processes involved in government and governance”. Processes may concern administration, service delivery, decision making and policy making. eParticipation is hence closely related to e-government and (e-)governance. (ICT=Information and Communication Technologies). The need for the term has emerged as user benefits and values have often been paid less attention to in the e-government development than those of the service providers.
[edit] History
The term emanated in the early 2000s and draws generally on three developments.
- The general development in CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) and groupware directed towards collaborative environments to support human ICT-mediated interaction, both work-related and social.
- The development in e-democracy since the late 1990s, where interest rapidly evolved from e-voting to several forms of ICT-supported and –enabled interaction between governments and citizens, including not only direct ones such as consultations, lobbying, petitioning and polling but also ones pursued outside of government itself, including electioneering, campaigning, and community informatics.
- The development in e-government towards increasingly complex service delivery. Complex services require considerable interaction including searching, selecting options based on multiple criteria, calculating outcomes, notifications, inquiries, complaints, and many other activities. There are several ICT tools for such tasks, ranging from FAQs to call centres, but there is a need to coordinate all these into user-friendly but powerful toolsets for client-organization encounters. Because interaction in such contexts is complex, and because goals have to be reached, the arenas where it takes places becomes social arenas for ICT-supported participation.
[edit] On the definition
The term Participation means taking part in joint activities for the purpose of reaching a common goal. This encompasses both trivial situations in which participation mainly has a technical meaning, ”doing things together”. For example, a football team needs 11 players, and dancing often requires two or more people acting in a coordinated manner. But participation, even in trivial situations, also has a goal-oriented aspect which means decision making and control are involved. Participation in political science and theory of management refers to direct public participation in political, economical or management decisions. The two are not completely separated but belong on a spectrum of complexity and context. When participation becomes complicated, decision making becomes necessary. Hence, any participatory process is potentially important for the rule system governing the activities. In terms of points 2 and 3 above, this means that when service processes become complex, the implementation of them will not be in all details based on political decisions but also on what is found to be practical. Such decisions are made in many places in a situated manner. When such practical doings become implemented in government (e)service systems, they will affect decision making, as many changes will later be hard to make simply because exising procedures are implemented in ICT systems and government agencies’ procedures. There are many theories dealing with institutionalization, for example Structuration theory, Institutional theory, and Actor-Network Theory. These theories all, in different ways, deal with how "ways of doing things" become established or rejected, and how those that become established increasingly affect the ways we "normally" do things.
[edit] External links
- DemoNet
- World e-Gov Forum
- e-forum Association dedicated to analysing the future needs of eGovernment in Europe
- Internet Society Organization home for the groups responsible for Internet infrastructure standards, including the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).
