Jeremy Millard

Understanding eParticipation State of Play in Europe

In this article, we develop a three-layered analytical framework for investigating the development of eParticipation in Europe, which incorporates the outputs, outcomes, and impacts of eParticipation, and also accounts for the action of external factors. This analytical framework was used as a basis of a questionnaire survey among eParticipation initiatives at the European, national, regional, and local levels. It has been concluded that, in most cases, eParticipation simply provided a suitable alternative channel for participatory activities and did not challenge institutionalized centers of power.

A three–layered framework for evaluating e–participation

This paper presents a framework for evaluating e–participation, distinguishing between internal project components and external moderators and between front and back regions of e–participation from a governance perspective. It uses a three–layered impact assessment framework comprising outputs, outcomes and impacts and employs the notion of an intervention logic specifying types of actions necessary to initiate and manage participation processes. Its multi–layered and bounded character prompts evaluators to consider links to high–level policy goals, cultural factors and the chain of transformations which condition long–term impacts. We show how we populated the framework for the purposes of a study of European e–participation.

Social Innovation for Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development: Some Governance and Policy Perspectives

The systematic deployment of social innovation has been largely overlooked by policy makers concerned to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. According to research funded by the European Commission, the policies of international organizations rarely refer to the potential of social innovation, neither generally nor in the context of achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. However, a huge number of initiatives around the global are successfully using social innovation approaches, but most do so without using this term. They thereby do not fully understand the potential and strength that a more systematic deployment of social innovation theories, methods and practices could bring. This paper aims to at least partially redress this balance by reporting on evidence derived from the on-going empirical and theoretical research undertaken by the SI-DRIVE research project in relation to policy reduction and sustainable development, in particular by focusing on the governance and policy implications.

Driving Innovation Using Big Open Linked Data (BOLD) Panel

Governments have always retained public service data internally in their own systems with only limited information provided to the public and other stakeholders such as the business, charitable and NGO communities. However, the rapid advancement of ICTs coupled with electronic publishing via the Internet in the last decade in particular has enabled governments to exploit the potential of wider distribution and use of such data previously held in internal systems. The panellists will discuss how Big, Open and Linked Data (BOLD) can be utilized to drive innovation and what obstacles and challenges may be encountered. Empowering citizens, potential mis-use in identity theft, policy manipulation or market distortion, and the need to combine open data with closed sources will be discussed.

Toward a Coherent Methodological Framework for Examining Social Innovation in the Public Sector

Creating an integrated social innovation concept requires connecting, engaging, and applying theories and practices into an encapsulating framework. Therefore, the exploitation of various methodologies becomes inevitable and a force in underpinning positive change. This study examines a coherent methodological framework that can be utilized toward examining social innovation in the public sector. The proposed framework provides foundations for examining social innovation leading toward empowering citizens and influence societal changes toward smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth.

Evolving e-government benchmarking to better cover technology development and emerging societal needs

Many international e-government benchmarks seek to measure progress towards various versions of a digital society, and in this endeavor include a component of e-government. But because comparable international e-government data are scarce, most reports rely on the United Nations E-Government Development Index, specifically its Online Service Index as a benchmark. However, this assessment only captures national level initiatives at a broad level and does not link evaluation to outcomes and impacts, i.e. e-government performance relative to investment. This paper briefly reviews the current UN framework and assesses how it can evolve to meet new demands, such as calls to better connect investments to policy goals, and evolving user behavior. It also places this in the context of new technology trends, like mobile and social media which have not yet been fully embraced by e-government but which are likely to become increasingly important. Similarly, important trends in benchmarking and in benchmarking tools are surveyed. For example, is it possible to measure outcomes in a cost effective manner? What might be the role of non-UN data and of web metrics and social media analytics? How could relevant data and other information be better presented to countries and decision-makers in order to strengthen the goal of using the UN survey to support learning and improvement? In this context, the paper outlines the next feasible steps which the UN and similar benchmarks might adopt, including how the framework might be applied to local level assessments.

A roadmap for e-participation and open government: empirical evidence from the Western Balkans

This paper describes why and how a conceptual framework for e-participation and open government has been developed and applied to six aspirant EU countries in the Western Balkans. It provides a rationale and background, and then examines the main academic and other relevant sources used. This is followed by an overview of the conceptual framework and a description of its main elements. Finally, the paper examines international data on e-participation covering the Western Balkan countries, uses this to examine the results of applying the conceptual framework in each country, and then provides conclusions and recommendations.

Cities and Urban Living at the Crossroads

Cities need to look again at their approach to evolving the smart city concept to addresses the challenges of urbanization. This concept paper highlights the European approach along with the need for social, technological and economic innovation to make such an objective feasible and sustainable.

From the Special Issue Editors: European Research on Electronic Citizen Participation and Engagement in Public Policy Making

In the last decade, there has been a strong interest of both researchers and practitioners in the exploitation of the information and communication technologies (ICT), and especially the Internet, for extending and enhancing citizens’ participation and engagement in public policy making. This has resulted in a huge growth, on one hand, of the research in the area of electronic participation (or e-participation), and on the other hand, of the investments made by governments for developing and operating Internet-based ICT platforms for this purpose. This trend can, even in the near future, have strong impacts both on the way government agencies operate internally and develop policies and also on the political life and the democratic processes. So it is worth examining briefly its main roots and foundations from the political and management sciences domain. Undoubtedly, the most important of them are the “participatory democracy” and “public participation” ideas developed about thirty years ago (Barber, 1984; Held, 1987). According to them, our representative democracy, in which representatives of citizens are making the main government decisions, has been combined with continuous citizens’ participation and engagement in all the stages of the policy-making processes of government agencies. This can bring substantial benefits: improvement of the quality of public policies (by taking advantage of valuable policy-relevant knowledge, opinions, and attitudes of citizens), more transparency and accountability of government, increase of public trust in government, and reversing of the declining confidence in politics and public institutions. Another equally important benefit is the education and improvement of the citizens: according to Held (1987) “the equal right to selfdevelopment can only be achieved in a participatory society, a society which fosters a sense of political efficacy, nurtures a concern for collective problems and contributes to the formation of a knowledgeable citizenry capable of taking a sustained interest in the governing process” (p. 262). Twenty years later, it was gradually realized that many design and problem-solving activities in private firms, which were performed exclusively by highly knowledgeable professionals, can be performed even better by large, diverse, and pluralistic teams of less-knowledgeable individuals, giving rise to new distributed ICT-based multi-disciplinary design and problem solving practices, referred to as “crowdsourcing” (Brabham, 2008; Surowiecki, 2004). The capability of a large network of people, connected through web technologies, to perform difficult design and problem-solving activities, which is referred to as “collective intelligence,” is gradually recognized by management researchers and practitioners. Furthermore, it is gradually realized that these ideas are applicable in the public sector as well, which can resort to “citizen-sourcing” for collecting information and knowledge concerning the needs of citizens, for determining the nature and the main characteristics of difficult social problems, and also for finding possible solutions to those problems (Nam, 2012). This citizen-sourcing can provide valuable information, knowledge, and ideas to government agencies, and can lead to the application of open innovation ideas in the public sector and gradually to the “coproduction” of public services by government and citizens in cooperation. The rapid development and the growing penetration of ICT provide rich opportunities for the extensive application of the above ideas at a low cost, leading to the development and growth of e-participation. ICT have the potential to support the provision of information to the citizens concerning planned or in-progress policies and activities of government and also to increase both the quantity and quality of consultation with the citizens. Also, ICT has the potential to support both top-down government initiatives and ground-up civil society ones, aiming at the enhancement of public participation in the decisionand policy-making processes of government agencies and the improvement of interaction between society and government. ICT enable the collection from the citizens of huge amounts of information, knowledge, and ideas on the problems and needs that public policies attempt to address and on proposed courses of government action and legislation. At the same time, ICT also enable advanced processing at a low cost of this extensive information and knowledge (e.g., the numerous textual postings of citizens in e-forums or social media can be processed using opinion-mining techniques [Pang & Lee, 2008] in order to draw conclusions from them), which enable a better