Lukasz Porwol

An ontology for next generation e-Participation initiatives

Abstract Despite over a decade-long experience of implementing e-Participation initiatives, there have been limited efforts so far to develop a detailed, comprehensive conceptualization for e-Participation considered from three distinct perspectives: as democratic process, a project and a deliberation platform. Current e-Participation literature is replete with fragmented models, which only partially describe aspects of e-Participation with main focus on structuring the “e-Participation” concept as a domain. This has made consistent descriptions and comparative analysis of e-Participation initiatives difficult, thus hindering the overall evolution of e-Participation. Consequently, no comprehensive, formal, executable e-Participation Ontology exists, that could be directly leveraged to facilitate operations of e-Participation initiatives or improving communication and knowledge exchange between similar e-Participation initiatives. In addition, current generation of e-Participation models does not explicitly support the emerging phenomenon of spontaneous, citizen-led e-Participation, in particular hosted on the social media platforms. This work bridges this gap by providing a practical, yet sufficiently detailed, conceptualization along with corresponding formal and executable ontology for next generation e-Participation. These semantic models cover the core facets of e-Participation — as a democratic process, an initiative and a sociotechnical system. The developed models also explicitly support the integrated citizen- and government-led model of e-Participation. For demonstration and validation, we employed the developed e-Participation Formal Ontology as a “design artefact” to describe two e-Participation initiatives at Local Government and European levels.

On the Duality of E-Participation --- Towards a Foundation for Citizen-Led Participation

What remains unclear after a decade of e-Participation research and practice is the extent to which the social web and informal channels have empowered citizens in government-citizen interactions where government determines what, where and how to discuss. Lately, attention has shifted to how these informal channels could be better harnessed as part of a holistic e-Participation solution. However, this implicit notion of duality of e-Participation is yet to be explored or conceptualized. This paper provides a first step towards understanding the duality of Government-led and Citizen-led e-Participation based on structuration and dynamic capabilities theories. We employ structuration theory to understand how dynamics of power between government and citizen in deciding what is important for the society and the solutions to adopt could tilt towards the side of citizens through citizen-led deliberations. Through the dynamic capabilities theory, we determine additional capabilities required by governments to meaningfully exploit and sustain citizen-led e-participation as a part or a holistic e-participation framework. We show through a case study how our resulting analytical tool could be employed in identifying salient technical, organisational and political issues in an on-going Irish e-Participation initiative planning to adopt citizen-led deliberation.

Structuring e-participation perspectives: mapping and aligning models to core facets

A proliferation of e-participation research in recent years has produced fragmented contributions in the area of e-participation models. Without a mechanism for analyzing, relating and consolidating these models, further development of the domain is in danger of repeating itself. This paper presents such a mechanism -- an Integrative Framework which organizes e-participation models based on the nature and specific aspects of e-participation supported. The Integrative Framework enables mapping of models to 12 different facets constructed from a combination of three related perspectives and four canonical aspects of e-participation. While our genealogical analysis of the models showed in general weak relationships among models, our Framework enabled logical groupings of these models as a basis for consolidation, alignment or complementarity analyses. Mappings also clearly revealed aspects of e-participation that are yet to be (sufficiently) addressed. We conclude with recommendations for fostering rigorous and incremental model development in the e-participation domain.

Realizing the Innovation Potentials from Open Data: Stakeholders’ Perspectives on the Desired Affordances of Open Data Environment

Despite the increasing number of datasets available on open data platforms, there has been limited adoption and use of open data by the public. This has consequently limited the innovation and transparency impact of open data on respective economies and governments. While literature is replete with articles on barriers to open data exploitation and use; these studies are yet to examine how affordances of open data platforms could help to overcome these barriers. This perspective is important since the platform directly mediates access to open data resources and their use. We describe a study carried out as part the Route-To-PA (Route-To-PA Project, Raising Open and User-friendly Transparency Enhancing Technologies for Public Administrations, H2020 Project, http://routetopa.eu/.) project to establish stakeholder’s perspectives on barriers to effective use of open data and the desired open data platform affordances to address these problems. Our results provide details on what kinds of data are needed by stakeholders, the features required to support their interactions and collaboration around open data and features that could enhance the understandability of datasets available on open data platform.

Harnessing the duality of e-participation: social software infrastructure design

There have been limited efforts so far to mainstream social media-based citizen-led political deliberations and its integration with traditional government-led e-Participation. Thus, while notion of duality of e-Participation is plausible -- the mutual (re-)shaping of the deliberations on traditional e-Participation and social media; significant socio-technical and organizational capabilities must be developed by governments to harness this duality. In this paper, we elaborate on these capabilities relying on the theoretical framework developed in our earlier work. Focusing on the socio-technical aspects, we develop the requirements, design and specify the implementation technologies for realizing the Social Software Infrastructure (SSI) required for harnessing political deliberations on social media platforms. We show how the SSI can be integrated with a traditional e-Participation platform and conclude with the challenges in implementing and sustaining this technical infrastructure in government.

A semantic model for e-Participation - detailed conceptualization and ontology

There have been limited efforts so far to provide a detailed conceptualization and formal ontology for e-Participation. Current e-Participation literature is replete with fragmented models, which only partially describe aspects of e-Participation. Consequently consistent descriptions and comparison of e-Participation initiatives is difficult. In addition, no e-Participation ontology exists, which supports citizen-led e-participation on the Social Media platforms. This work bridges this gap by providing a detailed conceptualization and corresponding formal and executable ontology for e-Participation. These semantic models cover the core perspectives of e-Participation; democratic process, initiative and sociotechnical system. The developed models also explicitly support the integrated citizen- and government-led model of e-Participation. Results from the use of the ontology in describing two e-Participation initiatives at Local Government or County and European levels are also presented.

Social inclusion and digital divide: eParticipation dilemmas in municipalities

Citizen-participation faces a large number of obstacles. eParticipation is considered to be one of the key tools to ensure effective state-to-citizen communication. A number of initiatives have led to the creation of eParticipation platforms, enabling digital participation online via ICT technologies. Even though these solutions have been introduced, the overall citizen participation remains at a relatively low level, and in general eParticipation objectives have not been fully met. One of the main reasons identified, why the initiatives fall short on participation, is the problem of digital divide and social exclusion. We present a study on eParticipation in municipalities, based on an opinion-mining project in an Irish city. We provide preliminary results and our conclusions after conducting a specific initiative. We identify key factors and decisions that have led towards a promising initiative in the field of eParticipation.

Barriers and Desired Affordances of Social Media Based e-Participation: Politicians' Perspectives

The high rate of adoption of Social Media technologies and platforms make them naturally appealing for engaging citizens. Interestingly, despite the proliferation of e-Participation platforms, overall efforts towards mainstreaming Social Media-based and citizen-led political deliberations are still limited. Consequently, there is a paucity of research on effectiveness of Social Media technologies as e-Participation platforms; barriers to their use for e-Participation and their potentials to reshape deliberations on traditional e-Participation platforms. This paper investigates the perceived barriers to e-Participation and affordances of Social Media from the perspectives of senior decision maker and political actors. Grounded in the analytical framework for the duality e-Participation, we designed an instrument and interviewed 10 politicians and decision makers at different levels of government across three countries in Europe. Our results provide insights into barriers and perceived affordances of Social Media for e-Participation as well as the necessary conditions for increased adoption of Social Media for citizen-led participation.

VR-Participation: The feasibility of the Virtual Reality-driven multi-modal communication technology facilitating e-Participation

Textual communication which currently has largely shifted from paper to digital space is predominant in the domain of e-Participation. Even though the ubiquitous text-based communication through forums, chats, emails and social media is easy to use and process it shows significant lack of expressivity. Despite the proliferation of voice-based and video-based teleconferencing solutions compensating the communication gap in textual channels the contemporary digital communication systems struggle to deliver close to face-to-face group communication experience. Therefore, major government and citizen meetings and hearings have to be held in person to ensure quality discussions. In this paper, we argue that multi-modal communication enabled by the emerging, affordable and accessible VR technologies creates an opportunity to integrate the majority of mainstream channels into one communication platform.

Examining the feasibility of a Smart Region approach in the North West Atlantic and Borders Region of Ireland

Research and innovation of the smart city concept is logically evolving and extending into the conceptualisation of smart regions. Within the European Union the political priorities and principles are aligning to encourage the development of smart regions. Current plans for jobs, growth and investment, the digital single market, energy union and democratic change align with the long-standing principle of subsidiarity, the circular economy approach [2] and with smart specialisation strategy [3]. This paper examines the ongoing process of engagement and active participation of stakeholders using the quadruple helix model [5] in the conceptualisation, design and implementation of Smart Regional Policy in the Northern, Western and borders region of the Republic of Ireland in an area including 10 local authorities. This process is known as the Smart Places Region initiative.