Renata Mekovec

The perception of e-democracy and e-participation at the individual level: a Croatian example

Today, the ICT and the Internet tools offer citizens the opportunity to surpass the position of passive actors in the creation of new political and social systems, and become active participants who are able to propose new alternatives based on their opinions. Various available social media platforms are breaking down the barriers between citizens and government authorities, both at the central and local level, by overcoming traditional forms of interactions and giving opportunities to numerous and various categories of individuals and groups to be potentially involved in the political processes. In order to examine the perception and frequency of ICT and Internet use which enable citizens to be included in different processes of public and political activities, as well as the communication between public authorities and citizens and active involvement of citizens in decision-making processes, a survey was conducted on a representative sample of participants in the north-east part of Croatia. Research results show a very low level of the use of ICT and the Internet for the aforementioned purposes.

Automation of e-gov service quality measurement process

In this paper we present development and usage of new instrument to assess quality of e-service provided by regional governments web site. We demonstrate the process of defining precise criteria for all measurements, as well as for all quality categories. Due to complexity of final scoring procedure proposed with new assessment instrument, an automate scoring tool that can be used is introduced.