Analysis and Evaluation of E-Consultations

E-democracy relates electronic delivery of the processes of democratic representation to practices of communication, consultation, and participation in public decision-making. The evaluation of e-democracy initiatives has not developed as quickly as public debate about the potential impacts. We review criteria for the political evaluation of e-consultations, technical evaluation considerations, and social research methods that have been used to analyze e-consultation outcomes. We argue that socio-technical evaluation needs to encompass a range of qualitative and quantitative methods if interdependencies between the political, technical and social conditions for success are to be better understood. We briefly compare field experiment and case-study methodologies as a basis for evaluating e-consultation as a policy instrument intended to enhance public participation in policy making. We suggest that case study approaches are more suitable given the lack of previous research, the need for policy-makers to understand the contexts that underpin successful e-consultation, and the needs for further innovation.

[1]  Peter Checkland,et al.  Soft Systems Methodology in Action , 1990 .

[2]  Ortwin Renn,et al.  The Pursuit of Fair and Competent Citizen Participation , 1995 .

[3]  Ann Macintosh,et al.  E-Democracy and the Scottish Parliament , 2001, I3E.

[4]  Cliff Hague,et al.  Public Participation in Planning: A Review , 1971 .

[5]  Thomas Webler,et al.  “Right” Discourse in Citizen Participation: An Evaluative Yardstick , 1995 .

[6]  S. L. Star,et al.  Social science, technical systems, and cooperative work: beyond the great divide , 1999 .

[7]  Katarina Stanoevska-Slabeva,et al.  Towards the E-Society: E-Commerce, E-Business, and E-Government , 2013 .

[8]  R. Yin.  Case Study Research: Design and Methods , 1984 .

[9]  T. Webler,et al.  Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation , 1995 .

[10]  M Tewdwr-Jones.  British planning policy in transition, planning in the 1990s , 1996 .

[11]  Teun A. van Dijk,et al.  Critical Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis , 1999 .

[12]  Christine Halverson,et al.  Social translucence: designing social infrastructures that make collective activity visible , 2002, CACM.

[13]  David L. Altheide.  Reflections: Ethnographic content analysis , 1987 .

[14]  Fernanda Fuentes,et al.  Digital Democracy. Discourse and decision making in the information age , 2001 .

[15]  S. Coleman,et al.  Bowling Together: Online Public Engagement in Policy Deliberation , 2001 .

[16]  Cees Leeuwis,et al.  Teledemocracy in the province: An experiment with Internet-based software and public debate , 1999 .

[17]  A. Armour.  The Citizens’ Jury Model of Public Participation: A Critical Evaluation , 1995 .

[18]  Gerry Stoker,et al.  Enhancing public participation in local government , 1998 .

[19]  Nick Tilley,et al.  WHAT WORKS IN EVALUATION RESEARCH , 1994 .

[20]  T. Webler,et al.  Fairness and competence in citizen participation : evaluating models for environmental discourse , 1995 .

[21]  A. Strauss,et al.  Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. , 1993 .

[22]  Angus Whyte,et al.  Technology to Support Participatory Democracy , 2002 .

[23]  Anthony G. Wilhelm.  Virtual sounding boards: How deliberative is on‐line political discussion? , 1998 .

[24]  Richard T. Watson,et al.  A strategic perspective of electronic democracy , 2001, CACM.

[25]  Vasja Vehovar,et al.  WEB SURVEYS " CAN THE WEIGHTING SOLVE THE PROBLEM ? , 2002 .

[26]  D. Guston.  Evaluating the Impact of the First U . S . Citizens ' Panel on ' Telecommunications and the Future of Democracy ' , 1998 .

[27]  Sherry R. Amstein.  “A Ladder of Citizen Participation” , 1969 .

[28]  M. Patton,et al.  Evaluation: A Systematic Approach , 1980 .

[29]  Angus Whyte,et al.  Transparency and teledemocracy: issues from an ‘e-consultation’ , 2001, J. Inf. Sci..

[30]  David L. Altheide.  Ethnographic Content Analysis , 1987 .

[31]  M. Rouncefield,et al.  Ethnomethodologically Informed Ethnography and Information System Design. , 2000 .

[32]  Mark V. Springett,et al.  A comparison of usability techniques for evaluating design , 1997, DIS '97.

[33]  Å. Grönlund.  Electronic Government: Design, Applications and Management , 2001 .

[34]  S. Arnstein,et al.  Ladder of Citizen Participation , 2020 .

[35]  Doctoral Student,et al.  Merging Theory with Practice: Toward an Evaluation Framework for Community Informatics , 2001 .

[36]  A. Strauss,et al.  Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. , 1992 .

[37]  Alfred Kobsa,et al.  Personalized hypermedia and international privacy , 2002, CACM.

[38]  Michael J. Muller,et al.  Participatory design , 1993, CACM.