e-Participation

The subject of the presented comparative case study is the phenomenon of collective intelligence (CI) in the online public sphere. Intelligence that appears in online communities is understood as a form of a distributed ability, which arises from the collaboration and competition between many individuals in the Internet. The purpose of the presented study was an analysis of group cognitive processes specific for the manifestations of CI, appearing in the 8 selected online projects implemented in the Central-Eastern European countries. Additionally, 2 projects from Western Europe, considered in the scientific literature as valuable examples, were selected for comparison purposes. In these projects, we evaluated the 4 main cognitive processes specific for collective "thinking": perception (collective sensing), problem-solving, decision making, and collective memorization (including learning and gaining feedback). The results revealed, that most cognitive processes in the analyzed projects are working satisfactorily, with the exception of collective memory, which works only to a very limited extent. A presented guideline for future policymakers is to develop a shared memory system, to which all community members should have access.

W przeciwieństwie do zasad zwykle stosowanych w przypadku słowików biograficznych, zespół redakcyjny niniejszego tomu postanowił pozostawić autorom stosunkowo szeroki zakres swobody w kwestii konstrukcji biogramów. Zasadnicza struktura jest jednak wspólna dla wszystkich zamieszczonych w Leksykonie artykułów. Każdy rozpoczyna się metryką, zawierającą informacje o datach i miejscach urodzin oraz zgonu opisywanej postaci, spis używanych pseudonimów, podstawowe informacje dotyczące rodziców oraz wykaz najwyższych pełnionych przez nią stanowisk państwowych. Dalej następuje – stanowiąca trzon artykułu – obszerna nota biograficzna, całość wieńczy zaś zwięzła bibliografia. Aby uniknąć nadmiernego rozrostu not bibliograficznych, zde- cydowano się na ograniczenie ich jedynie do monografii, artykułów i relacji bezpośrednio odnoszących się do bohatera danego tekstu oraz biogramów zawartych w słownikach biograficznych, leksykonach, czy encyklopediach historycznych. Wierzymy, że zastosowanie tego roz- wiązania umożliwi Czytelnikom stosunkowo łatwe dotarcie do litera- tury szczegółowej, pozwalającej poszerzyć wiedzę na temat losów każdej z prezentowanych w Leksykonie postaci, chroniąc jednocześnie przed licznymi powtórzeniami tytułów najważniejszych monografii naukowych poświęconych różnym aspektom aktywności środowiska piłsudczykowskiego. Ze względu na funkcjonującą w literaturze przedmiotu różnorodność sposobów zapisu dwuczłonowych nazwisk przedstawicieli obozu piłsudczykowskiego zdecydowaliśmy się na konsekwentne stosowanie w Leksykonie reguły zapisu umieszczającej dołączony do nazwiska przydomek lub herb szlachecki przed nazwiskiem rodowym. Reguła ta została zastosowana zarówno w treści poszczególnych tekstów, jak i przy procesie aranżacji artykułów w kolejności alfabetycznej. Stąd też w tomie pierwszym znajdzie czytelnik teksty o Tadeuszu Brzęku-Osińskim, czy Michale Tadeuszu Karaszewiczu-Tokarzewskim, a w tomie drugim przyjdzie mu szukać informacji o Bolesławie Wieniawie-Długoszowskim czy Marianie Zyndramie-Kościałkowskim. W publikacji celowo unikano również stosowania terminów „sanacja”, „sanatorzy”, „sanacyjny”, jako że już od końca lat 20. XX wieku obrastały one wyraźnie pejoratywnymi konotacjami, wynikający- mi ze sposobu w jaki stosowali je zarówno nieprzychylni funkcjo- nującemu od 1926 r. reżimowi komentatorzy polityczni międzywojnia, jak i niemała grupa historyków zajmujących się dziejami Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej w okresie PRL. Zamiast tego, konsekwentnie używane są mniej obciążone sformułowania, takie jak „obóz pomajowy”, „obóz rządzący” czy „piłsudczycy”.

Author is a researcher working in the educational project " E-Government 2.0 in Practice'' realized since 2014 under the European Commission's program ERASMUS+. The project developed innovative and interdisciplinary teaching curricula in the area of e-Government 2.0, offering a new quality of university education as regards the content provided and educational tools applied, in the subjects covering: Web 2.0 in public administration, particularly practical use of the ICT tools in the field of e-participation, e-consultations, e-petitions, e-democracy, crowdsourcing, collaborative decision-making, open data re-use etc. The knowledge database, the case studies, the new curricula, teaching methods and didactic tools have been created and are available for a free use for all interested universities. The paper includes the following subjects, reflecting the scope of work carried out in the project: identification of the contemporary political, social, technical and research trends in the e-Government 2.0 area, the key questions outlining an e-Government 2.0 framework, proposed typology of the e-Government 2.0 websites and internet applications, as well as information about access to the results of the project. The project results are available for all the interested educational organizations under creative commons license on the http://www.egov2.eu website. Every university can therefore implement the project results in the educational program.

Resumen
La idea de que Internet podría utilizarse para mejorar el funcionamiento democrático de nuestros sistemas políticos es tan antigua como la propia Internet. La realización de este anhelo se ha visto limitada, sin embargo, tanto por problemas técnicos como por la falta de voluntad política y permanece hoy en día en un estado apenas embrionario. La investigación académica, por su parte, ha tendido a alinearse con la agenda de los actores gubernamentales y ha promovido y estudiado experiencias de participación administrativa con un potencial transformador y esclarecedor muy limitado. Esta tesis doctoral lleva a cabo, en primer lugar, un análisis crítico de los principales avances conceptuales, metodológicos y técnicos promovidos desde los campos de la participación ciudadana y la democracia digital. Combinando ‘trans-disciplinariamente’ enfoques provenientes de la Ingeniería de Sistemas, la Sociología Política y la investigación etnográfica se llevaron a cabo una serie de trabajos de campo y de experimentos aplicados que han fundamentado el desarrollo de modelos conceptuales con capacidad para englobar las formas más emancipadas de participación digital. Sobre esa base teórica y conceptual, la tesis plantea un marco de referencia para orientar los procesos de diseño y construcción colaborativos de plataformas de Software Cívico que se atiendan las necesidades de los actores sociales afectados. Siguiendo esta metodología se realizarán en un futuro una serie investigaciones aplicadas de alto impacto y con un gran potencial para vincular sinérgicamente la investigación académica con su aplicación al entorno social.

Abstract
The idea of Internet being used to improve the democratic operation of our political systems is as old as the Internet itself, but its realization remains today at an embryonic stage, limited as much by technical problems as by a lack of political will. Academic research, meanwhile, has been aligned with the agenda of government actors and has studied and promoted mostly a kind of ‘top-down’ citizen participation experiences, whose transformative and enlightening potential is very limited. This doctoral dissertation performs, first, a critical analysis of the major conceptual, methodological and technical advances obtained so far in the public participation and digital democracy fields. By means of a cross-disciplinary research approach, that combines insights from ethnographic research and the Systems Engineering and Political Sociology fields, a series of field work and applied experiments were performed. They laid the foundations for the development of conceptual models capable to apprehend emancipated forms of digital participation. On that basis, the dissertation develops a reference framework for the collaborative design and construction of Civic Software platforms that suit the needs of all affected stakeholders. This methodology will guide future applied research with high potential to link the academic research with its application to the social environment in a synergic way.

What is the state of the research on crowdsourcing for policymaking? This article begins to answer this question by collecting, categorizing, and situating an extensive body of the extant research investigating policy crowdsourcing, within a new framework built on fundamental typologies from each field. We first define seven universal characteristics of the three general crowdsourcing techniques (virtual labor markets, tournament crowdsourcing, open collaboration), to examine the relative trade-offs of each modality. We then compare these three types of crowdsourcing to the different stages of the policy cycle, in order to situate the literature spanning both domains. We finally discuss research trends in crowdsourcing for public policy and highlight the research gaps and overlaps in the literature.

Citizen participation and sustainability are two main concepts used in the definitions in the smart city literature. Citizen participation is often used within the context of improving good governance in smart cities. Its relationship with sustainability is seldomly discussed. This study analyses the relationship between the concepts of smart city, smart sustainable city, and citizen participation, and discusses how citizen participation is shaped in smart sustainable cities. In light of this analysis, seven types of citizen participation mechanisms are studied. The findings of the study reveal that sustainability in smart cities is only considered within the framework of environmental matters, while citizen participation is only considered as a mechanism aimed at supporting good governance. The study recommends using these participation mechanisms to highlight other aspects of sustainability such as securing comprehensive-ness, alleviating poverty, promoting gender equality and to focus on other aspects of citizen participation such as real participation and democratic effectiveness.

Decentralized civic engagement, i.e. engagement which is not initiated and managed by government, has been often used as a popular slogan in various public speeches to highlight the importance of genuine civic interests in governance, yet offering very limited options on how to actually promote such involvement. The advent of the digital era has facilitated the development of a plethora of digital participatory platforms that could presumably help to boost the effective engagement of civic communities in decision making processes in an explicitly decentralized manner and, more so, the demand for such decentralized e-participation services is increasing during the current Covid-19 crisis. However, there is a real shortage of studies that directly focus on the analysis of such autonomous cases and all the more so from real life contexts in their natural settings. In this regard, this paper aims to fill the gap by analyzing the phenomena from an intrinsically peer-to-peer networking perspective, which could be observed today in popular autonomous civic engagement initiatives that have been launched in recent times in the area.

Electronic Participation (e-Participation) initiatives, seen as the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for facilitating citizen participation in the policy decision making process, have often had a limited success of citizens' engagement. Despite utilizing social media as a potential solution to remedy this limitation, many of such initiatives particularly those sponsored by governments, continue to suffer of low citizen involvement. This fact raises crucial questions about citizens’ incentives, attitude and adoption towards this interaction.
While e-Participation initiatives seek to empower citizens with ICT so as to be able to involve and impact decision making processes. Typically, examining and predicting citizens’ engagement cannot exclude the possibility role of various human behavior factors besides technology one. Significantly, information systems (IS) discipline consider the intersection of artifacts, humans, and tasks when investigate a phenomenon and reveals several theoretical models primarily developed from psychology and sociology theories. In thus, the current in progress research ultimate aim to derive and validate an integrative citizen adoption model. The model will be based on distilled the main critical social, behavior and technological factors related to the explanation and prediction of citizen’ adoption to involve in government-led e-Participation initiatives through social media

In this paper I demonstrate the utility of a Values in Design (VID) perspective for the assessment, the design and development of e-democracy tools. In the first part, I give some background information on Values in Design and Value-Sensitive Design and their relevance in the context of e-democracy. In part 2, I analyze three different e-democracy tools from a VID-perspective. The paper ends with some conclusions concerning the merits of VID for e-democracy as well as some considerations concerning the dual tasks of philosophers in assessing and promoting value-sensitive technology design.

The aim of this study then is to move beyond politically oriented discussion forums by also examining the  communicative practices of participants within fan-based forums. The focus is on how participants talk politics in online informal discussion forums. By informal discussion forums, I am referring to those forums that are not bound to any formal predetermined agendas such as e-consultations or e-juries, but rather to forums who’s primary purpose is to simply provide a communicative space for talk, e.g. fan-based discussion forums, news media message boards, and Usenet newsgroups. By political talk, I am referring to everyday, informal, political conversation carried out freely between participants in these online spaces, which is often spontaneous and lacks any purpose outside the purpose of talk for talk sake, representing the practical communicative form of what Habermas (1984, p. 327) calls communicative action. It is through this type of everyday political talk whereby citizens achieve mutual understanding about the self and each other, and it represents the fundamental ingredient of the public sphere.

The purpose of this study first is a normative one; it is to examine the democratic quality of this fundamental ingredient, of the communicative practices of participants within online discussions forums in light of a set of normative conditions of the public sphere. It is also to move beyond a formal notion of deliberation (beyond rationality via argumentation) by providing a more accurate account of how the political emerges in online discussions (particularly within nonpolitically oriented forums), how people actually talk politics in those discussions, and finally, how alternative communicative forms such as humor, emotional comments, and acknowledgements interact and influence the more ‘traditional’ elements of deliberation (e.g. rational-critical debate and reciprocity). Consequently, I present the following three research questions, which are central to this study:

To what extent do the communicative practices of online political discussions satisfy the normative conditions of the process of deliberation of the public sphere?

What role, if any, do expressives (humor, emotional comments, and acknowledgements) play within online political discussions and in relation to the normative conditions of deliberation?

How does political talk emerge in nonpolitically oriented discussion forums?

Together, the answers to these questions present a more comprehensive account of online political talk. They seek not only to offer insight into the quality of such talk, but also to provide a better understanding of its expressive and affective nature. Moreover, they seek to improve our understanding of how political talk occurs outside the realm of politically oriented discussion forums, and how it emerges in such communicative spaces. Therefore, in order to answer these questions and provide this insight, I examine and compare political talk within three online discussion forums of the Guardian, Big Brother, and Wife Swap. A comparative study design with normative, descriptive, and explorative characteristics was utilized. A content analysis with both qualitative and quantitative features was employed as the primary instrument for examination. Additional textual and network analyses were carried out to provide more depth to the investigation.

This article reflects, from a holistic and interdisciplinary perspective, on the challenges surrounding the development of eParticipation in Europe, with special focus on EU programs. To this end, we firstly assess the field’s practical and theoretical achievements and limitations, and corroborate that the progress of eParticipation in the last decade has not been completely satisfactory in spite of the significant share of resources invested to support it. We secondly attempt to diagnose and enlighten some of the field’s systemic problems and challenges which are responsible for this unsettling development. The domain’s maladies are grouped under tree main categories: (1) lack of a proper understanding and articulation with regard to the “Participation” field; (2) eParticipation community’s ‘founding biases’ around e-Government and academy; and (3) inadequacy of traditional Innovation Support Programmes to incentivize innovation in the eParticipation field. In the context of the ‘Europe 2020 Strategy’ and its flagship initiative “Innovation Union”, our final section provides several recommendations which could contribute to enhance the effectiveness of future European eParticipation actions.

Growing distrust in government is accompanied by new  opportunities for civic involvement through online technological
platforms. LiquidFeedback is one of the most interesting, as it embeds innovative features to support online deliberative processes. Designed as an intranet tool for closed, homogeneous groups, the software has also been used in large civic contexts involving citizens at large. This paper presents and analyses two large-scale deliberation projects where thousands of Italian citizens used the LiquidFeedback platform. The analysis aims to understand how well this software
serves as a platform for people to gather ideas, draft proposals collaboratively, and then rate them by degree of consensus. We consider the political context for these field cases and their socio-technical design choices, look at how LiquidFeedback enables citizen participation, discuss politicians’ accountability in terms of online activity, and report participants’ assessment of the two projects. Our analysis adapts existing frameworks that match different participation styles to profiles of activity in online communities

Nowadays “education for citizenship” is presented as a solution for many of the political, social, and co-existential issues in Western democratic societies in order to tackle dysfunctionalities produced by globalization, populism, migration, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and violence. At the same time, particularly among “millennials” or “digital natives”, lack of civil commitment and apathy toward politics as a whole contrasts with their intensive usage of digital social networks, or social media. By exploring potential conceptual correlations between the use of digital social networks and civilian participation among “millennials”, this paper presents two widely studied paradigmatic events of democratic regeneration: the “Kitchenware Revolution” in Iceland after the financial collapse on 6 October 2008, and the “15M Movement” in Spain after 15 May 2011. Despite the substantial relevance that digital social networks played in both cases, this paper wonders to what extent digital social networks foster millennials’ civilian participation, when, paradoxically, they seem to be the population target who contests the status quo but who is not actually being represented democratically in the formal political system. The author concludes that digital social networks could initially foster civilian participation, but they should be seen as a new artefact that, itself, does not necessarily lead to a better political representation of millennials. As well, this paper argues against the widespread assumption regarding the correlation between socioeconomic and educational status and Internet usage factors of millennials when it comes to civilian participation in extreme political mobilisation events such as the Kitchenware Revolution and 15M.

This chapter aims to evaluate what could be some possible barriers for a sustainable e-participation process in a developing country case. Sustainability refers to the provision of uninterrupted and successfully implemented programs in related to e-participation in terms of expectations and gained results. For such purpose(s), it is of utmost importance that regarding infrastructures are provided, and related precautions are ensured before enrolling in. It is argued that sustainable e-participation is kept consistent if possible barriers are successfully considered. In this context, possible and potential barriers for sustainable e-participation process are derived from the literature, but confined to five types in drawing the framework. As a country case, Turkey is evaluated in terms of some current indicators presenting an overview of information and communication technologies’ (ICTs) infrastructure and its use before discussing about barriers. Administrative, legal, institutional, and cultural dimensions that produce and feed the barriers are described next. After addressing these dimensions, it is concluded that there are some potential barriers before e-participation process. Resistance from bureaucracy for sharing their monopoly over policy making, the lack of expertise in designing methods for e-participation, privacy concerns in data sharing, a big accumulation of legal and administrative arrangement burden, and potential inertia at citizens’ side toward policy-making issues are among threat-posing features for a sustainable e-participation process in Turkey.

According to the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act introduced in 2009, UK local authorities are expected to implement “a facility for making petitions in electronic form to the authority”.Motivated by this arrangement, this paperreflects on the findings of a case study investigation conducted with the Royal Borough of Kingston (one of the first local authorities to implement such a servicesince 2004). Lessons learnt from the case suggest that ePetitionsreveal increased potential to enhance local government democracy, but are also shaped by challengingopen implementation issues which can highly influencethe initiative’s impact.Our conclusionsare developed within the general debateabout online public participation or eParticipation andparticularly examinetheimplications for policy makers.

This report aims at providing an overview of the normative and institutional state of art of ICT-mediated citizen participation in Spain. The first section provides an overview of the political and civic liberties framework in Netherlands. In the second section the landscape of ICT mediated citizen engagement is mapped. In the third section, the report engages with implications of technology mediations for deliberative democracy and transformative citizenship.

Many researchers have assumed that social media will reduce inequalities between elite politicians and those outside the political mainstream and that it will thus benefit democracy, as it circumvents the traditional media that focus too much on a few elite politicians. I test this assumption by investigating the association between U.S. Representatives using Twitter and their fundraising. Evidence suggests that (1) politicians' adoptions of social media have yielded increased donations from outside their constituencies but little from within their own constituencies; (2) politicians with extreme ideologies tend to benefit more from their social media adoptions; and (3) the political use of social media may yield a more unequal distribution of financial resources among candidates. Finally, I discuss the implications of these findings for political equality, polarization, and democracy.

The aim of this chapter is to see whether online discussion forums dedicated to popular culture (reality TV) provide a communicative space, content and style for politics that extends the public sphere. Given their typically casual, chatty and frivolous nature, we might assume that political talk doesn’t emerge in such spaces, and if it does, it would fall well short of the type of talk crucial to the public sphere. To what extent does political talk emerge in such spaces? If so, do such forums fulfil the requirements of rationality and ‘decent’ deliberation? Given the nature of the forums, the analysis moves beyond a formal notion of deliberation by also taking into account the use of expressive speech acts: emotion, humour and acknowledgements. What role do ‘expressives’ play within online political talk and how do they impact the normative conditions of deliberation? Moreover, comparing these spaces with a space dedicated to high politics – the Guardian political discussion forum – allows us to see whether, as critics would expect, deliberative talk is taking place in the one and emotional and irrational talk in the other.

Sosyal çalışma mesleği ve bilimi kapsamında gerçekleştirilen çalışmalarda temel amaç sosyal adalete erişmek olarak ifade edilir. Sosyal adalet başlı başına siyasi bir gündem olduğu için sosyal çalışmacıların siyasette yer almasını doğal olduğu görülür. Bu temellerden yola çıkarak oluşturulmuş olan siyasi sosyal çalışma (political social work) alanı, siyasetin işleyişinde sosyal adaletin sağlamasına yönelik mesleki müdahalelerin odaklarının ve yöntemlerinin neler olduğu ile ilgilenir. Siyasi sosyal çalışmaya dair literatür sosyal çalışmacıların sosyal adalet ve insan haklarının gereklerinin yerine getirilmesi için sosyal çalışmacıların siyasal olarak aktif olmasının etik bir sorumluluk olduğunu belirtir. Öyle ki, bu konuda hem siyasal katılımın hem de gündemin belirlenmesinde görevler tanımlar, düşük düzeyde temsil edilenlerin oy vermesini sağlama, seçilmiş olanların gündemlerini etkileme, politik partilerin şahsen adayı olarak siyasete müdahil olma ya da belirli bir partinin adayı için çalışma yapma gibi doğrudan ve dolaylı roller belirler.
Dikkati çeken şudur ki, literatürde siyasi sosyal çalışma açısından tanımlanmış olan bu rol ve işlevler demokratik katılımın temsilciler yoluyla gerçekleştirildiği dönemin temel özellikleri dikkate alınarak oluşturulmuştur. Oysaki günümüzde elektronik katılımın, elektronik demokrasiye geçişin imkanlarının güçlendiği, karar alma süreçlerinde temsilcilerin değil vatandaşların doğrudan katılımının mümkün ve kolay hale geldiği bir durumda siyasetin işleyişinde önemli dönüşümlerin kapıda olduğu malumdur. Bu durumda siyasi sosyal çalışmanın kendisine biçtiği rolleri tekrar düşünmesi hem sosyal çalışmacıların hem de hizmet verdikleri kişi, grup ve toplulukların siyasete katılımı konusunda yaptıkları çalışmaları, yöntemleri ve müdahale odaklarını tekrar gözden geçirmelerini gerektirmektedir.
Bu tartışmalar ışığında sunumun amacı 21. yüzyılda gelişen teknolojinin verdiği imkanlar doğrultusunda sosyal adalete ulaşmak amacıyla siyasi sosyal çalışmacıların mesleki müdahalelerinin ne şekilde değişebileceğini ortaya koymaktır. Bunu yaparken geçtiğimiz yüzyıllarda demokratik ülkelerde uygulanan temsili demokrasi sisteminin 21. yüzyılın şartlarında ne şekilde değişime zorlandığı ve bu gelişmelerin siyasal sosyal çalışmacıların kullandıkları yöntemler ve üstlendikleri mesleki rollerde ne gibi değişiklikler sağlayabileceği tartışılacaktır.

This article explores the effects that digital mediation has on the experience of Christian worshippers by examining the extraordinary Urbi et Orbi blessing, given by Pope Francis on March 27, 2020, as a case study. The Urbi et Orbi blessing took place sixteen days after the World Health Organization declared the spread of COVID-19 a “pandemic,” and was a direct liturgical response to the global health crisis. In some ways, Urbi et Orbi epitomizes the impact of technology on liturgical prayer; while only a handful of participants were physically present at the blessing, millions tuned in digitally to listen to Pope Francis’ words and to receive the blessing and accompanying indulgence. In her 2017 book @ Worship, Teresa Berger reflects comprehensively on the themes of embodiment, participation, and ecclesial formation as they relate to digital liturgical practices. Drawing from methods offered by the field of ritual studies, this treatment seeks to weave together the experience of a participant observer (myself) in the Urbi et Orbi blessing with the theoretical reflections provided by Berger. Specifically, this article aims to analyze the Urbi et Orbi blessing in light of its digitally mediated nature in order to reflect on the themes of embodied participation and ecclesial formation. Ultimately, it argues that digitally mediated liturgy, like “brick-and-mortar” liturgy, has the capability to facilitate religious experience and real reception of the grace of God. The same methods of ritual analysis used to study brick-and-mortar liturgies can therefore also be fruitfully applied to evaluating digitally mediated liturgy.

Published in Anaphora 15, nos. 1-2 (2021): 59-70.

Talking politics online is not exclusively reserved for politically-orientated discussion forums, particularly the everyday political talk crucial to the public sphere. People talk politics just about anywhere online from reality TV discussion forums to numerous other forum genres. Thus, the need to tap into those discussions is important if our aim is to provide a more comprehensive overview of the online discursive landscape. However, widening our scope of analysis presents us with a new set of difficulties, namely, how do we identify political talk within the vast pool of threads and postings, and how do we assess such talk in light of the public sphere, while at the same time, taking into account its informal nature. The aim of this article is to tackle these questions by presenting a methodological approach, which attempts to detect, describe, and assess political talk in non-political discussion forums.

Crowdsourcing is rapidly evolving and applied in situations where ideas, labour, opinion or expertise of large groups of people are used. Crowdsourcing is now used in various policy-making initiatives; however, this use has usually focused on open collaboration platforms and specific stages of the policy process, such as agenda-setting and policy evaluations. Other forms of crowdsourcing have been neglected in policy-making, with a few exceptions. This article examines crowdsourcing as a tool for policy-making, and explores the nuances of the technology and its use and implications for different stages of the policy process. The article addresses questions surrounding the role of crowdsourcing and whether it can be considered as a policy tool or as a technological enabler and investigates the current trends and future directions of crowdsourcing.

El expediente electrónico funda un nuevo paradigma en la teoría general del proceso, con principios propios y específicos. El expediente en red, conectado en la web, deroga el principio clasico de la escritura - 'quod non est in actis non est in mundo'. El proceso en red funciona desde la logica contraria a la del principio de la escritura, es decir, desde el principio de la conexión.

Este capítulo reflexiona sobre los factores que han de tenerse en cuenta para el diseño de una plataforma virtual para la participación municipal que busque facilitar la interacción entre los agentes políticos y los ciudadanos, dotando de mayor eficiencia a la participación cívica dentro del municipio y favoreciendo el afianzamiento de las redes ciudadanas. Para ello, se parte de una contextualización teórica del ámbito de la participación ciudadana y la participación electrónica municipal. Se analizan posteriormente algunas experiencias de participación electrónica desarrolladas en los últimos años, depositando especial atención sobre las características de los entornos virtuales utilizados en ellas. A partir del análisis de sus puntos fuertes y débiles, se proponen los principales ejes conceptuales que deberían guiar el diseño de un sistema electrónico para la participación ciudadana municipal basado en software libre.

The open government movement as a socioeconomic phenomenon is experiencing a fundamental shift in its development due to the recent diffusion of various independent open data-driven startups all over the world. The promotion of the projects through various professional developers’ networks is the most promising way to advance the concept, first of all, as a participatory movement, yet it is the least studied in related academic and professional literature. The growing collaborative trends among local enthusiasts, coders, computer experts and even technically savvy citizens around open data phenomena, whose obscure yet, as it turned out, really important proxy support plays a crucial role in launching such data-driven initiatives, is one of the areas of study that is ripe for investigation. In this respect, the invisible mechanism of collaboration and networking among independent developers, which is presumably conducive for the development of related projects, is of special interest in this research.

Resumen: Las elecciones municipales de España en 2015 trajeron a mu-chas ciudades españolas lo que se ha calificado como " ayuntamientos de cambio " : ayuntamientos cuyos alcaldes y representantes en el gobierno provienen de partidos emergentes del Movimiento del 15M. Esta investiga-ción se centra en el entorno sociopolítico en el que se desarrolla este fenó-meno, concretamente en Madrid y Barcelona, las dos mayores ciudades del estado y con " ayuntamientos de cambio ". Nuestra investigación revisita la e-Participación desde los inicios del siglo XXI y, sobre todo, tras las se-cuelas del 15M, proponiendo que las recientes iniciativas de participación basadas en las TIC en los municipios podrían estar lejos de ser meras en-cuestas para los ciudadanos para ser, en cambio, la punta de lanza de una red de ciudades tejida con prácticas tecnopolíticas.

The official websites of public institutions play an essential role in the relationship between central and local governments and citizens, as well as the provision of public services. Metropolitan municipalities, as well as the websites they service, play a significant role in the implementation of e-participation processes. The aim of this research is to find out what e-participation services are available on the websites of metropolitan municipalities, which make up a significant part of local governments. The usability of the e-participation content on the mentioned websites is evaluated in this context. The data was gathered by examining the websites of metropolitan municipalities and applying the content analysis method to them. 18 criteria created based on the literature were used to assess e-participation performance. The research found that communication and information mechanisms are at the forefront of the services provided to citizens on metropolitan municipalities' official websites. In addition, according to the e-participation evaluation criteria, Istanbul and Izmir metropolitan municipalities ranked first and second, respectively, in terms of website rankings. Metropolitan websites, on the other hand, have been determined to be insufficient in terms of participatory practices. The innovations brought about by technology in relation to the websites of metropolitan municipalities, as well as proposals for expanding online participation services, are discussed in the conclusion part.

Este artículo reflexiona sobre los factores que han de tenerse en cuenta para el diseño de una plataforma virtual para la participación municipal que busque facilitar la interacción entre los agentes políticos y los ciudadanos, dotando de mayor eficiencia a la participación cívica dentro del municipio y favoreciendo el afianzamiento de las redes ciudadanas. Para ello, se parte de una contextualización teórica del ámbito de la participación ciudadana y la participación electrónica municipal. Se analizan posteriormente algunas experiencias de participación electrónica desarrolladas en los últimos años, depositando especial atención sobre las características de los entornos virtuales utilizados en ellas. A partir del análisis de sus puntos fuertes y débiles, se proponen los principales ejes conceptuales que deberían guiar el diseño de un sistema electrónico para la participación ciudadana municipal basado en software libre.

English Abstract
This article reflects on the most important factors that need to be considered for the design of a generic virtual system for municipal participation, which seeks to facilitate the interaction between political and citizen agents, thus promoting a more efficient civic participation within the municipality and contributing to reinforce citizen networks. We start from a theoretical conceptualization of citizen participation and municipal electronic participation. Afterwards, we analyze some e-participation experiences developed in the last years, paying special attention to the characteristics of the virtual system they used. Analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of this system, we propose the main factors that should guide the design of an online system for municipal citizen participation based on free software.

This pilot study is part of this project and it aims to examine the background conditions and requirements for the design and the implementation of digital advocacy tool for civil society organizations in Latvia.
The report is structured according several objectives.
1. Examine parliamentary practices about the involvement of citizens into legislative processes in European Union member states and beyond.
2. Providethebestpracticesofthedigitaltoolsthatcouldberelevantinthedesign of the digital advocacy tool for civil society organizations in Latvia.
3. Gather background information about the interest representation in Latvian parliament.
4. Review the experience and expectations of the potential users of digital advocacy tool.
The report is structured according these objectives and builds on:
􏰃 Literature review of the existing studies and the information requests of European Centre for Parliamentary Research and Documentation (ECPRD).
􏰃 13 Semi-structured expert interviews with non-governmental organization (NGO) representatives conducted from January -Feb, 2021
􏰃 Expert survey with 25 respondents representing various civic society organisations in Latvia
􏰃 Analysis of parliamentary records about the submissions and consultations undertaken by parliamentary committees.

While the development of e-government since the early 1990s has been characterized by many successful applications and systems, it has also been notable for a number of failures to fully realise visions and for several stalled ideas. Governments, professionals and indeed scholars have a tendency to embrace the latest technological developments before older ones have been fully exploited or in some cases even fully understood and this can leave a trail of uncompleted projects in its wake. The future success of e-government depends in part on understanding this phenomenon, addressing it and developing the ability to discern when a technology or concept is no longer of value and therefore should be abandoned and when a task needs to be finished properly, no matter how unglamorous that task may be.

Niniejszy artykuł omawia inicjatywę Loomio. Loomio to aplikacja online służąca do zbiorowego podejmowania decyzji, a równocześnie inicjatywa pozarządowa wyrosła wokół antysystemowych ruchów protestu, mająca na celu umożliwienie pełniejszej niż dotąd partycypacji obywateli w decyzjach politycznych. Nazwa „Loomio” jest tworem słownym wykorzystującym angielskie pojęcie „loom” oznaczające w tym przypadku pracę zakładu tkackiego.

This paper presents research findings of reviewing 42 studies concerning electronic participation (e-Participation) through social media. Overall, such initiatives have reflected the prevalence of a one-way communication strategy, what do not considerably foster citizen involvement in policy decision making process.

Based on an analysis of several municipal e-participation experiences, and of the virtual environments used in these, this article covers key aspects to be considered when designing an electronic Internet-based system for participation at the municipal level, whose aim would be to enhance communication between public officials and citizens while streamlining municipal civic participation and consolidating citizen networks.