I came across a fairly succinct definition of the term e-participation today that I find useful with regard to the things we are working on:
In the context of current project, e-Participation means the use of ICT for enabling and strengthening citizen participation in democratic decision-making processes. Depending on the aspect of democracy being promoted it can employ different techniques (Trechsel et al, 2002):
- For increasing the transparency of the political process;
- For enhancing the direct involvement on participation of citizen;
- For improving the quality of opinion formation by opening new spaces of information and deliberation
Source: UNDP Europe & CIS, Preparation of e-Participation Guide: Searching for interesting case studies and lessons learned (Word document, 60 KB).
Obviously a word can be defined in all sort of ways depending on what you are trying to get at. One interesting issue raised by the definition you cite is whether e-participation should focus exclusively on democratic decision-making processes, i.e. decisions that are currently made by elected representatives. Arguably, there is a lot of scope for e-participation in administrative decision-making, e.g. what proportion of the funding of my local library is spend on dvds as opposed to books, what sort of books are purchased, what times the library opens etc. The old phrase “e-democracy” has focused the issue of e-participation on the political process, but I see just as interesting an agenda in relation to what you might call administrative processes and decisions.
Thanks, Paul! Good point.