International Journal of Electronic Governance (12 papers in press)

Special Issue on: "Users and Uses of Electronic Governance"
Guest Editors: Dr. Stéphanie Wojcik, Céditec, Université Paris-Est, France Mr. Giles Moss, New College, Oxford, UK

• User Centered Design Model (G2C2G) for Rural e-Governance Projects
  by Charru Malhotra, Vijayaraghavan Chariar, Lalit Das 
  Abstract: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have the potential to spawn innovative means of wealth generation in rural areas by providing timely information or by facilitating knowledge management. Several studies have successfully pointed out a positive relationship between usage of ICT in delivery of public services (e-government) and rural growth leading to a popular perception that such projects can inevitably serve as means for delivering good governance in villages. An in-depth analysis of one such project in rural context of Indian villages has been carried out in this study. Analysis of ‘Rural Access to Services through Internet’ (RASI) project, initiated in November 2001 in the southern state of Tamil-Nadu in India, indicates that such e-government projects are usually designed from the perspective of controller viz. bureaucrats, technocrats and donor bodies rather than from the perspective of the citizen. Such a hierarchical approach to design of ICT based projects is contrary to the basic principles of design philosophy. Though the approach of Designer-as-a-Problem-Solver has been accepted in various other fields such as product design or engineering innovation but its principles are yet to be completely explored and applied for creation of e-government or e-governance projects. This paper presents an inclusive design strategy for rural e-governance projects in a participative governance framework that would address needs of both the government and the governed. A Government to Citizen to Government (G2C2G) model is proposed based on a User Centered Design (UCD) approach which is responsive to citizens’ limits and potentialities and to their cultural wisdom, community knowledge, and prevalent traditional practices in the rural areas.
  Keywords: Rural E-Governance, User Centered Design, Design Issues, Tele-Kiosks, RASI, Technology Diffusion Models, Citizen Participation, G2C2G Model, Traditional Knowledge/ Community Knowledge Systems
   
• Users’ experiences with e-voting: A comparative case study
  by Anne-Marie Oostveen, Peter van den Besselaar 
  Abstract: A system for e-voting was developed and tested in fourteen field studies. This enabled us to investigate the actual experiences of users when deploying this type of e-governance technology. In this paper we describe the set-up of the field studies, and discuss the main results. Are users satisfied with e-voting technology and its usability? Do different user groups differ in their uses of the technology, and in their opinions about it? If so, which groups can be discerned? Does this point at a digital divide? Will users be extra motivated to use new e-governance technologies thereby increasing voter turnout? Our empirical study found that there is a serious risk that if e-voting systems replace the traditional voting systems in the future, it may have the unintended effect that it will exclude large groups of citizens from participating in the democratic process. Moreover, the assumption by many policy makers that e-voting will increase overall voter turnout is not supported by our research.
  Keywords: User experience, e-voting, usability, voter turnout, digital divide.
   
• E-participation in electoral campaign: the Brazilian experience
  by Francisco Brandão, Carlos Marcos Batista 
  Abstract: This paper focuses on voters’ participation in 2006 Brazilian election campaign, when the Internet played an important role in the results. The research observes who participated and why, in an analysis of e-mails sent to presidential candidates and debates among militants and supporters in virtual communities. The analysis focuses not only the supply of political information, but also the users’ demands, in a profile about which variables lead to politicians and voters access to Internet – gender, age, partisanship, education degree, profession. The motivations of participation are described by political and social factors, and also by mediatic events.
  Keywords: e-democracy; e-participation; elections; Internet; web technology; web 2.0; campaign strategy
   
• Debate Practices in French Political Parties Forums
  by nicolas desquinabo 
  Abstract: During the last French presidential election, political party web forums have become a major place of political debate. In order to evaluate the use of this e-governance technology, we analysed the three main party forums between November 2006 and April 2007. Our corpus is made of threads produced on desirsdavenir.org (Ségolène Royal), jeunespopulaires.com (Nicolas Sarkozy) and UDF.org (François Bayrou).We first analysed the total participation and the level of interactivity of all the threads produced. Then, we have selected a sample of “political debate” threads from each site in order to characterize the pragmatic features of the interactions. Our results point out the influence of institutional instructions on debate forms. The availability of status cues also seems to have specific effects as shown in the “computer-mediated groups” studies (Lemus & al., 2004).
  Keywords: Internet, forum, debate, party, campaign, election, online deliberation, e-participation, interactivity, France, citizen, institutional design, website design.
   
• Design Principles of Secure Federated em-Government Framework
  by Athanasios Karantjias, Spyridon Papastergiou, Despina Polemi 
  Abstract: The impressing penetration rates of electronic and mobile networks provide the unique opportunity for all countries to implement large-scale enterprise frameworks, providing advanced e/m-services, and accelerate their entrance in the digital society, strengthening the fundamental structure of Governmental Organizations. A set of fundamental design principles, strategies and guidelines has to be clearly specified, addressed, built, and maintained in order catch common goals and benefits such as, to increase intrinsic interoperability, federation, vendor diversification options, business and technology domain alignment, organizational agility, and reduce IT burden. This paper proposes a synchronous e/m government SOA framework, giving constant emphasis on how and where fundamental design principles are applied with the ultimate goal of producing high quality, secure and interoperable governmental services.
  Keywords: e/m-Government, Federation, Interoperability, Mobility, Modularity, Privacy, Scalability, XML Security
   

• A Review of Electronic Government Interoperability Frameworks: Patterns and Challenges
  by Yannis Charalabidis, Fenareti Lampathaki, Alexandra Kavalaki, Dimitrios Askounis 
  Abstract: eGovernment Interoperability Frameworks outline the essential prerequisites for joined-up and web-enabled e-government and provide the basic standards that every public authority must adopt. Today, their scope has been extended in order to facilitate the seamless exchange of information and the deployment of interoperable systems in Central and Municipal Government, including from security frameworks and frameworks for the certification of public sites to unified governmental registries with service descriptions and data models for achieving a common understanding of organizations and semantics at a syntax-independent level. In the scope of this paper, the interoperability frameworks released at pan-European level and nationally by 8 countries that present vivid activity in eGovernment are presented and a comparative analysis among their findings is conducted in order to indicate the similarities and differences in their philosophy and implementation and to produce a set of recommendations for any interesting party embarking to create or update an Interoperability Framework.
  Keywords: e-Government Interoperability Framework; eGIF Contents; Guidelines on e-Government Interoperability; Organizational Interoperability; Semantic Interoperability; Technical Interoperability; Interoperability Registry.
   
• Promoting Electronic Participation Systems in the Balkans: The case of National Press Agencies
  by Yannis Charalabidis, Sotirios Koussouris, George Gionis, Dimitrios Askounis 
  Abstract: While eParticipation systems have found their way in many European member states at national or local level, their use and operation in converging and outermost European Regions still seems to a problem to resolve. Socio-economic conditions, familiarisation with new democratic processes, as well as the low overall penetration of information technology in some regions still pose barriers to the new participative e-government applications. Within this context, there is a great need of joint participation and cooperation of citizens and organisational bodies with different visions and interests in order to form a unified framework consisting of guidelines and of common codes of ethics for successfully implementing and applying eParticipation platforms. This paper presents a case study based on the European project called WEB.DEP, which attempts to establish an eParticipation platform based on the cooperation of national news agencies in the converging regions of the Balkans.
  Keywords: eParticipation; Converging Regions; Regional eGovernment
   
• The Role of e-Facilitation (ICTs) in Economic Development of the Rural Population.
  by Vinay Sharma, Prasoom Dwivedi, Piyush Seth 
  Abstract: This paper proposes for an effective usage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to enhance the levels and reach of institutional rural credit for the Bottom of the Pyramid (Prahalad, 2002) population so as to enhance the levels of capabilities (Sen, 2000) through reducing the unfreedoms (Sen, 2000) of the aforesaid population. The paper is suggestive of the centrality and importance of institutional rural credit for the generation of Buying Power so as to positively effect the economic cycle with reference to the concerned population and the economy as a whole. This paper has used some examples to demonstrate its proposition of an effective usage of ICTs to develop the reach and sustainability of institutional credit to positively affect the capabilities of the bottom of pyramid populace to develop the economy as a whole.
  Keywords: Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), Rural Credit, Bottom of the Pyramid, Capability.
   
• Changing Perspectives and Pragmatics of Good Governance and E-Governance in India: A Shared Vision of Citizens
  by Nirmaljeet Singh Kalsi, Ravi Kiran, S. C. Vaidya 
  Abstract: E-Governance is an unprecedented opportunity for us to change the way the country is governed. The governments are today in the process of transformation worldwide. Everywhere, every state is changing; from silos of information to integrated services, regulator to facilitator, departmental focus to customer focus and protective to collaborative mode of working. The present work is an effort to evolve a Shared Vision of Stakeholders for leveraging the use of Information and Communication Technologies for delivering Good Governance through the “Participatory Stakeholder Assessment” (PSA) and its weighted analysis. The present research is an attempt to identify and establish linkages between the factors responsible for creating a conducive environment for effective/ successful implementation of E-Governance and factors relating to Good Governance, e-Governance Issues and Challenges, demography, economy, geography, culture and others, especially in the Indian context.
  Keywords: Governance, Stakeholders, Information and Communication Technologies( ICT)
   
• Technology Support for Participatory Budgeting
  by Jesus Rios, Jeremy Rose, Barbara Lippa 
  Abstract: Participatory budgeting is a reasonably well-established governance practice, particularly in South America. It is information and communication rich – making it well suited for modern technology support; in addition, the widespread participation of many citizens is difficult to achieve without this support. Participatory budgeting is associated with eParticipation, where much is already known about the kinds of technologies supporting citizen participation and how they are used. This paper identifies (from the existing literature) basic processes which are common to most participatory budgeting initiatives and couples them together in a generic process model. Two cases studies are examined for different purposes. The well known Porto Alegre case is analysed to show how the generic process model is implemented in a practical example. The more recent Berlin-Lichtenberg initiative, however, is integrated with a purpose-built internet platform; here we use the analysis to understand how the internet-based technologies are used to support the various participatory budgeting processes. We identify a range of these technologies which are currently used to support different eParticipation activities and match them to the generic participatory budgeting processes. This results in a comprehensive picture of how known eParticipation technologies can be used to support participatory budgeting. The next research question (unfortunately beyond the scope of this article) is how to choose – which technologies fit which local circumstances and conditions?
  Keywords: participatory budgeting; e-participation; technology support; ICT
   
• AN EVALUATION FRAMEWORK FOR E-PARTICIPATION IN PARLIAMENTS
  by Euripidis Loukis, Alexandros Xenakis, Yannis Charalambidis 
  Abstract: E-Participation is a relatively new approach, so it is necessary to evaluate it carefully, in order to understand it better, acquire more knowledge about it and identify the advantages and benefits it offers, and also its disadvantages, shortcomings and problems. However, even though many countries invest significant amounts of money in e-participation in order to engage citizens in public decision-making using information and communication technologies (ICT), they do not pay corresponding attention in evaluating these efforts. In this direction, this paper describes a new framework that has been developed for evaluating a number of e-participation pilots in the legislation development processes of parliaments that will be implemented as part of the LEX-IS project (‘Enabling Participation of the Youth in the Public Debate of Legislation among Parliaments, Citizens and Businesses in the European Union) of the ‘eParticipation’ Preparatory Action of the European Commission. The proposed framework is based on a) the objectives and basic characteristics of the ‘traditional’ public participation, the e-participation and the legislation development processes, and b) the existing frameworks for the evaluation of information systems, e-participation and traditional public participation. It includes three evaluation perspectives: process, system and outcomes evaluation; each of them is analysed into a number of evaluation criteria.
  Keywords: Electronic participation (or e-participation), Electronic Democracy (or e-Democracy), public participation, evaluation.
   
• Publicity and Private Life within the Greek Blogosphere
  by George Pleios, Stamatis Poulakidakos, Maria- Eleni Manatou, Kornilia Kalpaki, Grigoris Kappas 
  Abstract: This article seeks to explore the presence of publications concerning the private life of individuals within the Greek blogosphere, based on the findings of an empirical research. Through content and discourse analysis we seek to explore whether the private life of the bloggers themselves or other persons is being commented in the Greek blogosphere, seeking at the same time to answer questions concerning their social status and role (e.g. politicians, businessmen etc), their political identity and the aspect of their private life that is being commented. In addition important theoretical and practical issues concerning blogosphere are being addressed; do anonymity and pseudonimity within the blogosphere favor the negative commenting of individuals, especially those who are protagonists in the public sphere? Which are the indicia of such negative commenting discourse? Which kind of blogs is more likely to favor negative commenting? How intense is the presence of photographs or other visual material in such web-blog publications? Do their authors provide evidence or other documentation?
  Keywords: Blogs; blogosphere; political communication; weblog content; new media discourse; new media content; private life; anonymity; negative blog comments; journalism; television culture