Title: An experimental study of a web-based framework for group decision support with applications to participatory budget elaboration

Authors: Roman Efremov, David Rios Insua

Addresses: Department of Statistics and Operation Research, Rey Juan Carlos University, c/ Tulipan s/n, 28933, Madrid, Spain. ' Department of Statistics and Operation Research, Rey Juan Carlos University, c/ Tulipan s/n, 28933, Madrid, Spain

Abstract: Owing to the increasing demand for citizen participation in public decision processes, participatory budgets are becoming increasingly popular in many municipalities. Because there is little methodology available for this type of activity and because information and communications technologies are scarcely used, we describe a prototype of a web-based decision support tool for participatory budget problems. We implement a framework designed to support non-sophisticated users and develop a user-friendly, yet rigorous, participatory group preference modelling method. The framework is based on the interactive Pareto frontier visualisation, expression of preferences in terms of goals and goal-based arbitration. We describe an experiment we have run with an example participatory budget problem.

Keywords: group decision support; Pareto frontier visualisation; human–computer interface; HCI; arbitration methods; e-democracy; participatory budget; decision support systems; web based DSS; electronic democracy; e-participation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTPM.2007.014535

International Journal of Technology, Policy and Management, 2007 Vol.7 No.2, pp.167 - 177

Published online: 15 Jul 2007 *

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