Presentation given by Goran Forbici at the Service Design and Delivery in a Digital Age - Academies for EaP countries organised by the SIGMA Programme and the GiZ Eastern Partnership Regional Fund. Topic 4: Gathering user insights and feedback.

1. E-participation: trends and challenges
Goran Forbici
29. 11. 2023

2. What shall be discussed:
•E-participation in EaP countries: current trends and
challenges
•Key international trends of e-participation (methods,
tools)
•Best practices – examples from the EU and worldwide
•Key success factors (do's and don'ts)

3. •E-participation: use of ICT in facilitating citizen participation in
government-related processes, encompassing areas such as
administration, service delivery, decision-making, and policy-
making.
•E-participation can be further defined as a mechanism that
augments and intensifies political participation, enabling citizens to
connect with each other and their elected representatives
through information and communication technologies (ICTs)

4. Started in the early 2000s
High expectations:
•improve the quality of policies and legislation
•make public services more responsive to citizens’ needs
•intensify (policy) innovation
•increase collaboration
•increase societal cohesion
•raise the engagement of the disengaged segments of society
•strengthen the legitimacy of governments
•increase trust in public instituions and politics / reduce the
appearance of alienation of administration and politics from the
people
From “thin democracy” to “deep” democracy!

5. E-participation in EaP countries
What is the state of affairs, what tools are being used?
Key problems, challenges?

6. High expectations
•Cheaper
•Better outreach
•Less time consuming
For example, making policy drafts available for comment on a public
platform is a low-cost activity, compared to holding in-person
consultation meetings using other systems to disseminate the draft
and elicit, collect and compile comments.

7. 20 years later
•Little proof of the democratizing and legitimizing effects of e-
participation initiatives
•technology often failing to deliver the transformational changes
Why?
•
In a nutshell:
•overly techno-centric focus
•politico-administrative and organizational realities heavily
underestimated

8. Many e-participation mechanisms are digital versions of pre-
existing mechanisms or processes:
•consultations and participatory budgeting existed prior to the
Internet
•e-voting or m-voting is a complement to traditional ballot casting
or a more convenient way to vote

9. ICTs however opened genuinely new ways of doing participation
(both in terms of channels for participation and of outputs of
participatory processes).
•products or services that rely on the aggregation of individual,
voluntary inputs made by many citizens acting in a decentralised
fashion.
I.e.:
•collaborative mapping, as applied to real-time disaster and hazard
maps,
•feedback on public services (e.g. Fixmy street)
•co-creation of new public services (hackatons or other forms of
innovation competitions)

10. https://www.fixmystreet.com/

11. E-consultation portals
by 2018 most developed countries had some version of
such portals in place
•CROATIA
•SLOVENIA
•SCOTLAND

12. Croatia
https://esavjetovanja.gov.hr/ECon/Dashboard

13. Slovenia
https://e-uprava.gov.si/si/drzava-in-druzba/e-
demokracija/predlogi-predpisov.html

14. Scotland
https://consult.gov.scot/we_asked_you_said/

15. e-petions / “ideation forums”
platforms where citizens can submit
ideas or proposals
SLOVENIA
UK
SPAIN

16. SLOVENIA: I PROPOSE
Users can comment on the proposal and suggest
corrections for 15 days.
The final proposal prepared by the author of the proposal
is voted on.
Voting lasts 14 days (registered users)
If the proposal receives more votes for than against and if
at least 3 percent of active users participated in the vote, it
goes to the competent ministry or government
department for consideration, which prepares an official
response within 30 days.

17. https://predlagam.vladi.si/

18. WESTMINISTER E-PETIONS
Petitions - UK Government and Parliament
The Petitions Committee will take the threshold of 100,000 signatures
as a starting point when it considers which
petitions should be debated.

19. Spain

20. Decide Madrid
•Citizens can submit a proposal on Decide Madrid, for which
the person only has to be registered on the platform.
•The citizen proposals will be in force in Decide Madrid for 12
months, where they can be supported by citizens over 16 years
of age and registered in the city of Madrid.
•If the citizens' proposals get the support of 1% of the people
over 16 years of age registered in the city of Madrid, the City
Council will call a citizen vote. Once held, if there are more
people in favor than against, the municipal government will
study the feasibility of it with the aim of its implementation in
the city.
Decide Madrid

21. Participatory budgeting
Decide Madrid

22. Multi-function local e-participation
platforms
Decide Madrid

23. Issue to consider:
develop own platforms and e-tools
or
use existing close or open-source platforms and tools?
Advantages?
Disadvantages?

24. https://www.citizenlab.co/

25. https://mitgestalten.wien.gv.at/de-DE/

26. Lessons learned
ESTONIA
ALBANIA
CROATIA

27. ESTONIA
E-voting
•March 2023 elections: 51% cast their vote online (313.000)
•In 2019 247,232 e-votes

28. Osala.ee consultation platform
Lunched in 2007 as a platform for public consultations
on legislative drafts.
In 2008 additional functionality, which allowed citizens
to propose ideas to the government, and gather
comments and votes in support
•
no more than 5-10 committed active users
an all-time peak of traffic at the end of January 2009:
5906 unique visits per week
by 2010, average weekly visits had dropped to 933,
starting a trend for gradual decline

29. ALBANIA
Electronic Registry of Public Notification
•the central governmental platform for e-consultation
on draft policy documents.

30. the portal Albania we want
https://www.shqiperiaqeduam.al/#nismaIme
•enabling citizens to make specific policy proposals and
recommending specific governmental projects or by
having online meetings with the prime minister or other
ministers on specific issues and by submitting online-
petitions
•
•established in October 2017, in first three years received
over 35 thousand proposals and suggestions

32. CROATIA

34. Questions?